If this turns out to be the case, I will still want a good explanation for my point about host sophistication in post #229.
Am I the only one who’s bored by the White Hat/Black Hat Brothers storyline? I find both of them terribly uninteresting because of how goofily stereotypical they are. I’m guessing that’s the point, but the fact there is zero nuance bugs me. Plus, I think the actor who plays White Hat is terribly wooden and boring and I just don’t care. I’m curious about Dolores, so she keeps me interested in them, but that’s about it.
Every other storyline I’m interested in (especially Bernard!) and can’t wait to see more, but I just don’t give a shit about the two mad-hatters.
I think they have to be there. As others have pointed out, to get into Westworld as a guest is basically to start playing an MMO. You enter into the hub of Sweetwater, which gives you an introduction to the world and a chance to pick up a quest line. You can be good or bad; either way, the game won’t stop you, although it may cut off possible quests due to your actions. They’re both audience surrogates and reference points. You can play an RPG by metagaming it and doing whatever you want to do on impulse or you can play one with serious thought and heavy-duty roleplaying. Neither one is inherently wrong, but in either case the player will get out what he puts in.
For Black Hat, Westworld is an excuse to screw around, kill things on a whim, and find a way to get as much enjoyment as he can for his money. White Hat is clearly uncomfortable with the setup and is treating the hosts as something more than just NPCs. Personally, I think I’d be far more like White Hat (based on how I actually play games), while other viewers might see themselves more like Black Hat.
Unless Dolores started exhibiting free will and self awareness from the very beginning, William cannot be the Man in Black. Her discussions with Bernard and her going off loop and running into William is happening, in my opinion, in the present.
Did you notice that in the most recent episode Black Hat (Logan) said something about finding an Easter egg? So even the guests see this as we do a video game.
I can see how their storyline is there to show us, the audience, the experience from a user’s point of view, but I don’t think they need to be SO polar opposites to accomplish this.
Having Black Hate just wontonly shoot everything and everyone (or at least want to) only seems to be there for the show to yell at me saying “SEE? WHITE HAT = GOOD!” and force his morality onto us.
I would much rather see the two guys come into the park for the first time and allow us to simultaneously see Westworld from a user’s point of view and also grow with these guys as they discover what unlimited power does to them in real time.
In other news, things we discovered in this ep that are worth mentioning:
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It was assumed before, but now mostly confirmed, that other hosts are becoming some kind of self aware even without hearing the magic phrase. How is the little girl so knowing? What about the outlaw? How does he know these things?
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Who is the most self aware of all?
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The bullets used in Westworld are apparently real bullets, however when the 'bots are “cleaned up” the bullets aren’t removed. This seems like a gross oversight on the engineer’s part.
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The Man in Black =/= Arthur. He also apparently doesn’t have unlimited power because he had to ask permission to use cigars as explosives. How did he do that anyway? He’s also apparently a real-world person too who’s “on fucking vacation”. A 30-year vaca? or does he just come back a lot in 30 years?
Theories still in play:
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Black/White hat is Man in Black: I don’t like this theory personally, but it hasn’t been conclusively debunked yet.
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Bernard is a robot
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The nature of the park: Could be VR, could be real, could be on Mars…we just don’t know yet
Arnold, not Arthur. As for the bullet that wasn’t removed from Maeve, that was explained as the technician being rushed when repairing her.
I think I like them being polar opposites. This is William’s first time coming into the park, so he wants to be the good guy. Logan has been there a lot and so he’d rather be the black hat because he likely feels he’s already done all the narratives he wanted to do as a white hat. I think it’s an interesting question as to whether anyone really stays as a white hat if you’ve been coming there for a long period of time.
And it’s a question of how real do you see the hosts? It’s the Ford/Arnold question. William seems Dolores as more human than she is. Logan has been there enough to think of the hosts as simply robots there to do their bidding - and in a world where we know they are merely robots, does his actions really equate to evil? He’s shooting robots at willy nilly. Does that matter? Are folks who play as assholes in MMORPGs evil? Does the knowledge of unreality change anything?
I think there are host (no pun intended) of incredibly interesting questions with the white hat/black hat drama of William and Logan.
A couple episodes back they explained that while the hosts don’t dream, they understand the concept of nightmares, just on the off chance they remember something from being “processed.” So you have all these hosts together that sort of remember the cleaners, and it becomes the story of these demons.
Basically, they’re not as good as wiping memories as they thought they were.
I think the shot of Maeve pulling up the floor and finding all these other pictures she already drew was my favorite scene so far. It’s basically like if everyone else in Groundhog Day started remembering things.
