A pair of guests, first-timer William (Jimmi Simpson) and repeat visitor Logan (Ben Barnes), arrive at Westworld with different expectations and agendas. Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) and Quality Assurance head Theresa Cullen (Sidse Babett Knudsen) debate whether a recent host anomaly is contagious. Meanwhile, behavior engineer Elsie Hughes (Shannon Woodward) tweaks the emotions of Maeve (Thandie Newton), a madam in Sweetwater's brothel, in order to avoid a recall. Cocky programmer Lee Sizemore (Simon Quarterman) pitches his latest narrative to the team, but Dr. Ford (Anthony Hopkins) has other ideas. The Man in Black (Ed Harris) conscripts a condemned man, Lawrence (Clifton Collins, Jr.), to help him uncover Westworld's deepest secrets.

Written by Jonathan Nolan & Lisa Joy; directed by Richard J. Lewis.

It's a modern reproduction version of the LeMat revolver. Being the early ones were all ball/cap and Ed's is clearly center fire. I guess the old ones use to weight in at 5 pound when fully loaded?! No wonder it fell out of favor, even with 9 shots + shotgun round.

“It’s not the guns,” Nolan said. “It’s the bullets. We thought a lot about this. In the original film, the guns won’t operate guest on guest, but we felt like the guests would want to have a more visceral experience here. So when they’re shot it has sort of the impact. They’re called simunitions. The U.S. military trains with rounds like the ones we’re talking about. But there’s a bit of an impact, a bit of a sting. So it’s not entirely consequence-free for the guests.”

Among the video game inspirations for Westworld were Rockstar’s open-world adventure games — most notably, Red Dead Redemption and the Grand Theft Auto series, which both Nolans played for research.

“My wife is the world’s most boring Grand Theft Auto player,” Jonathan Nolan said.

“The city looks beautiful if you just slow it down and take your time,” Lisa Joy Nolan rebutted. This attitude of enjoying an open-world video game — treating it as a theme park, essentially — is addressed in the show’s second episode, which airs tonight on HBO (it’s already available on demand). In the episode, “Chestnut,” we’re introduced to two new human visitors.

Logan treats the park like “a Grand Theft Auto mission of indulgence,” said actor Ben Barnes during the panel. His friend William (Jimmi Simpson) is more reluctant to see the park as a fantasy. To follow the metaphor, he is the Grand Theft Auto player who stops at traffic lights.

But the Nolans are fascinated by the way that people can use games to explore violent fantasies that might be completely at odds with their everyday personalities. This behavior finds its logical extreme in the Man in Black (Ed Harris). “It really speaks to the game-like aspect of it,” said Jonathan Nolan.

“The way that we act in our simulations is not [...] how we act in the real world,” Jonathan Nolan said of Harris’ character. “That binary aspect of his personality is something we’re exploring.”