A second season of HBO’s sci-fi/western Westworld hasn’t been announced, but that doesn’t mean the show’s producers aren’t thinking about what’s coming next.
Creator Jonathan Nolan told Entertainment Weekly that Season 2 will dive into things like how the park’s robots–known as hosts–are constructed. We will also learn about how they are powered. Interestingly, Nolan also revealed that the hosts do not require oxygen to survive.
“Their construction and their power source is something we’re really going to get into during Season 2,” Nolan said. “So we’d like to keep that mysterious. They’re closer to biological than they are to mechanical, but they don’t suffer brain death the same way we do.”
“They’re largely indistinguishable from a human beings, but their brains don’t require oxygen–which opens up interesting possibilities,” Nolan went on to say. “Their brains are not as fragile as ours. On one hand, their cognition is controllable and malleable, but on a structural level they can’t be killed in the same way you and I can. There are advantages and disadvantages to being a host. Season 2 we’ll be exploring more the nuts and bolts of what they are–as the hosts themselves are trying to understand.”
At the end of October, HBO programming president Casey Bloys said it’s “looking really good” for Westworld to be renewed for a second season. However, HBO hasn’t made it official yet.
There will be 10 episodes in all for Westworld‘s first season, meaning there are three more to come before Season 1 wraps up. Episode 7, which aired on November 13, contained a major twist concerning a prominent character–read this spoiler-filled post to learn more.
This post contains major spoilers about Westworld Episode 7.
Last night’s episode of Westworld, “Trompe L’oei,” revealed what some fans saw coming: Bernard is not a human but instead a host. Not only that, but he murders Theresa Cullen, his former lover, at Dr. Ford’s request. Now, Bernard actor Jeffrey Wright has spoken to Entertainment Weekly about the momentous episode for the character.
He said he didn’t know Bernard was a robot until after they shot the pilot. As for the reveal itself, Wright said it was not done for “shock value.” Previous episodes of Westworld suggested the possibility that Bernard was a robot–and this was by design.
“It’s woven into the logic behind the relationship of the characters and it’s not done for any shock value. There are very specific reasons why he is synthetic,”Bernard said. “If fans weren’t at all aware, or didn’t have any suspicions, that would have been a disservice to them and undermine the quality of storytelling.”
You may recall that a previous episode of Westworld showed Bernard speaking with his wife, while Episode 7 contained a flashback sequence of what happened to his son. These were artificial memories, made to flesh out Bernard’s backstory and character, apparently.
Read the full Entertainment Weekly interview with Wright here.
Westworld creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan also spoke to Entertainment Weekly about Episode 7. Joy said she was “careful” about how much she wanted to tell Wright about the nature of Bernard, so as to inform the way he performed the role.
“He’s such a skilled actor he was able to play a robot thinking he’s a human very well, he’s playing it on a couple different levels at the same time, and absolutely brilliant about it,” she said. “We didn’t want him to feel like we pulled the rug out from under him.”
Joy also discussed the weight of the scene where not only Bernard’s true nature is revealed, but he also murders Cullen. “It horrifies us, and it horrifies him. It’s a betrayal of everything that he–as a man he thought he was–believed in,” she said. “He had real feelings for Theresa. It’s meant to make the sadness and the horror of his manipulation all the more real because it has such costs.”
Also in the interview, Nolan said the host character Clementine (Angela Sarafyan)–who was basically lobotomized in Episode 7–may return with a different personality.
“They’re physically removing part of her personality,” he said. “It’s like when the NSA has a hard drive they want to get rid of. They don’t just erase it, they drill holes in it. The mind of the hosts are organized similar to a human mind, with that frontal lobe containing most of the code for her personality. So the person we know as Clementine is largely gone.”
We’ll have our full review up once we can test the game in real-world conditions. Until then, take a look at a collection of opinions in the list below. We’ll continue to update this as more reviews surface and as scores are finalised.
