All You Need to Saddle up for Westworld Season 2
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Westworld hits a lot of WIRED sweet spots. It has robots, an expansive open world, and Tessa Thompson. With the show's second season right around the corner, it's time, yet again, to hitch yourself to HBO's streaming service. We've put together some of our favorite products that'll get you back into the swing of things. Here’s everything you need to be prepared for the Season 2 premiere this weekend.
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Amazon Prime Video now lets you access HBO Now. Sign up for their free 7-day trial pronto, pardner.
Need a streaming box? Roku’s top-of-the-line option has 4K capability and a remote that doesn’t make you want to run over it with a car. It's also much cheaper than Apple’s 4K streamer.
Westworld’s soundtrack is one of its most compelling attributes, with piano covers of songs by Amy Winehouse, Nine Inch Nails, and Soundgarden. While you can stream it on Spotify, this affordable starter turntable is much more in keeping with the old-timey-but-in-the-future theme of the show.
William’s transition from soft-hearted white hat to the cold-as-ice Man in Black is one of the emotional linchpins of the show. If you’re still deciding whether you’d have more fun talking to the old prospector or burning his house down, this cowboy hat from M&F Western comes in both colors.
You're probably not at a bar, facing down Westworld's brilliant and twisted founder, Dr. Robert Ford (and lucky you!). But don't let that stop you from tossing back a shot of warm liquid courage every time you hear that ominous quote from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: "These violent delights have violent ends."
Make your own maze! It’s a metaphor! Get it?
If you’re going to be participating in any sort of discussion of robot ethics, whether you’re hitting them or trying to have sex with them, you need to be familiar with Asimov’s seminal Rules of Robotics first. If it’s been a long time since you’ve picked up this classic work of science fiction, you have just enough time to jog your memory before the series starts back up.
At WIRED, it's hard for us to not see Westworld as inspired by the massive, open-world gameplay and rich single-player experience of games like Red Dead Redemption. If you’ve gnawed your fingernails down to stumps during the past seventeen months since Westworld went off the air, this is one way to get a quick Western fix, and it's even playable in 4K on the Xbox One X.
The HBO series is based on the epic 1973 film, with Yul Brynner as an implacable android gunslinger and Josh Brolin's dad (!) as one of the park's hapless guests. Watch it to help you start frantically speculating as to what HBO's Shogun World might look like, and also for its signature Michael Crichton ending.
