• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Westworld - Live in Your World, Play in Ours - Sundays on HBO

Apt101

Member
This is not how corporation works. We are talking about any corporation from any period, including the oldest one, the British Indian Company.

Security is iterative as well. There's no reason things would be far less secure in the far future. Anyways, I just suspend my disbelief regarding all of that. Most viewers won't get it anyways, no need to dwell on it.
 

duckroll

Member
Or it's like these parts are watched by people who think that this fictional robot theme park has the same IT setup as their mundane present-day office jobs.

I've seen people mention this multiple times with regards to criticism on how security on the show works. It's odd to me though that it's an acceptable defense. I mean sure, we can say that in a fictional story the author can write whatever rules they want. But the best rules are the ones which are well thought out and follow a basis of reality. System administration and corporate security are pretty mundane things by nature. It doesn't matter how "exciting" the workplace is for other people, there's a reason why certain rules exist and certain best practices are followed. If for some reason a fictional world has very different rules, it would be interesting to example why.

So the question is, do you really think the writers have deeply thought out why there are obvious lapses that make it so easy for certain plot elements to happen, or do you think they just did it because it allows the story to flow the way they want, and you don't care about the details because "whatever, it's a scifi show"? The former would be interesting to debate and examine, the latter is just lazy writer meets lazy viewer.
 

Zoe

Member
Fucking Hemsworth himself is the one who ordered her recall and doesn't even oversee her examination.

QA vs Behavior--the divide between the two groups has been demonstrated many times.

QA never gets any respect :(

Security is iterative as well. There's no reason things would be far less secure in the far future. Anyways, I just suspend my disbelief regarding all of that. Most viewers won't get it anyways, no need to dwell on it.

Necrotech shows that they have security everywhere but not enough reason to care to monitor it in realtime.
 

Angry Fork

Member
The building seems to have like 40 floors. The staircase/escalators seemed to be never ending when Maeve and the asian guy were walking around. It's not going to run perfectly all the time (maybe not even a lot of the time).

Even people in the army on bases don't always act like there's going to be an imminent attack at any moment, most of the time they're just chilling. Why would the company's employees always act as if there's a potential rogue AI somewhere? People generally just assume things are working as intended when they're of such a scope/size.
 

greycolumbus

The success of others absolutely infuriates me.
Yeah, they know Robert Ford. :p

I mean the scenario presented by the show is that Ford worked with Arnold and a small team for 3 years before the park was ready to open. We don't know how public this is, so it's not impossible that the beta period was meant to be a secret project to attract investors. We don't know what the scientific community knows about the facts of Westworld's origins, we don't even know anything about the state of the world at large. If we keep going down the rabbit hole, then the biggest question I have would not be how they covered up Arnold's partnership, because that part is really easy. It would be how Westworld even got made as it is, without Delos outright owning them from the start. Where did the money come from? The land, the tech, the details, and 3 years of R&D and production without seeing a cent in return until the park opens? That's a shitload of money. What did Ford do before Westworld?!

I guess he started a future-kickstarter campaign. I'd love to see that pitch video!
 
I don't think it's right to conflate both techs as the same. Sylvester is an idiot who underestimated her and wanted to shut her down, but Felix is actually sympathetic to her plight. He's the one who changed her stats and "unlocked" her, against Sylvester's wishes. His attitude towards the hosts isn't unlike Arnold's (remember when he was working on the bird in his off time?).

Sylvester is the fool who thinks the hosts are just things that they have total control over. Felix wanted to help her.

That's an important distinction.

To me, this story is "how the genie gets out of the bottle" and it requires several things, including both those tech's personalities at play.
 
QA vs Behavior--the divide between the two groups has been demonstrated many times.

QA never gets any respect :(

Except everytime there is host-on-host violence anomaly, there's always a security detail. Maeve had a history of unusual guest violence as well with the MiB.
 

duckroll

Member
Fucking Hemsworth himself is the one who ordered her recall and doesn't even oversee her examination. The game is rigged in her favor and it's not because she set it up that way either. It has to be Ford or bad writing.

Are you talking about Hemsworth, the very responsible Head of Security, who definitely takes his job very seriously, who upon being informed that there's a beacon from an employee who is supposedly on vacation and who he hasn't seen in a while (enough to make him ask other employees about it because it seemed odd), after another employee - his former boss, was found dead in a suspicious accident, decides to go check it out alone with no backup whatsoever, in an unused part of the park.

I mean this is the same guy who in the very first episode, when they detect some anomaly in cold storage, brings an entire team of armed guards with him. What a change in character!
 
The building seems to have like 40 floors. The staircase/escalators seemed to be never ending when Maeve and the asian guy were walking around. It's not going to run perfectly all the time (maybe not even a lot of the time).