“Watch Dogs 2 makes a life of cybercrime in San Francisco almost irresistibly fun. In what turned out to be a smart maneuver, Ubisoft dialed back the self-serious cyberpunk drama from the first game, aiming for something closer to an absurd hacker sitcom with Grand Theft Auto‘s irreverent atmosphere. You can have a lot of fun playing Watch Dogs 2 offline, but multiplayer–when it works–shouldn’t be ignored. There are emergent PVP events that allow you to hack or hunt down other players, and special missions where you and a partner can infiltrate networks and private property together. We will continue to experiment, so check back later this week to see if Watch Dogs 2 can seamlessly marry single and multiplayer gameplay, and what that means for the game at large.” — Peter Brown[Full review in progress]
Polygon — 8/10 [provisional review]
“In expanding the first game’s clever hacking options and through a story about taking on a system overwhelmingly stacked against the people, Watch Dogs 2 strikes an even more powerful chord at this precise moment in time. And if it went just a little bit farther in embracing that story and found a better balance between silliness and seriousness, it would be essential, rather than just cathartic.” — Phillip Kollar[Full provisional review]
IGN — 6.5/10 [Not final score — review in progress]
“By expanding on a lot of what the first game and its expansion got right and mixing action, stealth, and puzzle gameplay with handy remote-control drones, Watch Dogs 2 impresses with open mission designs with multiple ways to reach your objective and some great toys to find them with. I’m conflicted about the tone of its story and characters, but I had a great time exploring its Bay Area map. Once its serious multiplayer problems are hopefully resolved, this will be a significant improvement over Ubisoft’s first draft of its action-hacker series.” — Dan Stapleton[Full review in progress]
IBTimes — 4.5/5
“I was expecting Watch Dogs 2 to be more enjoyable than its predecessor, but I didn’t expect it to be so well designed and full of heart. Watch Dogs 2 isn’t reinventing the open-world game and fans of Ubisoft’s special brand of go-places-and-pick-things-up gameplay will feel right at home, but it’s one of the best examples the genre has to offer – as long as you don’t want to shoot anything.” — Jake Tucker[Full review]
The Telegraph — 4/5
“Watch Dogs 2 feels like it’s making a statement. Rudyard Kipling once said, ‘San Francisco has only one drawback – ’tis hard to leave.’ While Watch Dogs 2 isn’t as faultless as Kipling’s vision of Northern California, you’ll still want to spend tens of hours wandering this virtual recreation of the famous city and on into the Bay Area beyond.” — Kirk McKeand[Full review]
Watch Dogs 2 makes a life of cybercrime in San Francisco almost irresistibly fun. In what turned out to be a smart maneuver, Ubisoft dialed back the self-serious cyberpunk drama from the first game, aiming for something closer to an absurd hacker sitcom with Grand Theft Auto‘s irreverent atmosphere. We’ve spent almost 40 hours with the game, and though we were able to beat every main objective and most side missions, not every aspect of Watch Dogs 2 was ready for showtime leading up to launch.
In response to reports of heavy slowdown during multiplayer events, Ubisoft temporarily disabled seamless PVP last week. Though we only experienced multiplayer-related frame rate issues a few times, it was relentless when it occurred–rebooting the game was the only cure. We don’t know if the issue will be resolved before Watch Dogs 2 goes public, so our full review will have to wait until we can test multiplayer in real-world conditions after launch. However, the majority of Watch Dogs 2 is designed for solo play and everything outside of multiplayer seems to be in working order.
With San Francisco’s skyline at your back, you guide our upbeat protagonist Marcus into the open arms of DedSec–a well-meaning hacktivist group that fights for privacy and justice against the likes of the FBI and social network giants. Your partners come on strong at times, overflowing with hacker cliches, but outside of DedSec’s secret hideout, the Bay Area’s biggest tech companies, personalities, and headlines steal the show. If you’ve ever wanted to harass the nefarious pharma bro Martin Shkreli or peer into the mind of a social network bigwig, there’s a mission for that.
Your smartphone can manipulate electronics and vehicles remotely thanks to its suite of DedSec apps, and hop between closed-circuit cameras to silently enter municipal and corporate buildings. There’s an art to accomplishing your goals without being noticed, but if you prefer to stand tall and carry a big stick, no major character will question your tactics–least of all Marcus himself. You are free to hijack cars, steal from the poor, and use brute force in place of covert hacks, provided you’re good at running from the police.
