HBO's new drama series "Westworld" was previously mentioned to be based off of Michael Crichton's original 1973 film. And, now, the series' showrunner Jonathan Nolan reveals that he drew inspiration from a number of video games, including "BioShock," "Red Dead Redemption" and "Skyrim."
Nolan had a recent interview with VICE explain this further, admiring the way video games in recent generations have "a lot of interesting storytelling." Although he has never worked in developing a game, he's actually "fascinated by the concept of writing a story in which the protagonists' actions aren't part of the story."
With a special mention of games like "BioShock," "Red Dead Redemption" and "Skyrim" (and even BioWare's titles), Nolan noted the games' principles where "morality is a variable" and how it could quite a challenge for writer to produce story where "the hero's moral component exists on a spectrum."
Interacting with the NPC's are also one of the things that Nolan took note of. Games like "Skyrim" have a massive number of these non-playable characters going about their own business, having their own lives, in which players are not even always the center of attention.
Nolan even took note of "Bioshock's" Ken Levine during one of his commentary and how the developers and designers had a lot of effort, time, and affection invested in their characters.
IGN also had the "Westworld" showrunner admiring the bond of the game designers with their characters, being "qualitatively different" than how "screenwriters have with their characters." Nolan believed that Crichton may have anticipated this kind of relationship "to some degree" for this show (or even his other works possibly). Because of this, Nolan thinks that this has since "become much more complicated than even he could imagine."
"Westworld" had its pilot episode earlier this week called "The Original." The next episode "Chestnut" will premiere on Oct. 9.