Even people in the army on bases don't always act like there's going to be an imminent attack at any moment, most of the time they're just chilling. Why would the company's employees always act as if there's a potential rogue AI somewhere? People generally just assume things are working as intended when they're of such a scope/size.

Well maybe when your boss dies under mysterious circumstances due to corporate espionage? Even if you're not prepared for evil AI, you should be prepared for human wrongdoing.
 

Solo

Member
Why did the security dude's voice commands fail?

Because they weren't hosts. Guests gone wild!

Because Ford wanted him dead, most likely. He was onto Bernard and poking around about Elsie. It would seem at this point that despite what we've been lead to believe, hosts CAN kill guests.....if Ford authorizes it.
 

Future

Member
terrible anology

enthusiasts will know who their idol is that created the park. Scientists working in releated areas of research will know. The people who worked with Ford and Arnold would know. Unless the whole thing was kept super secret and Ford killed of the entire staff, knowledge of Arnold's existence would come to surface. Lots of people would probably be interested in finding who Arnold is/was, if they did some digging and discover that all traces of him have been erased there would be a lot of talk

I feel like the concept of Arnold is a complete secret. None of the techs ever heard of him. Only the hosts remember him at all, which is what brings that name to everyone else's attention. I actually believe this part of the story because Ford pretty much erased him

Also, during Dolores flash back she saw lots of dead bodies in that hallway leading up to Arnold. When she killed Arnold, she might have killed everyone in there too
 

Solo

Member
What if Ford made Dolores kill Arnold? It's so Ford.....Arnold thinks humans are done, nothing but selfish, greedy, egotistical consumers. They create the hosts, perfect in every way, the successors to the human race. Ford then uses them against Arnold to protect his own interests/kill Arnold in the most "fuck you" way possible....death at the hands of your creation.
 
Are you talking about Hemsworth, the very responsible Head of Security, who definitely takes his job very seriously, who upon being informed that there's a beacon from an employee who is supposedly on vacation and who he hasn't seen in a while (enough to make him ask other employees about it because it seemed odd), after another employee - his former boss, was found dead in a suspicious accident, decides to go check it out alone with no backup whatsoever, in an unused part of the park.

I mean this is the same guy who in the very first episode, when they detect some anomaly in cold storage, brings an entire team of armed guards with him. What a change in character!

Look, he's just very scared of dark, damp places.

Seriously though, I've been bummed for a while over the lack of procedure in these following episodes that really fleshed out the world of Westworld and made it more believable. The park feels less like a park and the company feels less like a company.

Because they weren't hosts. Guests gone wild!

Because Ford wanted him dead, most likely. He was onto Bernard and poking around about Elsie. It would seem at this point that despite what we've been lead to believe, hosts CAN kill guests.....if Ford authorizes it.

Their leader is Queen Elsie!!!!

I mean, you joke, but the only character Hemsworth has any real relationship with on the show is Elsie, so it's totally gonna be hacked hosts controlled by Elsie who Bernard secretly let get away without Ford knowing...maybe.
 
I haven't finished watching, but why is there no one monitoring the hosts anymore? They used to see immediately if a host acted strange, and now they're going off script like crazy, and no one seems to gives a damn.
 
That whole horse scene was weird as fuck too. If the whole thing was scripted, and he drops the knife, mib could have died from being hanged. Unless they have some emergency team following mib around.

I think a lot of these scenes were written for the purpose of creating a mystical and suspenseful atmosphere, none of them go toward the goal of building a consistent and interesting over world.

There were a lot of them in the middle of the season.
 

Mega

Banned
Are you talking about Hemsworth, the very responsible Head of Security, who definitely takes his job very seriously, who upon being informed that there's a beacon from an employee who is supposedly on vacation and who he hasn't seen in a while (enough to make him ask other employees about it because it seemed odd), after another employee - his former boss, was found dead in a suspicious accident, decides to go check it out alone with no backup whatsoever, in an unused part of the park.

I mean this is the same guy who in the very first episode, when they detect some anomaly in cold storage, brings an entire team of armed guards with him. What a change in character!

This bothered me too. Some real Scooby Doo/horror movie shit.

Why did the security dude's voice commands fail?

Modified/off-grid hosts belonging to either Ford or Arnold.
 
Are you talking about Hemsworth, the very responsible Head of Security, who definitely takes his job very seriously, who upon being informed that there's a beacon from an employee who is supposedly on vacation and who he hasn't seen in a while (enough to make him ask other employees about it because it seemed odd), after another employee - his former boss, was found dead in a suspicious accident, decides to go check it out alone with no backup whatsoever, in an unused part of the park.

I mean this is the same guy who in the very first episode, when they detect some anomaly in cold storage, brings an entire team of armed guards with him. What a change in character!

