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[The Last of Us] subscribing to HBO Max can't be for nothing [Open show spoilers]
Dark Raven X
Laugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered User regular
Laugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered User regular
https://youtu.be/E5tSO9aR2DsYo this premiered today and it was really fuckin' good! Showrunner is Craig Mazin, the guy from Chernobyl a few years back, and this has a very similar style to it.
Starring The Mandalorian as Joel and Lyanna Mormont as Ellie, this first season looks to be adapting the entire first game, and putting its own tasty spin on things while remaining mostly faithful.
Open Spoilers in here for the TV show and anything that it has adapted or changed / removed from the games (so don't spoil upcoming plot points!)
I'm really interested in the changes made - biggest one to me being Joel actively looking to leave Boston even before getting the Ellie mission. That's a pretty huge shift in his motivations, and I'm curious why they did it.
Oh brilliant
ElJeffe on
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Won't be participating in the thread, though, if it's open spoilers for both games, since I haven't played or beaten the second game.
But the TV show at least gets a thumbs up from me so far.
edit: Do we really need to have open spoilers for both games in this thread? It would be kinda nice to have a place to talk about the show without spoiling the games which, as you said, appears to be an adaptation of the first game only.
edit 2: Spoiler policy for this thread changed so parts of this post aren't relevant anymore.
The show is great. That is all. I've played the game too many times, and I was still really tense and nervous about what was happening to these characters. The way that world building and relationships are introduced feels lived in and grounded in a way that's distinct and maybe even more cohesive than the game. They're different mediums, so the different ways each version is telling its story makes sense. I was just giddy that I was surprised while watching an adaptation of a game I've played two dozen times in the last decade.
That jumped out to me, too, but it seemed like it was to streamline that subplot and also make it seem like Joel and Marlene's motivations were more closely aligned than they were in the game. The whole thing with Tess and Robert and Marlene and the guns and the double cross always makes me scratch my head. Yeah, I get why it's there and how it gets all these characters to cross paths, but it does feel messy, and it's never resolved. It's never resolved because it doesn't need to be because it ultimately isn't that important. I really like what they did here, making Joel already motivated to get out to Wyoming, getting Robert in there as the battery guy, still getting the double cross in there to wrangle in Marlene, and then hey, Joel's looking for his brother anyway, and now there's this girl that needs to get to the Fireflies, and it just so happens that Joel's brother knows a thing or two about those people. It seems more neat. On the other hand, it does make Joel's reluctance to take on that job a little more suspect: in the game he didn't want to leave Boston, and in the TV show he's already plotting his course to Wyoming.
I really liked how the neighbor family is introduced as a establishing piece that communicates the infection to the viewer: friendly family with cookies and an immobile grandma, cut to grandma chomping down on people. It's more well rounded than the neighbor in the game that just crashes through the door of Joel's office. How is that guy? I don't know, he's a zombie. Much less personal.
That the guard that screened Ellie as positive outside the walls is a character Joel knows and the audience also knows was another nice touch. This episode did a great job making space for more complex, three-dimensional relationships. I want to know all about that guy with the radio broadcasts.
It would have been the easiest thing to just make a straight adaptation of the game, and it would have likely been terrible. Good for the creative and production teams for making different choices.
Another big change that I rather like; no spores! Apparently removed for the dual purposes of getting to show off the actors faces more frequently, and the realistic principle that if transmission via spore was a thing, there's no fucking way anyone would still be alive 20 years later.
Although we may have to use our judgement if there are major changes, like if a character dies in the show but lived in the game, or vice versa.
Thanks, I really appreciate it.
That's not to say that I think it's a bad game by any means, because it most certainly is not and there's a lot of fun to be had in the game, but it was definitely also significantly frustrating at times, at least for me.
Anyway, this was a solid premiere.
TLOU Part 1 late game
I think the story itself works just as well as a show or as a game. But one thing a game can do by virtue of being interactive media is really rap into something personal by forcing YOU to do these things.
Like the way the ending plays out - there's value in having you, the player, experience that. It makes it more visceral.
Anyway, fantastic premiere, the actors all nailed it, can't wait to see more.
They did a real good job of recreating game levels but as believable sets and scenes.
Also I thought the ‘Gulf War Veteran’ sticker was a neat way to show without telling that Joel is going to be pretty handy with firearms.
I WAS NOT EXPECTING ANNA TORV! She still rocks!