San Francisco and other Bay Area cities look and feel like their real-world counterparts, but there’s a noticeable lack of traffic on sidewalks and city streets. This affords you fewer opportunities to create chaos as a result, but open lanes make it easy to cruise around the bay. Driving feels marginally better than it did in the first Watch Dogs, with motorcycles offering the most control and utility. There’s a wonderful mix of urban variety and natural beauty on the map, and the steep hills of San Francisco offer plenty of opportunities for death defying stunts.
The best moments in Watch Dogs 2 are when it presents open-ended challenges that inspire you to mix hacking and armed combat.
As you coast around and across the bay, you can distract yourself from the daunting task of hacking the world by racing motocross bikes, go karts, and drones. You can also work on your selfie game and drive for a ride-sharing service to earn extra cash and attract new DedSec followers, which in turn allows you to unlock new hacking abilities and purchase weapons. Working through skill trees is a gradual process with few grand and meaningful leaps in technology, and though you’re encouraged to shoot for a specific playstyle, you’ll have no problem if you diversify your skillsets–research points are doled out generously during story missions. There are scenarios where you can easily identify the most reasonable course of action, but the best moments in Watch Dogs 2 are when it presents open-ended challenges that inspire you to mix hacking and armed combat.
Part of the reason Watch Dogs 2 can allow you to be sneaky or explosive at a moment’s notice is that its AI has a few screws loose. You aren’t given the chance to hide bodies, which makes stealth seem like a non-option, but this is accounted for by easily distracted NPCs. With a simple command, you can distract or overwhelm enemies through their smartphone, even when they know something sketchy is afoot, then knock them out before they can call for help. You can drive forklifts and scissor lifts through crowds, but no one seems too bothered by the inconvenience. With fast and loose rules, Watch Dogs 2 won’t win any points for realism, but it does allow you room to be the creative action hero you (apparently) are.
You can have a lot of fun playing Watch Dogs 2 offline, but multiplayer–when it works–shouldn’t be ignored. There are emergent PVP events that allow you to hack or hunt down other players, and special missions where you and a partner can infiltrate networks and private property together. We can imagine how a server full of players has the potential to make you feel connected to the world and part of a larger community of hackers, but we can’t test that theory until the game is in the hands of more people. We will continue to experiment, so check back later this week to see if Watch Dogs 2 can seamlessly marry single and multiplayer gameplay, and what that means for the game at large.
According to sales monitor Chart-Track, Dishonored‘s sequel sold 38 percent fewer opening week copies than the original game, and was the only new entry in the UK top 10 for the week ending November 12.
Retailer promotions helped a number of titles this week, with Overwatch clambering back into the top 10, and Lego Dimensions shooting up 28 places to no.9.
You can see the full top 10 in the list below. This table does not include digital sales data, and thus should not be considered representative of all UK game sales.
The Harley Quinn movie is moving forward. More details about the Suicide Squad spinoff have emerged, and it has been reported that a scriptwriter has been hired.
The site also notes that the film won’t just focus on Harley, played by Margot Robbie in this year’s supervillain team-up. The film will be a Birds of Prey movie, and could feature other female characters from the DC universe, such as Poison Ivy, Katana, Catwoman, and Circe.
In September, it was reported that Robbie would also produce the film. The actress has signed a first-look deal with Warner, meaning that the studio will have the first option to make any projects that her production company, LuckyChap Entertainment, develops there. According to THR, the Harley Quinn/Birds of Prey movie has been set up there.
Despite mixed reviews, Suicide Squad has to date made $745 million worldwide. It currently stands as the eighth biggest film of the year.
For those playing (or re-playing) Skyrim right now and thinking, gee, this sure is a big game world, remember: for 1996’s Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, Bethesda weren’t feeling quite so constrained.
What can I say? Dishonored 2 has me at a bit of a loss honestly. Watching Corvo don the mask again simply didn’t have the same effect on me as it did in the first game.
![Westworld Season 2: Producer Reveals New Story Details [SPOILERS]](https://playerschoicegames.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/3157104-west1.jpg)
