Do I Need to Play 'The Last of Us' Before the Show Comes Out?

The new HBO series is based on an acclaimed video game.

Roger Ebert as soon as said that movies “are like a system that generates empathy,” and that’s a lovely issue. He additionally once said that video games “can by no means be art,” and this wasn’t as nicely-received. In fact, his opinion had a profound impact at the as a substitute excitable population of people who play games. For goodbye, they’ve favored out of doors popularity, for someone to proclaim that these things have been no longer toys. Finally, in 2013, they were given The Last of Us. Sure, there has been Super Metroid, Half-Life 2, Shadow of the Colossus, but The Last of Us became cinema. It was well-written, nicely-acted, and closer to Breaking Bad than Call of Duty. It won countless best rankings and awards for Game of the Year. Empire magazine referred to as it “gaming’s Citizen Kane second.” HBO is popping it into a TV show!

In January of next yr, the game enthusiasts will subsequently have their day, provided the hallowed mainstream audience – the outside recognition – bothers to reveal up. Are they gonna want to observe the display if they haven’t performed the sport? Do you have to play the game? Well, the solution to that query starts out simply sufficient: “Absolutely not!” earlier than it receives complex.

Even for Naughty Dog, the acclaimed studio behind The Last of Us, this became a sparkling begin. It wasn’t linked to an established universe like their Uncharted franchise, which could ring in its 2nd sequel before The Last of Us launched. There’s no lore, no backstory that could’t be artfully included into the show’s exposition. It’s a completely easy setup: because the player, you manage a man named Joel for most of the sport, a smuggler within the zombie publish-apocalypse. His daughter died two decades ago, all through the outbreak, and at the begin of the game, he’s tasked with escorting a young girl throughout the u . S . A ., as she may be the important thing to ending the plague. No lifestream crystals or cyborg supersoldiers. Instead, the casting of Pedro Pascal has already pointed humans inside the proper direction: this is a tale approximately fatherhood.

‘The Last of Us’ Is Working with Simple but Effective Themes

The complex a part of the solution lies in how this topic is expressed through the sport’s interactivity. It isn’t too much of a spoiler to mention that a part of the task for Joel, apart from combating off zombies and bandits, is how much the younger lady, Ellie, reminds him of his daughter. The participant is made to apprehend this now not simply through cutscenes, which look like faithfully adapted in the display, but by using the enjoy of play. Naughty Dog has lengthy been accused of making films, in which gameplay takes a lower back seat to an on-rails, cinematic rollercoaster, however gameplay in The Last of Us is deliberate.

A 1/3-person stealth game, the player navigates Joel through environments dotted by using enemies, like dormant zombies and the roving Clickers, these eyeless, awful creatures with an more desirable experience of hearing. The participant has to make selections about a way to technique these conditions, calculating strategy against to be had assets. It’s a sort of survivalist simulator, conditioning endurance instead of a shooter twitch reflex, which would don’t have any realistic use in this sort of devastated world.

Joel and Ellie encounter survivors who, whether pleasant or adversarial, positioned faces to this post-apocalypse. A overdue-game plot improvement challenges the player to just accept that the bandits they’ve been murdering for hours are without a doubt the opposing side of an amoral warfare. The whole game has been a meditation on perspective, something inherently restricted by using the control of a single on-display avatar. It’s at some point of this plot development that player control in reality jumps to a one-of-a-kind person, making for the game’s maximum heart-wrenching bankruptcy.

All of this empathy is channeled into what can’t exactly be defined as a “twist,” however maybe a turn? Toward the give up of the sport, Joel learns key facts approximately Ellie’s dating to the capability treatment, and he makes a dramatic decision. It’s at this second that the sport asserts itself, revealing a chilly-blooded however charming purpose. Even the zombie putting, already tired by 2013, is absolutely justified. What have been a particularly compelling drama all of sudden sharpens to a devastating point: that is a story – an experience – approximately understanding the horrific man. Maybe the worst man. He does some thing so terribly incorrect, and we trust him. It’s a magic trick.

Like So Many Before It, HBO’s ‘The Last of Us’ Is No Guarantee

Even the surest bets can occasionally disappoint. Who may want to’ve predicted, in 2014, what Game of Thrones would appear like in 2019? The nation of the Last of Us adaptation is as true as everybody should ever hope, being overseen with the aid of the authentic sport director Neil Druckmann and the writer of HBO’s incredible Chernobyl, Craig Mazin. The super forged seems wonderful within the trailers, and the display’s supported by way of a large platform. If, however, towards all odds, it disappoints, visitors could probably be grew to become off from the brand, and from the game. That’s a worst-case state of affairs. So the whole answer to our question is, “Yes, please play The Last of Us, so that regardless of what occurs with the TV show, you’ll have had that unforgettable enjoy.”

Fortunately, The Last of Us is eminently accessible. Its original release at the PlayStation 3 was followed by using a remaster on the PlayStation four in 2014. Earlier this 12 months, a full-blown remake changed into launched for the PlayStation five, entitled The Last of Us Part I, with admire to the 2020 sequel. Despite updating an already very cutting-edge game, the remake gained plaudits for accessibility options, like descriptive audio and haptic remarks. This identify is virtually a big deal for Sony, who make up as a minimum two of the 5 production groups on the show: Sony Pictures Television and PlayStation Productions. They want every person to experience The Last of Us, and for proper reason.

It’s hard to mention if the tv adaptation can be able to translate the revel in of play to a non-interactive medium, or maybe if the first season will cover the whole first game and consist of Joel’s large decision. Such a innovative misstep could make for an incomplete story and confuse viewers. On the other hand, the show might be a terrific fulfillment and draw a new wave of hobby to the source material. At that moment, you’ll be standing there, leaning against the wall, hands folded, and you can say, “Oh, I played the game. It was a work of art.”

HBO’s The Last of Us premieres January 15 on HBO and HBO Max.