My only gripe, and it felt like it wasn't as bad during Chernobyl, but they do a lot of jump cuts to get rid of pacing shots, and normally I'm a fan, but it's a bit jarring.
It reminds me of that over the shoulder camera syle on the first Bourne movies.
It's minor and does not affect my overall enjoyment of the show, changing it from spores to mouth tendrils was :chefkiss:
I never thought I could be as impressed with a scene that's just a POV from the back of a pickup truck, as I was with the opening. It had me crying as much as the game did, more so since they were real people in front of me.
I'm sold. If the rest of the series episodes are half as good as the pilot, I'm happy.
And that was pretty solid, some of the locations look straight from the game.
I am very excited to see the rest of this. Looks amazing.
I'm curious about this too. TLOU has always felt story-driven to the point that you're basically just guiding the characters to turn the page and see the unfolding of events, just a single-path game. TLOU 2 spoilers:
So much of what I enjoy about video games may have a hard time translating to a TV show, but TLOU is clearly one of the ready-made transitions.
. . .I mean, TLOU was always a strong narrative game on top of a strong game, so it's not like the showrunners had to move mountains to make this work, but I'm still kind of surprised by just how well it does actually work. This includes the effects works, which are subtle but still unsettling (the bit in the basement was straight out of ANNIHILATION.
Just a great start and really has me looking forward to some of the other story beats to play out in more dramatic/cinematic form.
So I was watching this with some friends. One of whom is not someone who handles horror or bad stuff happening to kids well.
And the whole first 15 minutes or whatever I'm like 'shit this Sarah kid is going to get killed' and then once the zombie stuff start happening and she is getting visibly uncomfortable, I'm internally debating like do I spoil this in some way for her so she doesn't maybe take the full brunt of that scene.
But couple minutes before it happens she's like, "She's a good actress too bad she's going to die", and she got to that because that wasn't the actress on the splash page for the show. And it was like good job HBO, way to basically stick an unavoidable spoiler in front of your show.
Yeah but by that logic the original box art has the same spoiler. You can't really stop people from being genre savvy or do much to prevent it. Unless you want to pull a whole MGS2 and completely hide Ellie from every single preview.
Ellie wasn’t even in MGS2
It isn't so much that Sarah died, it's how she died. Perhaps that's reductive, though I don't mean it to be. There's an entire discussion, which is valid, about how Sarah's death is just an accessory to Joel's story. I do think it matters how she died. She didn't get bitten by an infected. An infected is devoid of choice an agency, it's just blind impulse. She got shot by a soldier that made a choice. Yes, he was ordered to do it, but he made a choice to pull the trigger. Humanity broke for Joel in that moment. If Sarah was killed by an infected, Joel would still be a broken person, but I do think that Sarah being gunned down by some jack-booted random guy affected him in a far different way.
Being attuned to narrative, someone likely gets "oh yeah, that kid isn't making to episode 2." I don't know if those same viewers expected it to happen the way it did, and to have the consequences it does.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
Canonically she's actually a 3000 year old demon.
I actually know what the secret to a youthful appearance is and you're not going to believe it!
Then there was the introduction to the actual post-apocalypse. Seeing a little kid walk up to the ghetto/quarantine zone, then getting put down, not with sudden violence, but by guards that did a simple test and oh, to bad, give him a what I believe to be a lethal injection... just that much more ruthless. The guard doesn't even flinch, but tries to comfort the kid. Not evil, but out of options and hope, having done this many times for it to become so routine.
Then there is the world, where yep this is what happens when shit falls apart. Maintaining a civilization built by billions with only thousands isn't possible. Medicine, Equipment and food all run out and you have to try to make more. There are limits to scavenging and even canned goods and shotguns run out.
I'm sure that's the case. They still look like Davey Jones' beard. It looks sentient, like the fungus itself has a mind. I'd have just made the spores be bloodborne. Well, I'd have put the masks on my actors, personally, I don't mind covering faces where appropriate, but if the execs insisted, blood and fluid transfer would have been my next suggestion. The mushroom heads are amazing and beautiful enough while being disturbing as shit, no need for squid mouth.
Pretty sure that was the whole point of the talk show opening.
I don't think so. It's there to explain what is about to happen in a quick bite that's easy to understand. He's not implying that fungus is intelligent, just scary.
The term puppets implies a controlling influence.