Everything in Westworld is a game. Guests can join robots on quests and missions or just do a hack-and-slash on poor Teddy. The park workers play power games. And programmers like Ford and Bernard are engaged in a giant mind game with all the robot hosts, whose minds are as big a mystery as the Man in Black’s quest. On this week’s Decrypted podcast, we talk with Ars Technica’s games editor Kyle Orland about the gameworld of Westworld in episode 3, “The Stray.”
Topics discussed include: Julian Jaynes’ theory of the bicameral mind (you must do LSD to fully understand it), robot consciousness (it ain’t your grandmother’s Three Laws of Robotics), Teddy’s new backstory with Wyatt (holy crap Wyatt’s gang is scary and confusing), Ford’s anti-robot racism (he’s got issues), the Westworld gameplay (why are there no consequences to getting shot?), the kinds of quests available to guests (they seem very hack-and-slash), whether the MIB is going on fan forums late at night to compare notes about clues he’s found in Westworld (definitely maybe he is), moderation and griefers in Westworld (it’s complicated), and who among the so-called humans is actually a robot (Bernard? Ford? Lee?).
Loading comments...
