HBO’s eagerly anticipated sci-fi/western Westworld debuts this weekend. Producer Jonathan Nolan is making the media rounds, talking about the intriguing-looking show’s story and themes, some of which are related to ideas that also apply to video games.
In Westworld, people can visit a sophisticated virtual reality amusement park of sorts that is populated by incredibly lifelike robots, referred to in the fiction as hosts. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he discussed how the show aims to ask viewers to think about at what point would they start to feel bad for robots–and he used video game examples to hammer home his point.
"When people play Grand Theft Auto, they don’t think about the moral repercussions of what they’re doing," Nolan said. "So one of the questions the show asks is, as you approach consciousness within these creatures, what is the point at which you start to feel bad? You don’t feel bad when you turn the phone off and the Pokemon disappear. You don’t feel bad when you turn off the Xbox and those characters go away."
He added: "In the most sophisticated and immersive RPGs, you can be completely immersed in the narrative. A huge amount of effort goes into creating non-player characters in these video games, and that’s really what our hosts are; they’re non-player characters. At what point does that line blur? We loved approaching artificial intelligence from that perspective, of how it creeps in. You arrive at this moment in which it gets really complicated."
Nolan added that when Michael Crichton produced the original Westworld movie in 1973, video games basically didn’t exist outside of Pong. Things have changed dramatically since then, especially with the rise of virtual reality, which makes 2016 a very compelling time to release the new Westworld show.
"We demoed VR last year and came away from the experience really shaken," Nolan said. "On the way home we just talked about how much time our daughter is going to spend in these virtual worlds; a significant portion of her life, a real phase change for humankind. The rules set for these virtual spaces is flexible."
As we’ve seen in previous trailers, Westworld will be very violent. According to Nolan, the show doesn’t aim to fetishize violence and sex, but rather uses those themes as a foundation for the question, "If you created a universe where there are no apparent consequences, how far would you go?"
The show also asks the question of why do people like to watch violent movies and play violent video games in the first place.
"In the games that we play, the movies that we watch, violence is a common feature of everything you’re looking at," he said. "We wanted to get underneath that and find out why people come to this park in the first place. So there is a fair amount in the series of exploring that question. We’ve tried to do it in a way that’s tasteful and compelling as possible."
Westworld stars Evan Rachel Wood, Anthony Hopkins, Thandie Newton, Ed Harris, James Marsden, and Jeffrey Wright. The JJ Abrams-produced show premieres on October 2, 2016. Nolan previously stated that part of his inspiration for the show came from video games such as Red Dead Redemption and BioShock.
According to Marsden, there are five or six years seasons worth of Westworld mapped out, though only the first season has been announced so far.
Source: GameSpot
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