Fake websites designed by HBO allow fans to explore the inner workings of the Westworld theme park and Delos Corporation. They’re weirdly addictive.
One cool aspect of a science-fiction show like Westworld is that it contains an entire universe for the writers and fans to explore. Like the real universe, it’s expanding, seemingly boundless; even as each episode fills in more details about the exotic dystopia inhabited by Dolores and company, mysteries beckon, teasing our imaginations. It is halfway through the season, and we still haven’t left the park.
Even the marketing exhibits a fondness for world-building (and secrecy).
If you venture onto DiscoverWestworld.com, you will find what looks like a tourist website. A montage of images – a train pulling into Sweetwater, Dolores and Teddy riding horses across the frontier landscape – covers the home page, overlaid with the Westworld logo and slogan: “Live Without Limits”.
The site is rather low on information. Scroll down, and you see various panels corresponding to the links at the top. “About” and “Experience” lead to minimalist blurbs touting Westworld and its attractions (e.g. freedom, thrills, etc.), while “Stay” allows you to “book” an all-inclusive visit and outlines the arrival and departure processes. The “Explore” section does show a map of the park, including places we’ve already seen in the show, such as Sweetwater and Pariah, as well as a few unfamiliar ones. Presumably, the “Unclaimed Territories” are where Ford is building his new storyline. Also, is “Sea” the place Teddy offered to take Dolores in “The Stray”?
Back on the homepage, a dialogue box invites you to “talk” to a Westworld host named Aeden, à la Siri. Aeden doesn’t disclose a lot, but his responses can be amusing. Say you want to gamble, for example, and he mentions that you can win money in a game or “simply take what you need when the opportunity strikes.” If you say you want to be a hero with Teddy, Aeden prompts you to go to the Abernathy ranch at night and save Dolores, whose “thankfulness will know no bounds.” A reference to Arnold prompts this:
Screenshot courtesy of HBO
Other Easter eggs are strewn throughout the site. Clicking “check availability” on the “Stay” page reveals an access code that you can paste in the box in the upper-right corner. And see what happens when you hold down the “shift” key (thanks for the head’s up, Indiewire).
Another website worth checking out is DelosIncorporated.com. Delos is the company that owns and operates Westworld. So far, the show has kept its inner workings fairly clock-and-dagger, so this site helps lift the veil a tad.
First, we see a list of “flagged comms”, emails between Delos employees that have, for whatever reason, been marked for review by Quality Assurance. Like Aeden, these are less enlightening than entertaining. Some of the messages are sent by or addressed to prominent characters on the show, such as Elsie, Bernard, and Ashley, and they capture their personalities with admirable accuracy.
Screenshot courtesy of HBO
As it turns out, working at Delos isn’t all that different from working at any other company. The technology is prone to malfunctions, employees berate each other for being bad at their jobs and causing trouble, and departments squabble. There are even staff prank wars. It’s a clever way of subverting science-fiction tropes, which typically depict dystopian corporations and governments as well-oiled, ruthlessly efficient machines.
Screenshot courtesy of HBO Screenshot courtesy of HBO
DelosIncorporated.com also continues the show’s propensity for meta commentary. As thought-provoking as its ideas are, Westworld ultimately works due to its dry, self-aware (and often self-deprecating) sense of humor, which seems to anticipate viewer nitpicks. Take this thread about a promo for the “fall narrative”, presumably a reference to this season of Westworld (the site was created before the premiere).
Screenshot courtesy of HBO
Both of the “Corp Alerts” are meta jokes. “Leaked Fall Storylines” alludes to the aforementioned ad and imitates entertainment industry marketing lingo (i.e. “hitting their quadrants”). Perhaps even funnier is “Digital Security Breach”, a tongue-in-cheek nod at fans’ habit of scouring movie and TV promotional material for clues to future plot developments. This is especially pertinent to Westworld, which, five episodes in, has demonstrated a Lost-like aptitude for inspiring elaborate theories.
Finally, the “Corp Resources” page takes you to three documents explaining different aspects of Westworld. “Host Intake Protocol” is a diagram, complete with illustrations, that summarizes the procedure for transporting hosts from the park to the labs for repairs. There are a couple of things worth noting here: 1) host intake falls under the jurisdiction of a department called Livestock Management, which reinforces the company policy of dehumanizing the hosts; 2) technicians get assigned to specific hosts, which explains why Lutz and his partner worked on Maeve both times we saw her being repaired; and 3) there are undertaker hosts, which is just an amusing tidbit.
Screenshot courtesy of HBO
“NarrativeDolores.gif” opens a flowchart designed by the Narrative Department that shows the script Dolores normally follows. Apparently, there are scenarios that don’t involve Dolores being attacked, though we haven’t seen them on the show. Either way, she serves almost exclusively as a love interest or sex object, whether for guests or other hosts.
The third document is a video map of the Mesa Hub, where Westworld’s offices and labs are located. As the show has implied, the building is almost entirely underground, a vertical structure embedded in the side of a cliff. Hector’s assertion that the “shade” whose image Maeve sketched was “sent from Hell” to oversee the human world makes sense, then. The Mesa Hub is also home to the staff living quarters (employees work in rotations, separated from their families) and the monorail terminal where guests receive their orientation.
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For promotional websites, DiscoverWestworld.com and DelosIncorporated.com are surprisingly well-designed, with elegant visuals and detailed content. They make the fantasy seem that much more real.