Since its first season launch in 2016, I’ve at all times felt just like the Westworld TV collection provided an particularly compelling commentary on the online game interest. Like a variety of sci-fi, the present leverages futuristic know-how and far-fetched concepts to get its level throughout. However at its core, it’s nonetheless a present in regards to the psychology of individuals taking part in a recreation and the way that recreation is admittedly nearly life and the choices we make that form that life. Westworld could not borrow from a longstanding online game license. Nonetheless, with its incisive and infrequently shocking views, it has emerged as the very best present about video video games, their potential, and their menace that I’ve ever seen.
SPOILERS comply with for everything of the Westworld TV collection, as much as and together with present episodes of Season 4.
Anybody who has performed an MMO might grasp the setup introduced because the present’s first season received began. Actual-life participant characters are dressed up in period-appropriate gown and flung headlong right into a teeming world of quest givers, aspect targets, and freeform exploration. After all, Westworld’s all-important twist is the attention and nascent sentience of the NPCs inside that would-be massively multiplayer actual world and the harmful implications of a gaggle of individuals prepared to miss others’ struggling to have a superb time.
Past the repeated themes of free will that dominate these early episodes, I recall being constantly impressed by the present’s narrative, notably its understanding of recreation design and writing – and the way in which good design calls for such an acute understanding of human psychology. Whether or not you as soon as DMed a D&D recreation to your buddies, otherwise you’re a part of a group crafting the following triple-A console RPG, it’s a truism that understanding participant needs is vital to creating one thing enjoyable.
The early episodes of the present fourth season double down on the online game allusions and aren’t delicate in regards to the nods. Composer Ramin Djawadi helps to open the season with one other of his fascinating orchestral covers of acquainted songs, this time with Lana Del Rey’s “Video Video games.” The music performs to accompany the quiet contemplations of Christina, née Dolores, as she muses on a brand new character within the recreation for which she writes.
That recreation is a product of Olympiad Leisure, a fictional recreation firm within the Westworld universe that originally appears to have the identical cache as at this time’s most distinguished recreation studios, however maybe much more exaggerated. The “Olympiad” title appears almost definitely to be a play on phrases to recall to mind Mount Olympus, the house of the capricious gods of Greek mythology who as soon as lorded over a helpless humanity, with current episodes serving as ample proof for the case.
Right here within the fourth season, Christina’s dawning horror about her function on the earth (as a author of individuals’s fates), Caleb’s twisted journey by means of the equal of a number of recreation over screens and respawns, and even Bernard’s seeming functionality to “cheat” by understanding the attainable results of each interactive selection – they’re all intelligent twists on online game conventions. In every state of affairs, Westworld’s episodes faucet into established elements of the fiction to create conflicts for its leads. However devoted recreation gamers can take pleasure in an additional layer of interpretation – every character being a participant or creator of an unlimited and inscrutable recreation.
If that’s the case, then why? Certainly, gaming is an integral a part of the zeitgeist and serves as fertile inspiration for futuristic dystopian musings. However I believe the present’s creators have extra they’re making an attempt to say with the fixed online game references.
The repeated online game insinuations emphasize lots of the identical emotions we encounter after we play video games. It’s that sense that our experiences won’t be solely actual, and that we must always query the character of our personal actuality. Like gamers in a recreation, there’s a futility to Westworld’s character experiences; everyone seems to be striving towards one thing however continuously finds themselves merely having to start out over from the start. Westworld leverages the gaming expertise to current an existential quandary for its characters, leaving them spinning their wheels as they attempt to study the foundations.
Most significantly, it’s additionally a means to make use of the present’s mind-twist setups to counsel that life, at its core, is commonly little greater than a recreation, albeit a fancy one. Like the customarily tortured characters of the present, the present’s writers appear to counsel that all of us are inclined to get wrapped up within the conventions of the sport of life we play from day after day. We set targets and targets. We chase enjoyable, flash, and simple rewards. We comply with guidelines, or break them. We provoke or handle battle. And, if we get too wrapped up within the recreation’s challenges and targets, Westworld’s fiction means that we could lose sight of the moments price residing for.
My enjoyment of Westworld has ebbed and flowed over the lifetime of its seasons. However all through the scope of its story, I continuously smile as I watch its many twists and turns, imagining how its characters appear to be a part of an unlimited and convoluted treatise on recreation design and participant psychology. In no matter wrap-up the showrunners ultimately attain, I’ll nonetheless love how the present speaks to my love of gaming, and I can’t wait to see if its characters lastly eke out a win.