When it comes to video game adaptations, TV and film producers have historically had an unfortunate habit of using the game for something completely unrelated. Characters you’ve spent 30 hours getting to know in a £1 deposit casino game can remain only by name and appearance, getting personality transplants to fit into new, ridiculous storylines. Filmmakers, working for decades, have shown widespread disrespect for video games.
The end of a vicious practice
“HBO’s The Last of Us finally marks the end of that era. The last few years have seen a change in the content of game adaptations; you could say Detective Pikachu was written by huge Pokémon fans, the Cyberpunk 2077 series on Netflix was actually better than the game, and the plot of Paramount’s TV version of the military space opera Halo is just as heavy-handed and important as the games. But the close involvement of The Last of Us co-creator Neil Druckmann takes the HBO adaptation to the next level. The Last of Us doesn’t just retain the plot and characters of the game; the show tells us something new about them.
The Last of Us has always been a good candidate for television. It’s a linear story, so every player takes it the same way – you can’t dabble with the plot or challenge the director’s intentions with your decisions. This is the story of Joel and Ellie, a withdrawn, suffering-hardened elderly survivor and teenager who is full of humor, defiance, and life despite the terrible circumstances in which she was born. It’s a horrible tragedy with moments of heart and hopes amidst the bleakness rather than a straightforward tale of saving the world. There’s room to run wild.
Authentic realization
Immersion is the magic of video games. When you live in character for hours on end, when you act like him, you have to identify with him in a way that’s impossible when you’re just watching. In the game, we never leave Joel and Ellie’s point of view, which is great for immersion but not great for story building, but the series can show us many more other characters and points of view.
The moments we’re missing from the games are seen in detail here. In the second episode, in a disturbing scene that will stay with us for a long time, we are left with Joel’s partner rather than him when they part ways. The third episode is essentially a short film about a character called Bill, who appears briefly in the game, and he’s very good.
Meanwhile, we learn more about the nightmarish cordyceps fungal infection that begins the end of the world in a few episodes of the series than we do in 50-plus hours playing games, half-reading leftover notes and newspapers we found in abandoned shopping malls teeming with zombies. And while you are waiting for the release of the new series, you could try your luck and get best casino bonuses uk.
There’s also the fact that no screen adaptation of The Last of Us can ever truly convey what makes the source material so interesting: being immersed in this world of games, lounging in spaces that feel haunted, and being eaten alive by clickers.
Going beyond the video game
The series isn’t just about Joel and Ellie; it’s bigger, sadder, and scarier. Players were always overcome with paralyzing terror at the presence of twitching, squealing clickers – former humans whose fungal parasitic infection is so advanced that it robs them of their eyes, causing them to stagger at every quiet sound in search of a new host – but in the end. At least in the game, I could smash their bulging heads with a brick or hide from them under a table. By contrast, watching the clicker scenes is terribly discouraging; they’re even more terrifying when you can’t turn and run away from them.
More than anything, the series conveys the austere, desolate beauty of the game and its mood. Looking at the remains of collapsed skyscrapers from the hotel roof, Ellie makes jokes as she makes her way through an open area of the former city with Joel – amid moments of tension and horror so intense it gives you heartburn.
Almost every heartbreaking, terrifying, or awe-inspiring moment we remember from the game happens here too, but it also gave fans so much that they hadn’t seen before. Some have even had nightmares. It’s a tribute to a series that will touch gamers and thrill them with the story they’ve spent so much time with and pondered over for years. Ten years ago, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us was a game that expanded the possibilities of games and what they could put us through. The show can’t recreate the game’s devastatingly interactive experience; instead, it explores what can be added to it.
Conclusion
Still, it doesn’t seem even remotely controversial to call this the best video game adaptation ever made. For fans of the game, it’s an adaptation of the highest skill and reverence, yet still capable of surprise; for people who’ve never picked up a controller, it’s an encapsulation of the heart and soul of the game – its full-blooded characters, its neat plot, its mature themes of love and loss.