He also mentioned “risk vs reward”, a common gaming term.
I don’t care what kind of power trip you are on, it’s just wrong to dig up a field of blue agave.
What happened to the woman who was with Teddy when Wyatt’s masked gang attacked them? Why didn’t Teddy’s gun (or hers, if she ever actually hit one) kill them?
Maeve’s been through this before - when the masked techs were operating on her previous abdomen wound and mentioned the MRSA, that was from the same shot that never got fixed correctly that led her to digging the slug out this time. Maybe this self inflicted wound festers up and that’s what those techs were working on when she woke up in the lab. These time loops are making it hard to know what happened when.
Ford says something about carrying on Arnold’s legacy or some such. If Arnold is the one who implanted the “sentience virus” or whatever you call it (Ford said Arnold wanted to make them remember/aware or something earlier), then is Ford secretly trying to further this goal?
Come see the Old West Strip Mine World!
It is pretty cool that the “lamer” bounty hunt for Slim turns up a connection to El WhatsHisName that excites even William’s jaded brother. Be interesting to see what El WhatsHisName is/knows that’s so important.
Concerning Ed Harris being in the past, when he activated the exploding cigars, didn’t we see present day characters in the control room allowing the 'splosions to happen?
The theory isn’t that Ed Harris’ character (the Man in Black) isn’t in the past but that White Hat/William is the same character in the past.
Lack of nuance doesn’t bother me. The black hat guy obviously wants to play an over-the-top villain, so that’s what he’s doing. White hat has trouble viewing the hosts as non-people, so can’t bring himself to treat them like props, which seems like it would be a pretty common problem for people entering the game for the first time.
But their interaction with each other is weird. Black hat brings his future bro-in-law to play a game, presumably to have some fun, but than seems super controlling about how he plays it. It seems bizarre he’s so invested in him having his hat-in-law come with him, and than seems determined to fuck with his good time. But then, there seems to be more backstory there than we’ve seen yet, so maybe it will make sense later.
Wyatt was just added to the game by Anthony Hawkins. He’s Teddy’s nemesis, and leader of the weird cultists Teddy tries to hunt down with the lesbian Guest. We saw him in the “flashback” (is it a flashback if its someone remebering something that never really happened?.
Also, I’m pretty sure the MiB can’t be in the future (or White Hat in the past). They spent a lot of the first episode talking up about how they change the game up over the years, moving Hosts to different roles, adding story lines, making them more realistic, etc. But White Hat and MiB are pretty clearly in the same game, with the same characters in the same loops wearing the same clothes. They could be there at different times, but not different decades.
Well, she woke up in the middle of the removal procedure and ran amok. Not surprised that he missed something.
I think he just visits a lot. Also, I think the match is a game item with significance. Lighting it sends the message to Control that he wants something to go bang. He gets to interact with the world in a realistic way, they handle the nitty gritty for him. Possibly advanced gamers get access to cool stuff like exploding cigars once they demonstrate their capability. Leveling up into rare gear, so to speak.
It was a behavioral term long before it was a gaming term.
If we assume that what we’ve seen in Control is all “now” (which seems to be the case, it’s all very linear), and we assume that the robots breaking character is also a new phenomenon (also a fairly safe assumption), then it’s hard to see how the park events are not also real time.
MIB arrives at the village with Lawrence in tow, talks about how he’s never been there before, amazed at how the game can keep surprising him. He then slaughters the village, orphans the girl, and searches for the maze. Dolores gains a gun and the ability to shoot it, and kills her attacker. She flees the house and runs into William, who then takes her to that same village. It’s strongly implied that this is after the massacre, as the girl is seemingly still orphaned. At this point, Dolores is still having reveries and flashbacks; she imagines the moon is the light of the workers, and sees the MIB’s face superimposed over someone she sees.
It’s hard to reconcile these events as happening 30 years apart. If they are, then the whole underlying narrative (the robots are starting to manifest consciousness) falls apart.
Sidenote: I wonder if the safe in the whorehouse is more than just a MacGuffin? Seems like a good place to stash a clue in the greater game.
I dunno. That doesn’t seem weird to me. I’ve seen plenty of folks excitedly introduce their friends to a game and then get a bit peeved when they aren’t doing it the way they “should be playing” and “if you do it this way, it’s more fun”. Seems accurate to me.
My wife pointed out after the last episode that the maze design was the around the dark edges - as in, the lighter space between the dark lines is where you follow it. For some reason I just thought it was a dancing stick figure doodle.