00:00WARNING! The following video discusses spoilers about Season 2 of The Last of Us
00:04and elements of the game that has not been adapted for TV yet. Please watch this at your own discretion.
00:15So, The Last of Us Season 2 has come and gone, and the reactions to it have been interesting
00:20compared to the game it's adapted from. When The Last of Us 2 came out, it was a divisive
00:25game, to say the least, mostly owing to certain story elements. Here, the discussion for the TV
00:30show seems to be on how the TV show adapted the game, mostly changing some elements to make it
00:35work as a TV show. Lots of people have decried these changes, and I don't understand where they're
00:40coming from, but I am okay with how they changed things. Well, yes, there are some moments I wish
00:44were in the game, like the scene in the synagogue, and I do think Abby telling Joel her motivations
00:49take away from the mystery that was in the game, along with showing who the WLF and the scars are
00:53early, but I can see why certain elements were changed. Video game adaptations, especially
00:57movies and TV shows, were for a long time seen as not good, often being in poor quality. Sometimes
01:03you can get a Mortal Kombat 1995, or something made by Uwe Boll. I feel like the reason why
01:08video games are hard to adapt is because of one thing that TV shows and movies don't have,
01:13interactivity. Video games are an interactive medium. You control a character, and you can make
01:18them do what you want to do. You can make choices that affect the story, you can fight enemies,
01:22you can choose who you can fall in love with, and you can explore the world. You can't do that
01:26in a
01:27film or an episode of TV where you're just watching something. When reviewing the 2005 adaptation of
01:32Doom, Roger Ebert once said, this movie has been inspired by the famous video game. No, I haven't
01:37played it, and I never will, but I know how it feels not to play it, because I've seen the
01:42movie.
01:42Doom is like some kid came over and is using your computer and won't let you play. Interactivity is
01:47something that inherits video games, and without that factor it takes away from the experience and makes it
01:51feel derivative in an adaptation. What would make a Last of Us TV show different from something
01:55like The Walking Dead, if you take out all the scavenging and gameplay sections if you're not
01:59controlling the characters on screen. Luckily, when it came to adapting the first video game
02:03into a TV show, they did some interesting creative decisions to circumvent the lack of interactivity.
02:09The Last of Us is a more story-driven game, which can easily fit into the mode of television. The
02:13game's chapters and levels have beginning, middles and endings which you can make into TV episodes,
02:18and you can even adapt and change it. The Bill and Frank episode is a complete 180 from the game,
02:23turning another level which you have to try and escape The Infected into a more personal
02:26character piece, putting focus away from Joel and Ellie, and creates a breather after the action of
02:32the last episode. In an interview with TechRadar, Neil Druckmann talked about this process of
02:36adaptation with Craig Mason when it came to episode 3. That's what would have been an important thing in
02:41the past when you're adapting video games and looking at superficial aspects and thinking,
02:44oh, players want to see that gameplay moment. That's not what they want. They want the core
02:48of the heart of this experience. The Last of Us Season 1 adds more scenes and more characters to
02:53flesh out the world, taking away the moments where you as a player would explore the world.
02:56In the show we have scenes in the past, we have scenes outside of America, and we have new characters,
03:00so you can see them follow this mentality when it came to adapt in Part 2. We get more scenes
03:04with
03:05other characters, we see Jackson thinning off a horde while Abby works on a golf swing, and we have
03:09new characters and get more flashbacks into other characters like Isaac. But do they work?
03:13Kinda. Compared to Season 1, Season 2 is adapting half of the game, so you can see moments that
03:17clearly are set up for when they deal with Abby's side of the story, especially the scenes with Ellie
03:21training in Episode 1. Don't think that will come into play later, or what Joel said to Eugene when
03:26they did the porch scene earlier than expected. With how they structured the season, it does leave
03:30things hanging in some regards. One aspect I did love was how it had to circumvent the lack of
03:34gameplay. Last of Us Part 2 is a sprawling game, then the first. Lots of exploration and traversal,
03:39and lots of killing. Lots and lots of killing in the name of revenge, ending with Ellie's killing of
03:43Nora.
03:46A pregnant woman being a dark combination of a quest for revenge. The show being a TV show with a
03:51set
03:52time limit for an episode, there isn't a lot of time spent on the killing, so the show changed that
03:56aspect and by mixing up certain elements, mainly having Ellie and Dinah go out to Seattle before Tommy,
04:01and in spite of their community's decision not to do so, and have Dinah get involved with the action
04:06after revealing she's pregnant, but until she's injured and taken out of action, Jesse and Tommy
04:10have to chase Arthur because of this. Then when you get to Ellie's murder of Nora, the dark of the
04:14soul moment for Ellie, is the realisation that she dragged a lot of people into this, nearly got her
04:19girlfriend killed more than once, and they could have gotten killed as well. This change is effective
04:23and manages to contain the same manner of impact the game did. Still shocking, and managed to capture the
04:28core of the game's story, and you can tell that this is obviously going to have a bit more
04:32impactful when they do get round to adapting the Abbey parts in Season 3. But ultimately,
04:37the second season does feel incomplete, and there are some moments I do wish we did get to see
04:41adapted. It will be interesting to see how they adapt the Abbey scenes to TV,
04:45what characters will get expanded upon, and how will it play out as a whole.
04:52Like what you see here? Then please subscribe from my YouTube channel so you can get more Watch This
04:56Space, but also other things such as my short films. Please remember to like and subscribe the
05:01videos you just watched, and also please check out The Orange Bin, my blog where I have write-ups of
05:07my episodes here, which with links to sources that I mention on the show. It also contains some of my
05:13old blog posts if you want to see what else I used to do back in the olden days. So
05:17please remember to
05:18check out my blog and like and subscribe to my YouTube channel.
Comments