Westworld VIII: Forging On

[Mexal]

I actively disliked this episode whereas I enjoyed the first one, mostly because of Aaron Paul. I have much more interest in what Dolores is doing than I do Maeve and I care infinitely more about the wider world conspiracies than I do about the park. Pretty much all of this episode was utterly unnecessary, introducing the concept of simulations that really annoys me. We will never know if anything is real until the moment the creators pull the rug from under us and boy do I hate that type of storytelling.

[Cas Stark]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Who says they're really out of it?

If Dolores is not actually out of the park then WW will have reached 'it was all Bobby's dream in the shower' levels of stupid.  So, I think/hope that is not the case.

[DMC]

I thought it was fine to have one episode detailing how Maeve got out of the park and bringing Stubbs into the new game.  Loved how Bernard is, like, the most efficient therapist ever being like "alright Stubbs, let's decode the suicide out of you."  I do worry Nolan & Joy are relying far too much on the "is this real" crutch, and the content of the episode was largely just another iteration of Maeve breaking through the glass ceiling - although that was the point.  We'll see.  Seems like the rest of the season should be entirely in the "real" world, right?  If that's the case, I can tolerate some of them fucking with the viewers about whether this is all just another "simulation" or whatever.  Just, please not too much, it's lazy.

[karaddin]

Yeah, I'm fine with them bringing up the simulation idea as long as it's to move past it immediately like this. Maeve herself being unsure would be ok, but the audience should know she's in the real world.

[Fragile Bird]

What is the white circle that looks like a corona(!) with the black smoke around the edge that shows up at the opening of episodes. With the words about the South China Sea (obviously the location of Westworld)

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

10 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

If Dolores is not actually out of the park then WW will have reached 'it was all Bobby's dream in the shower' levels of stupid.  So, I think/hope that is not the case.

Maybe. There's just so many scenarios you can play out, and I've yet to see anything that makes me believe that's the real world. 

Just as an aside because I really can't remember, how many times do we ever see a storm of some kind on this show?

Now vision capable @Fragile Bird, you're on it. 
 

[Relic]

3 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

What is the white circle that looks like a corona(!) with the black smoke around the edge that shows up at the opening of episodes. With the words about the South China Sea (obviously the location of Westworld)

Its the AI in the "real world", Rehoboam, running diagnostics or whatever

[karaddin]

23 minutes ago, Relic said:

Its the AI in the "real world", Rehoboam, running diagnostics or whatever

Just to expand on it, the AI has functionally gamed out the future and has anticipated almost all outcomes. The spikes out from the circle are the events that were not predicted/anticipated, and these divergences are of significant magnitude to threaten the future predicted by the AI.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, its very in line with the vision of ASI's (Artificial Super Intelligence) that Nolan explored in Person of Interest. That sufficient processing power with sufficiently advanced logic routines (on a level that the ASI is a living being, but far beyond us), and a sufficiently comprehensive data set would allow the future to be predicted with a high, but not perfect, degree of accuracy.