Westworld (HBO miniseries)

[botley]

is the park VR/real/combination of the two? How do they keep taking hosts out of the game to talk with them (which tells me it's real) while they're interacting with others or in the middle of quests/adventures without it disrupting the narrative of the guests? For instance, Delores is often pulled away and in the episodes we've been watching (4 and 5 last night), she was on some long, drawn-out adventure with MacPoyle (can't remember his name in the show but I can't seem him as anyone other than the incestuous human trash he played in Sunny anyway) but was taken back to talk with various people at least twice during that. So a) how is he not aware of this and b) how is it not interrupting his time in the park/game?

Without spoiling anything, it gradually becomes more apparent that you're seeing different time periods inter-cut together. The park is entirely real, with safeguards in place to protect guests, but whenever the Hosts die they can be physically patched up in the workshop, and put discretely back at the start of their 'loop' on the following day. VR exists there too, but it seems to be very limited in comparison to the park itself, and only very junior staff who can't afford the real thing ever use it.

When does the global park timeline start over? They kept showing Delores waking up and that whole scene where she's out front of the store and that can of condensed milk falls and rolls away over and over again...but when does it restart and what causes it to restart? How does it restarting affect hosts that are in the middle of other activities--like the aforementioned quest with MacPoyle that Delores was on?

It doesn't. The daily loops are meant to be self-contained, with or without the presence of other Hosts. The dialogue that the Hosts say on their loops is scripted, but they also have the capacity to improvise.

Are people constantly joining/leaving the park? If so: how does that affect timeline restarts/host respawning and if this is in fact super/hyper-reality and not VR, how can multiple groups do the same things within the game without stepping on each other's toes since it's not like an MMO where larger activities (dungeons, raids, etc.) are instanced and unique to you/your group?

There is enough going on at any one time to keep guests occupied with whatever they want to do. The town of Sweetwater itself is just the starting point, the world it exists within is vast. The programmers of the park are keeping an eye on how the various guest interactions affect the pre-scripted narratives, and if things go awry they can end a narrative early or send things on a different direction by directly reprogramming Host behaviour.