If such sophisticated robots are possible, why are they just being used in a theme park? You'd think it would be an Asimovian world where robots handle everything people don't want to do.
HBO's "Westworld", starring Anthony Hopkins/produced by J.J. Abrams
- Thread starter Ensign_Redshirt
- Start date
Amen to that. Still I would have preferred that the park was an attraction for adults only. Unless children will become an important part of the plot, like Dolores going to a killing spree and snuffing visitor kids.
Insurance companies will insure such things, the costs however may be very high and the security tests must be very hard for them to believe it would be a good deal. The thing about blades might also stipulate that visitors may not use them on "live" people because it's very hard to distinguish between the host and a real human, i also guess the guests have to sign a contract that they can't sue the company if they break their ankle getting off a horse for example (any kind of task typical to the Wild West).
But this is just grasping at straws and a quick way to explain it, you are right that there's too much that can go wrong that it's not realistic (just as an example of the recent episode where the host shoots up the whiskey bottle while the Gunslinger is still holding it.. no law will ever allow a robot to fire live ammunition this close to a live human being).
I hope the show explores this aspect too.. these hosts would be perfect for domestic use as servants and maybe even the military uses them for training purposes to increase realism.
A vacation in WestWorld should be incredibly expensive, still the visitors seem the same folks that can afford a vacation to Disneyland.
Disneyland doesn't cost $40,000 a day; WestWorld does.
Is it official? Wow, in the original movie the cost was $1,000 a day! The inflation!
ETA: And this is a better reason not to bring children in the park. $40.000 just for a picnic and sightseeing while you are dressed as a cowboy.
In the second episode, we kind of get a hint that there's more going on than we know.
When Ford is up on the surface, he interacts with a young boy who says he's there with his family and his father told him he can do whatever he wants. While not entirely proving he's a guest, it's highly suggested by that dialogue. Anyway, a little later, we see that Ford has a mastery of controlling the hosts when he stops a rattlesnake mid-attack and then commands it to wander off with a wave of his hand. A moment later... he pretty much does the same thing with the young boy, who turns and wanders off with a dazed look on his face.
While I hope they're not going full blown Twilight Zone on us, that kind of suggests that maybe Ford is one of the few humans still alive and everyone else is a host to one degree or another. Especially when coupled with some of the other stuff we've seen, such as the voiceover in the pilot and then the security dude reciting the exact same dialogue later on.
While I hope they're not going full blown Twilight Zone on us, that kind of suggests that maybe Ford is one of the few humans still alive and everyone else is a host to one degree or another. Especially when coupled with some of the other stuff we've seen, such as the voiceover in the pilot and then the security dude reciting the exact same dialogue later on.
Your "spoiler speculation" doesn't sound all that likely to me given that the show is set in the current (21st) century and we've seen - thanks to that photo of the woman in Times Square - that things don't look much different to how they do now.
This is one of the questions i have. I can understand the guns "sensing" whether a target is a host or guest, and we saw where a host cannot directly harm a guest (they have moments of hesitation, can't hit the target, etc...). But knives and human guests are different. A human can mistake a guest for a host and attack with a knife or throw a punch or drop a safe on his head or something. There literally doesn't appear to be any safeguards in place that would stop human on human violence.
How long do the guests stay? We get the impression (at least I did) that Delores, for example, resets her story line every day. Do guests only stay for a few hours? Are there overnight packages available?
I would think that the MIB Gunslinger not leaving and basically wrecking all kinds of havoc on Westworld would quickly draw attention and the staff would stop him. Yes, you can do "whatever you want" at Westworld, but a lot of time and effort was put into the interconnected story line that touches aspects of every guest's visit to the park. The Gunslinger is derailing all of that and will ruin the other guests visit. Even without the androids going haywire, this would be enough for a sizeable portion of the guests to demand a refund or badmouth the park and discourage future guests from even coming.
When are they going to sell their andorid idea to the government or governments and create soldiers and police?
I think this is a stylized or romanticized version of the Old West that is devoid of gender or racial bias. Female guests can play any role they want. Non white guests, the same. None are limited to the historic gender and racial roles.
In the second episode they literally said "He's paying so he can do whatever he wants" (some technician was worried because he had killed an entire posse).
I'm not a big fan of it either, but it seems to be suggesting that numerous times. If not everyone, then quite a few.
As for the picture, did you also notice how old it was? Because it was quite old. They also mentioned some "incident" 30 years ago in passing as well, which oddly enough is the same time all of this began.
