Hardcore Casual and Paint it Black

Daily Ramble 159: Hardcore Casual and Paint it Black

In my rambling today I head back to Westworld and watch through another 15 minutes and things are definitely heating up. There’s more investigation of what’s going on with the updated hosts and the Man in Black is seen searching for some kind of deeper puzzle. There’s also a shoot out at the saloon and the outlaw gang returns to town.

On the Six Degrees side of things, I travel to Hardcore Casual and see that SynCaine has been posting a lot about his time in Life is Feudal. He’s built up a guild and has been exploring the community side of things…diplomacy, guild wars, and city building. It all seems pretty cool and while it’s a fun read I think I may be drawn to give that game a try as well.

Paint it Black – Westworld Episode 1, minutes 42 – 57

Last time I watched we left with Theresa lecturing Bernard that the hosts were supposed to follow their scripts with minor improvisation not with major deviations like they’ve been seeing. She demands that all the updated hosts are recalled and decommissioned if they are shown to have issues.

As Bernard explains the plan to shutdown the updated hosts and remove the Reveries that Ford installed, Ford seems to indicate that he’d like to see the mistakes remain…we’ll see if that happens.

Before any of that can happen though, we see the Man in Black with Kissy and things are not looking good for the Native American. MiB is looking for information about some deeper level to Westworld and he thinks he’ll find it with the help of Kissy. With his torture of Kissy and the way he treated Dolores it makes me wonder about how evil the Man in Black is but then he does know these are only robots after all – is it really evil is he’s torturing and hurting robots?

We then switch to the scene we’ve seen many times in just this episode where Dolores wakes up and head out to say “good morning” to her father. The problem is, dad is malfunctioning. Somehow the picture he found has messed with his programming and he’s been unable to “sleep”. Instead he wants he that she needs to leave. He tells her, ”Hell is empty and all the devil are here” and then he whispers something in her ear that we can’t hear and she heads off to town to get a doctor.

We see some of those devils in the when she gets into town just ahead of Hector and his outlaw gang. Hector was the bandit that the sheriff was looking for when he glitched out and he’s come back to shoot up the saloon. Well, not just shoot up, he’s taking the safe. This is the storyline the head writer, Lee, was working on and it was moved up because Theresa wanted to have an excuse to pull all the updated hosts from the park at the same time…if they’re all killed in a shootout then no one would question that they all went missing.

It’s a pretty cool shootout with a wonderful orchestration of Paint it Black playing in the background. Dolores can’t find the doctor but she does find Teddy. He gets shot trying to protect her though and it doesn’t look good. Meanwhile, Hector is in the saloon chatting with Mauve while his minions prepare the safe for stealing. He then comes out to give a speech that the writer indicated would be profound, but a guest shoots him before he can make it…funny when you realize these are just robots after all. And the people behind the scenes want them all dead anyway. In the end, the only host alive that they need to shut down is Dolores and Bernard’s assistant, Elsie, takes care of that by saying the passphrase to turn her off.

This was an exciting 15 minutes! With good scenes, good music, and good reveals. This first episode is definitely worth the rewatch and there’s still more to come.

Hardcore Casual

This stop in my Six Degrees is one in which a game I really want to play is highlighted. SynCaine has set up a guild and is working the system in Life is Feudal, a sandbox game along the lines of one of my previous favorites, Wurn Online. In the LiF: We have a home post, SynCaine mentions the trials of setting up a guild and getting the basics running. I guess there are in game requirements and of course you want to try to get people who will work towards similar goals. And since this is a sandbox, you want to try to get people with complimentary skill sets.

But skills are not the only thing a guild needs, it also needs access to resources. Life is Feudal progression update Jan 30th covers a bunch of individual and guild development and it looks like things are moving along well. I should also mention that the Supreme Cream guild has a Discord SynCaine mentions that you can head to if you’re interested in joining the team. I’m actually thinking I’ll head over there once I dip my toe into the game.

In the third post about the game and guild, they’re branching out in to animal husbandry and diplomacy with a large neighbor. It really sounds like things are starting to get interesting even though as of the Feb 2nd post, they are still at peace with everyone…I wonder how long that will last. Well, just as I wondered, the next post talks about getting attacked by a Chinese Guild. This game really sounds like fun and active.

With all the stuff going on in Life is Feudal, Hardcore Casual has plenty to cover. I’ve always enjoyed reading what SynCaine has to say about the games he’s playing and I actually participated in his Clash of Clans guild for a while. If I can ever get things going, I’ll try to get a character into LiF to see if I can join up with him there as well, but I just haven’t gotten the time yet. Fortunately though, I have had the time to read the engaging commentary on how the game is going for them and I look forward to seeing what else the game has in store on Hardcore Casual.

This has been an installment of my Six Degrees 2018 series in which I take a look at the wonderful blogs that surround Beyond Tannhauser Gate. The blogosphere is large but there are so many friends to be found within Six Degrees.