I recently finished playing The Last Of Us 2 and I’m still reeling from it. I don’t have the energy to say anything that wasn’t said by our friend Peter Knava in his excellent review except to say that it has me even more fired up for the HBO series than I already was.
Video game adaptations are tricky, but The Last of Us franchise is different. As a lifelong gamer, I had often heard that the original game was brilliant. But it’s a Sony Playstation exclusive and I was a PC/Xbox gamer.
“You have to play it, man.” My friends would say.
“I don’t like horror stuff.”
“Yeah it’s full of sketchy zombies and clickers and jump scares-“
“Wait, what’s a clicker?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Trust us: you’ll love it. It has the best written characters in video game history.”
That’s what made me take notice and that’s what made me go out, buy a PS4 and one game: The Last of Us.
And, weeks later, that’s what had me adding my voice to the swell of gamers who adore this game. The character development is flat out astounding. The game is a post-apocalyptic nightmare of the ilk we’ve become used to. People get infected. People start infecting others. World ends. But the story centers around a young girl, Ellie, and her grumbling protector, Joel. It’s a small story, ultimately, as you trek with Ellie and Joel and it’s the small moments that make the game a resounding masterpiece.
I bought and played the second game with everyone else, but I was one of the people who set it down for a bit after a plot choice that I had a hard time with. Can’t give any spoilers, but whew. The game took the wind out of me, and that plot choice in particular was a gut punch. But in anticipation of the series premiere I decided to wade back into it and see if I could get through it. It was every bit the game the first one was, if more subtle and nuanced and somehow more profound.
So it begged the question if a double masterpiece like that could translate onto the television format and so far the critical responses seem to be a uniform yes. We’re hearing superlatives thrown around and there’s more than a fair amount of gushing so far, which is rare for video game adaptations. Credit showrunner Craig Mazin, who recently turned heads with Chernobyl.
The Last of Us stars Pedro Pascal as Joel, and Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones’ own Lady Mormont) as Ellie. It premieres this Sunday on HBO.
If you want to watch the amazing cutscenes from the game, you can watch them in order here for The Last of Us:
And here for the Last of Us 2:
And here’s a video that gives you the general story of both. (But you won’t need any of this to enjoy the show, especially if you want to go in fresh.)