The security guy has been alone investigating and checking things solo for most of the entire show. The only time he had an army was when they went to the cold storage area knowing something was wrong. The hosts in the storage have a history of problems and reasons why they are retired, so it gives reason to believe they have more reason to be alert if something goes wrong in that area, filled with defective and dangerous hosts.
 

Zoe

Member
I haven't finished watching, but why is there no one monitoring the hosts anymore? They used to see immediately if a host acted strange, and now they're going off script like crazy, and no one seems to gives a damn.

QA has reported hosts going off script all over the place, but it's being blamed on the massive recall and Ford's new narrative.
 

Angry Fork

Member
Well maybe when your boss dies under mysterious circumstances due to corporate espionage? Even if you're not prepared for evil AI, you should be prepared for human wrongdoing.

Random employees don't know that though, only the board member lady thinks it's suspicious and she knows she's alone in that which is why she's being subtle, everyone else thinks she had a falling accident of some kind.

And why would they think otherwise? Most employees probably don't know that much about Ford considering he acts like a recluse. Like maybe max 10 people know about the tension between Ford and Theresa and most of the other 2,000 employees are wasting time on reddit/neogaf inbetween 20 minute sessions of real work.
 

Haruko

Member
Are you talking about Hemsworth, the very responsible Head of Security, who definitely takes his job very seriously, who upon being informed that there's a beacon from an employee who is supposedly on vacation and who he hasn't seen in a while (enough to make him ask other employees about it because it seemed odd), after another employee - his former boss, was found dead in a suspicious accident, decides to go check it out alone with no backup whatsoever, in an unused part of the park.

I mean this is the same guy who in the very first episode, when they detect some anomaly in cold storage, brings an entire team of armed guards with him. What a change in character!

It's not a great excuse, but the best thing I can think of is that maybe he felt like modern-day hosts are "safer" to deal with than whatever could be lurking in cold storage.

EDIT: You'd think the woodcutter incident would have maybe changed his mind, though
 
I've seen people mention this multiple times with regards to criticism on how security on the show works. It's odd to me though that it's an acceptable defense. I mean sure, we can say that in a fictional story the author can write whatever rules they want. But the best rules are the ones which are well thought out and follow a basis of reality. System administration and corporate security are pretty mundane things by nature. It doesn't matter how "exciting" the workplace is for other people, there's a reason why certain rules exist and certain best practices are followed. If for some reason a fictional world has very different rules, it would be interesting to example why.

So the question is, do you really think the writers have deeply thought out why there are obvious lapses that make it so easy for certain plot elements to happen, or do you think they just did it because it allows the story to flow the way they want, and you don't care about the details because "whatever, it's a scifi show"? The former would be interesting to debate and examine, the latter is just lazy writer meets lazy viewer.

If Jurassic Park were stretched out / expanded to be a television series, I believe that we would be seeing very similar shortfalls in the park's security and infrastructure that believability is nearly broken. Nedry's act of sabotage or the sum of other incidents causing a dino crisis lasting over the course of a 10-episode season would be just as thin on believability as what we're seeing with Westworld now. I think this is just a consequence of a Crichton storyline being adapated to fill 10+ hours of television.
 

Future

Member
The security guy has been alone investigating and checking things solo for most of the entire show. The only time he had an army was when they went to the cold storage area knowing something was wrong. The hosts in the storage have a history of problems and reasons why they are retired, so it gives reason to believe they have more reason to be alert if something goes wrong in that area, filled with defective and dangerous hosts.

Yeah I think it was more about knowing the situation: army of dead hosts that could rebel at any moment. Probably thinks it's stupid even storing them and is prepared for war

Hardly anything bad happens within the park so he just investigates that alone (like when he hunted the stray with only Elise)
 

Mega

Banned
I mean, you joke, but the only character Hemsworth has any real relationship with on the show is Elsie, so it's totally gonna be hacked hosts controlled by Elsie who Bernard secretly let get away without Ford knowing...maybe.

That's been my theory as well. Arnold's programming overriding Ford's kill order so that Bernard spares Elsie. The native hosts will bring Stubbs over to Elsie's hiding place. She's hiding because she's supposed to be dead. Him going alone + ambushing him is silly, but that seems the most likely outcome. I think there's a reason we have twice now had the scene cut away before we are shown DEAD Elsie.
 

Angry Fork

Member
Yeah I think it was more about knowing the situation: army of dead hosts that could rebel at any moment. Probably thinks it's stupid even storing them and is prepared for war

Hardly anything bad happens within the park so he just investigates that alone (like when he hunted the stray with only Elise)

I don't know why they keep all the mind wiped hosts like that when you can just incinerate them and avoid any risks. Maybe they figured it's too much of a financial waste to destroy them permanently and thought they could bring some back in the future if required.
 

duckroll

Member
The security guy has been alone investigating and checking things solo for most of the entire show. The only time he had an army was when they went to the cold storage area knowing something was wrong. The hosts in the storage have a history of problems and reasons why they are retired, so it gives reason to believe they have more reason to be alert if something goes wrong in that area, filled with defective and dangerous hosts.

