Dont forget - they showed an early model talking to ‘white haired owner guy’ - drinking whiskey in the basement - they were clearly showing how far they had come - the ‘bar buddy bot’ was very jittery in movement and seemed to have limited communication bits.
As for Guests v Guests and shooting hosts indiscriminately - part of the allure was shown with the ‘new guy’ getting dressed - you can’t tell which is which easily.
There may also be legal reasons why these robots aren’t in the general population (for all we know, maybe they do exist in some form out there but are priced so high that only a select few can own them outright) - as perhaps the general population doesn’t trust them walking about (there are a lot of robots taking over the world fears), but confined to a “park” with people having to volunteer to go into that park being considered ok.
If you can casually and gruesomely “murder” hosts in the town, ostensibly the most central and safest part of the park, then what if any of this is kid-friendly?
Guest: [stepping off train with his young son] Okay, Johnny, ready for this vacation? You can play cowboy all you like and- [another guest shoots a female host in the head, creating a momentary cloud of bloody mist, some of which settles on Johnny’s clean white hat]
Johnny: WAAAAHHH! [his father hastily pulls him back onto the train, followed by years of intense therapy]
I wondered how the long white hallway from the dressing area attached to the moving train as it passed through the desert.
The guns don’t work on other guests, but they still don’t explain how guests don’t accidently kill each other with knives or rocks or whatever if a host isn’t around to intervene. I mean what if I accidently hooked up with another guest, each of us thinking the other was a host, and for fun I decide to smash her head in?
Not to mention there is a whorehouse right there.
Why is the experience any more “extreme” as you get further out? The hosts guns are just as harmless.
Also, what about “griefers”? What MMOPRPG doesn’t have annoying a-holes taking advantage of exploits to ruin other people’s time? Ed Harris is probably the closest example, except he’s more about finding easter eggs. What stops me from just going around and just shooting the hell out of hosts whenever guests talk to them and just generally being a jerk?
What we’ve seen seems so adult-oriented that I thought perhaps the theme park was adults-only. But the website makes it clear that it’s for kids as well. And the website has a map showing all of the locations in the park. Perhaps one of the towns is set aside for family-friendly adventures?
Good point - nobody cares if American kids witness ultrarealistic violence but if they see naked boobs, everyone demands that shit stops NOW.
Ah, the Grand Theft Wagon scenario.
That, and in episode one we saw the parents and their kid running into Dolores while she was painting wild horses down by the river.
And weren’t those parents the same ones who shot the saloon robber and his sidekick, and had pictures taken with the “bodies”?
No, different ones. The ones who met Dolores were a black couple and their kid. The picture takers were white.
Ah, so they were. I was thinking the killer couple had a kid, but now I remember the kid at the river with the horse eating from his hand being black.
Another good episode, I thought.
Loved the flirtatious Englishwoman in the white dress who helped William get ready. Seems a bit late to be asking him questions about how delicate his sensibilities are, though.
Picking out either a black hat or a white - too much! I wonder if the symbolism is still understood in WW’s future. Maybe there’s been a comeback of Westerns in pop culture, either driven by or reflected in WW’s popularity.
Who is speaking to Dolores in the nighttime, outside her family’s farmhouse? Hmm.
We haven’t seen Dolores’s mom’s face (as when she was dead on the floor in the front hall in the first episode) yet. Wonder if that’s significant.
Ed Harris’s face is also obscured beneath the brim of his hat, I noticed, when the WW staff are monitoring him in the cantina.
Harris puts two bullets in the little girl’s hand. Didn’t see where he was going with that at first - brrr.
The little girl’s change in demeanor and voice, warning him, was also a creepy moment. Something pre-programmed, or did the staff intervene to make her do that?
Interesting to see the U.S. Cavalry recruiting in town. From the sergeant’s pitch, it sounds like this would be during the Civil War, but absolute historical accuracy is obviously not a goal of WW.
Do the hosts actually have pain receptors, or are they just programmed to respond as if they’re hurt? The old guy whose hand was stabbed in the restaurant certainly seemed to be in agony.
Yeah, I had the same thought. Even Sweetwater can get R- and X-rated.
Exactly. A dumb bit of showmanship.
Of course it is (IMO). That’s the point. You get to decide if you want to be cliched ‘white hat’ or the cliched ‘black hat’. They aren’t necessarily going for total accuracy, but basically entering into an old Western.
Yeah, I would think you have to disclose any medical problems, etc. before you pay your $40,000 (or whatever it costs) and arrive at the facility. Seems like there would be a lot of paperwork, waivers, etc. to fill out beforehand.
Heck, once some people realize that there’s pussy to be grabbed, that’s all they’ll do.
That was my first thought too. I have a pretty decent fear of heights, but if I know I’m surrounded in a completely safe environment with safety features all around me I am pretty OK with going up high.
If I had to make a guess to refute my own (and I guess your) argument would be the situation surrounding me would be more perilous.
Yes, I have no fear going against a gang of baddies if I know I can’t get shot, but I’ve shot a gun once in my life…my accuracy on those pistols is probably shit. So what do I do when I run out of ammo? It would still be pretty frightening to try and take on 4 or 5 “real” guys when all I have are my fists.
So then these bandits overwhelm me and want to torture me. I don’t want to feel pain and almost die. That could be frightening.
I think to make it more intense means stacking more odds against you and making it harder for you to “win” and making the ramifications of your “loss” greater
There is likely always a white hat around close to make sure you don’t fully lose.
But they aren’t going to torture and beat you up (I don’t think). That’s kind of the whole point. I mean Ed Harris doesn’t have super-human quick draw ability. They just can’t shoot him back (at least not that the impacts seem to matter as he doesn’t even flinch).
My theory is that “family safe” in Sweetwater basically means PG-13 Western. Sure there are gunfights and a whorehouse, but it’s still kind of an “old western film” level of violence and whorein’. Lots of hosts (including sheriffs and marshals and whatnot) who are mostly regular townfolk to make sure things don’t get too out of hand. All the sex is behind closed doors. Probably a petting zoo nearby for the kids.
As you get further out, the population gets thinner (fewer hosts to protect you and fewer eyes to observe you getting down), the scenarios get more violent and bizarre, the characters more shady, even a greater risk of actual injury (since those are real cliffs, rocks and rivers).
What if I want the “brown hat” of a morally ambiguous anti-hero from a Sergio Leone film?
Says who? For what I can gather (just based on the first 2 episodes and aided by Hopkins’ speech to the writer guy) the point of Westworld isn’t that it’s a game to be won. It’s an experience to be had. If the point of “the further you go out the worse it is” is to weed out the newbies from the veterans, then who says there has to be a white hat to save me? Until we get a stronger confirmation about how pain and death work, I have no reason to believe that Westworld’s makers (ESPECIALLY the writer guy) don’t have the attitude of “You want to really test your limits? Well here you go!”.
Ed Harris doesn’t, but he’s certainly more practiced than me or you. He’s been there for 30 years, he knows how to work a gun better than, probably, literally anyone else in there that isn’t a robot. He’s just simply too advanced for the theories of Westworld to work on him.
However, if an average Joe gets in there, I doubt he would be able to kill 8 people in 8 shots every. single. time.