Wild Westworld C.O.W.-Boys of MMO Mesa

[Mothra]

Caught up with Westworld. Overall eh? It's a lot of work with not quite enough stretches of purpose-driven story.

I've completely lost track of what it means to get shot in that show, whether you be bot or meatbag. Everyone seems to be able to recover from anything, except when the plot is done with you, in which case, you will instantly be permanently dead.

They gotta stop ending every scene with somebody getting shot at the end of an exchange. It feels so pointless now.

That said, I liked the one from the POV of the Ghost Nation guy.

[Mothra]

1.Just got out of combat with Hosts.
2.Hosts have shown they are willing and able to kill you and your squad with guns and bare hands
3.?????
4.Why of course it is time for sex with one!

I... cannot fucking believe they did this bit. It was like something out of a shitty CBS action comedy.

[Mothra]

So, I'm of two minds about how this set things up for season 3:

1. I'm glad they're going all the way with the premise of this show, and embracing the worldwide implications of the Hosts becoming fully sentient. I am a sucker for any depiction of an AI's awakening that doesn't skip directly to the Terminator genocide - Matrix's The Second Renaissance did this wonderfully and horrifically, Her did it in a much more humanistic and optimistic way. I'm excited to see what the outside world of humans is like, and how Hosts will try to muddle through it.

2. This show is tonally just an absolute drag, and endless trudge toward death and nihilism. It wasn't completely like this in season 1, where they had reprieves into the Western fantasy world to mix it up a bit and inject some life. The idea of leaving all of that behind and making the show exclusively about human-hating robots being loosed into a cyberpunk dystopia is guaranteed to be dull, dreary, bleak, and overwhelmingly depressing. We'll doubtless see Hosts endlessly appalled by humanity and their current state, which like, do I want an entire show about that? Ugh.

Because they've committed to their concept, they've ditched the fantasy of wild-west adventure and prairie life, and are now fully headlong into bleak dystopia. As a story that all makes sense. As a show? I really am not interested in watching something that dreary and bleak for another full season.

I dunno. This show was able to sometimes distract you from the depressing tone by throwing in some action scenes with the private military guys, so I guess they might do that again. I don't really want action, though, I want high-concept sci-fi delivered as far away from darkened office labs as possible.

[beatbandito]

Anyway, we got snowed in yesterday and binged on Westworld while baking absolute shitloads of cookies. It's just fucking excellent TV and I'm kind of surprised there wasn't already a thread in which everyone had already flipped their collective shit, but here I see that shit's just sitting there getting burned on one side.

No thanks, I already saw Battlestar Galactica.

I haven't actually seen Season 2 yet, but I hear my joke pretty much lived up to the punchline.

[Friday]

Writers have a hard time writing depressing shows without going overboard. Either because they themselves are depressed (EVA) or because they want to be edgy (most other depressing shows).

Fire and Ice, for all the shit it gets as a "meat grinder for your favorite characters" is a good example of a sometimes depressing media that still manages to give the audience hope.

[Blossom]

Season 1 was kind of a perfectly paced and encapsulated thing that answered all the questions it posed, and promised an awakening world that it didn't really have to deliver in order to feel complete.

But the economics of television are what they are, and the show continues. I haven't checked out Season 2 yet. I'm guessing it doesn't stay as good.

[Thad]

My recommendation is watch Riddle of the Sphinx and skip the rest of season 2.

[pacobird]

My recommendation is watch Riddle of the Sphinx and skip the rest of season 2.

sliiiiiiding right in to add Kiksuya but yeah

I enjoyed season 2 on the whole but it really benefited from my low expectations

[Mothra]

Seconding Kiksuya. Having just finished, watching that and Riddle of the Sphinx gives you everything you need to get out of this season.

[Thad]

Fair.

[pacobird]

Writers have a hard time writing depressing shows without going overboard. Either because they themselves are depressed (EVA) or because they want to be edgy (most other depressing shows).

I think the problem is usually that they are - quite reasonably - trying to tell a story about depression, or depressed characters, when the nature of depression itself is abnegation and inertia and resists the forward motion of a story. In a story, things have to happen, so the writer eventually has to settle for describing sadness rather than despair.

I don't think I'll ever see a better work of media about depression than Nier Automata tbh, because it's not that the characters are depressed (they are but by their nature cannot recognize it as such) or that the situation is depressing, but rather every aspect of the game, taken as a whole, is depression, and it's hard to describe to someone who hasn't been there, but it's effective enough to prime you for the objectively corny credits sequence.

[Friday]

Damn it I should play Automata I fucking own it even

But I also should play p5 and re7 and mgs5 and I own them too

[Brantly B.]

NieR:A has a cute operator girl who clearly has a crush on 2B.

[Friday]

stop trying to appeal to my desire to see cute robots have sex

[Niku]

but

cute robots actually literally do have a sex in nier a

[Newbie]

Have you actually avoided spoilers, two years after it was released? You should probably play it sooner rather than later, because I feel like its potential for spoiling is a greater harm than any of the other games you mentioned.

[Friday]

I somehow through some miracle have, yeah.

[Thad]

It appears to be on sale on Amazon at the moment. I'm thinking about it.

[pacobird]

but

cute robots actually literally do have a sex in nier a

:D