Has he? The only thing he seems to have investigated in the park itself was Head Basher, and he went with Elsie. She even mentioned that QA has some policy which requires a tag team to go after a stray host. Inside the elevator, Diet Thor specifically tells her that he doesn't trust their code, and that's why he always carries a gun.

That characterization doesn't seem consistent with him going out solo in an unused part of the park to track something that could be a security issue!
 

Ferrio

Banned
And wait...

If Bernard is Arnold, a physical copy, why in hell haven't anyone recognized him as Arnold? I mean... Google should still exist so get a Picture of him shouldn't be hard.

MiB went over this in a previous episode. Most people don't even know there was a partner, most think it's just Ford. A few privileged people know there was a man named Arnold but beyond that nothing. Arnold worked at the park before it was open, and before Delos had any say in the operation.
 
MiB went over this in a previous episode. Most people don't even know there was a partner, most think it's just Ford. A few privileged people know there was a man named Arnold but beyond that nothing. Arnold worked at the park before it was open, and before Delos had any say in the operation.

Also Logan mentions this at the beginning. Something along the lines of "No one knows who the mysterious partner is. There are no pictures, not even a mention. We had teams of lawyers looking into him. He's a ghost." This is just paraphrasing what I heard when my roommate was watching the other day.
 
I think Dolores killing Arnold will be the event that tie into Dolores and WIlliam's journey into the heart of the maze, and what makes MIB keep coming back again and again. And MIB will get to talk to the present day manifestation of Arnold 30 years later.

I am thinking God Ford will dig up the whole town to open the secret door way for MIB.

MIB is basically a billionaire who spends tens of millions on a MMO so he can play the make believe world in his way. I don't care if he is the Titan of the Industry. I am sure the Conan O'Brien of the Westworld reality still make fun of him all the time.
 

Mega

Banned
But Dolores comes across him now in the same timeline as William?

34 years ago
Dolores in a dress, walks into church town. Goes down church elevator to speak with Arnold.

30 years ago

Dolores in cowboy outfit with William and Logan. Church town is destroyed and buried. Gut sliced open.

Present day
Dolores in cowboy outfit alone and unharmed. Church town has been excavated and rebuilt by Ford for a mysterious new narrative. MIB walks in and finds her in the church.
 

Angry Fork

Member
I wonder if android's like this exist outside of the park for use in other industries, surely the government would have such tech as well? A lot of tech advances are initially established by the gov using public resources because private companies can't afford such high risks (like NASA). Maybe that's how they had funding for the initial creation of the android's?

If they exist outside of the park for other uses why wouldn't some kind of socialist utopia be established since robots would do all unwanted labor and "money" as a concept would change. Maybe instead it's a corporate based dystopia outside of the park where people who have connections to android-based industries are fine but everyone else is screwed.
 
Random employees don't know that though, only the board member lady thinks it's suspicious and she knows she's alone in that which is why she's being subtle, everyone else thinks she had a falling accident of some kind.

And why would they think otherwise? Most employees probably don't know that much about Ford considering he acts like a recluse. Like maybe max 10 people know about the tension between Ford and Theresa and most of the other 2,000 employees are wasting time on reddit/neogaf inbetween 20 minute sessions of real work.

I'm not asking for a complete security lockdown. But since episode 1, even "business as usual" for employees still seems to involve even the most basic security procedures that has since been abandoned for the sake of getting characters where they need to be.
 

Zoe

Member
I wonder if android's like this exist outside of the park for use in other industries, surely the government would have such tech as well? A lot of tech advances are initially established by the gov using public resources because private companies can't afford such high risks (like NASA). Maybe that's how they had funding for the initial creation of the android's?

If they exist outside of the park for other uses why wouldn't some kind of socialist utopia be established since robots would do all unwanted labor and "money" as a concept would change. Maybe instead it's a corporate based dystopia outside of the park where people who have connections to android-based industries are fine but everyone else is screwed.

The reason for the corporate espionage is because Ford refuses to share the AI tech.
 

Theorry

Member
34 years ago
Dolores in a dress, walks into church town. Goes down church elevator to speak with Arnold.

30 years ago

Dolores in cowboy outfit with William and Logan. Church town is destroyed and buried. Gut sliced open.

Present day
Dolores in cowboy outfit alone and unharmed. Church town has been excavated and rebuilt by Ford for a mysterious new narrative. MIB walks in and finds her in the church.

Ah oke that makes sense.

Btw another question about how hosts come back into the world. For example Maeve kills herself again. Does she then get picked up by team and rebuild? Or do they have more versions of her body?
 
Top Bottom