How Would You Spend Your Time in Westworld?

1274080_mkt_pa_westworld-s1_po_v1_pI’m watching three new shows this season, and I’m sure I’ll write about them all at some point: The Good Place, Frequency, and Westworld. I’m enjoying all three, but I’m really loving Westworld, so it gets the spotlight first.

I’m not going to spoil anything from the first three episodes, though if you want to know absolutely nothing about the show, you probably shouldn’t continue reading.

The basic idea of Westworld is that it is a futuristic theme park, though it feels much more like a live-action role playing game. There are no rides, no cotton candy, no castles that aren’t really castles–when you walk into Westworld, the world you enter is nearly indistinguishable from the wild west.

The show has started to explore the different types of things people do in Westworld. Quite bluntly, a lot of them just kill and have sex. This seems to be aided by the animatronic hosts (which are nearly identical to humans)–there’s a sense that there are no consequences in this theme park.

But guests can pretty much do anything. If you want to walk out into the middle of the desert, you can. If you want to go on a side quest, there’s an abundance of interesting characters waiting to engage you. If you want to get a job at the local saloon, you can do that too. Of course, spending even a single day at Westworld costs about $40,000, so you’re

There’s also a lot of other stuff going on–the entire show is a giant mystery box. It’s glorious.

My favorite film/television website, Slash Film, has a lot of content about the show. In this week’s article about Sunday’s episode, they pose the question: How would you spend your time in Westworld?

Here’s what I think I would do: I would try to Ready Player One it. Or at least see if that’s an option. That is, I’d try to find the stuff the park doesn’t want you to find, and I’d try to see if there’s a deeper mystery to be solved. Like, I want to take a shovel and just start digging. I want to look for hollow books in buildings far away from the city. I want to turn right and keep walking until I reach the end of the world.

If someone spent that much time, effort, and money making Westworld, surely they must have built in some mega-quest for people to discover if they look hard enough.

What would you do?

5 thoughts on “How Would You Spend Your Time in Westworld?”

  1. Jamey,

    While I haven’t had the opportunity to see Westworld, I would highly recommend that you check out the film Westworld starring Yul Brenner, a 1973 science fiction thriller film written and directed by novelist Michael Crichton about amusement park androids that malfunction and begin killing visitors. In the movie, if I recall correctly, they cover three different “worlds” but the main action takes place on “Westworld.”

    Cheers,
    Joe

    Reply
    • Thanks Joe! If you have the chance to check out the show, I’m curious to hear your thoughts. It sounds like the might explore the things you mention from the original movie, but because it’s a TV show, they have a lot of time to explore a number other fascinating subjects and plots as well.

      Reply
      • Jamey,

        Yes, it’s an intriguing concept…as a 30+ year RPGer the idea of having a place where you could actually conduct the activities of an adventurer would be quite exciting. I’ll definitely check it out!

        Cheers,
        Joe

        Reply
    • He’s definitely searching for a deeper mystery, though I guess I don’t personally connect with it because of how dark he is.

      Reply

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