Yet the only female guests we saw were:
- accompanying their partner or family (and they didn't seem very enthusiastic about it)
- just looking for sex with some bad boy dressed as a cowboy. And since they are robots, sex with them technically is just masturbation. For 40,000 $ at day they are the most expensive vibrators ever
I was just thinking aobut this encounter and how it contrasts the two children we see in episode 2. When the family meets Delores by the river, the first words out of the boy's mouth is "you're one of them, aren't you?" He's asking if she's a robot. or a host. In contrast, when the boy meets Ford in the desert, he never once questions whether Ford is human or robot. I think the hosts are the only ones depicted as being always "in character" and never questioning or commenting on whether someone is human or robot.
So, does this mean the boy in the desert with Ford was definitely a robot but the family by the river with Delores were definitely human?
So, does this mean the boy in the desert with Ford was definitely a robot but the family by the river with Delores were definitely human?
Probably yes. They were a little too much well dressed to be a 1800's black family in the West.
Not really. The boy in the desert didn't have a story; he specifically said his family was there on vacation and his father told him he could do whatever he wanted. That's what the guests do, not the hosts. It's only because we see Ford command him like a host later on that we're lead to believe that he is/was/might be a host. We don't even know if Ford really commanded him, though. The boy could have simply been 'respecting his elder,' though that is pretty flimsy given what Ford did just a moment earlier.
But if that boy was a host, and had the same general story as the family at the river, it could really go either way for either the family or the boy.
Really, we need to learn more about the world this show is taking place in to be sure. I mean, all we know so far is that you take an underground subway to get to the facility, and that at some point in the (distant, considering the age of the photo) past, Times Square was still a vibrant place.
But if that boy was a host, and had the same general story as the family at the river, it could really go either way for either the family or the boy.
Really, we need to learn more about the world this show is taking place in to be sure. I mean, all we know so far is that you take an underground subway to get to the facility, and that at some point in the (distant, considering the age of the photo) past, Times Square was still a vibrant place.
Disneyworld admission has increased like 30 times the original price so Westworld isnt that far off. Plus reflects thee 1%er culture we have.Is it official? Wow, in the original movie the cost was $1,000 a day! The inflation!
ETA: And this is a better reason not to bring children in the park. $40.000 just for a picnic and sightseeing while you are dressed as a cowboy.
As i said i can only guess that visitors have to sign a binding contract that forbids them to attack anybody with anything besides approved weapons, i.e. special guns and maybe knives are Hollywood style retractable knives that can "sense" if they are swung at a live human in which case they'd retract to avoid injury but stay rigid when used against a host (flimsy reasoning, i know
). So far i think only the gunslinger has used a knife to kill hosts and he seems like a psycho on a mission who doesn't play by the rules (and he's been going to the park for 30 years so maybe he knows all host models by now and knows whom he can attach safely).I think you can stay as long as you can pay as with any themepark so i guess there's anything from one day short adventure vistis up to the week or two week passage and anything in between. I don't think the park is that rigid with their structure because selling the illusion is what makes them so interesting and having an accountant don the hat and run after you n the town to ask if you will stay longer might ruin the experience.
I think the Gunslinger has to have special status, kind of like a gold membership. In the current episode he drops the info that he's been going there for 30 years meaning he must have tons of money so maybe the park and him have entered an agreement that he won't spoil the other guest's fun and otherwise is left on his own to do whatever he wants to do (including raping hosts.. jesus, i cringed so hard at that scene and it made me extremely uncomfortable). So far he has not interacted with other humans so there's no danger that he will become a problem for now.. what this ultimate level or whatever he's looking for is about is anyone's guess and part of the big puzzle that surely will play a big part in the show. I really can't make heads or tails about what he's looking for or hoping to discover.. can't be the workings behind the curtain (as a premium guest i think he could arrange a behind the scenes guided tour) so what's he after?
So far there's only been 2 episodes and they are still setting up the world and storylines.. it would be stupid and "unrealistic" if this advanced host technology would be confined to entertainment. I could well see a host as infantry cannon fodder.. leave out all the trappings like realistic skin and realistic behaviour.. barebones skin (probably armored to some degree) and with programmed combat behaviour could remove the human element from warfare which would be kinda the holy military grail, i.e. effective humanoid infantry soldiers with at least equal, if not superior, physical properties compared to a real human but which you can throw into the line of fire mercilessly without having to write a ton of letterst o families at home when they get cut down.
There's tons of useful (and non-military) uses for these hosts and i'm pretty sure that the company is selling them like hotcakes and personally i think it would be an amazing revelation when the hosts "wake up" and the show cuts to the rest of the world in utter panic mode because these hosts are used everywhere and are now malfunctioning realizing they've been used as slaves.
Obviously yes. But WestWorld isn't a faithful recreation of the Wild West, but something out of Hollywood cliché and stereotypes. I mean, real cowboys didn't even wear cowboy hats. What is the last western movie where you saw a median income black family?
I was thinking more like an actual army.
Good point. I wondered what the point of that was, although it seemed connected to the church or whatever it was.
