Spoilers THE LAST OF US (TV Show) - SPOILERS (for all mediums)

[RIPPA]

Way too much work and confusion to have two different threads (those who played the video game and those who haven't) so we are going to go with one and if you are reading the thread assume both the TV show AND video game will be spoiled for you.

Meanwhile - here is an interview with Collider where Neil Druckman and Craig Mazin explain they changed how the infection spreads for the TV show

https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-cordyceps-infection-explained-neil-druckmann-craig-mazin-comments/

[NoFistsJustFlips]

Very excited for this tonight. The first 10 minutes of the game were probably the best 10 minutes of any game I've ever played. If episode one starts the same way this should be good. Hope it lives up to the games.

[Contentious C]

I almost don't think of it as a game, just using the Naughty Dog engine as a vehicle to get around to telling a story. It was practically TV to begin with. Who knows if I'll ever watch it, though, since I'm seriously annoyed with WBD and their garbage "business".

[Coletti]

That was pretty much perfect. I told my wife it was going to be an intense first episode and sure enough, she cried. Kind of breaks my heart to know what comes and not want to spoil it for her. 

[Andrew POE!]

That show was perfect. They got all the details right - having Platinum'ed the game three times, I know the dialogue and where they are related to it, but it's crazy how they expanded on the game while being true to it at the same time.

The actress playing Sarah is perfect - they even got the T-shirt right. Diego Luna sounds EXACTLY like Tommy. Pedro Pascal's voice isn't as deep as Troy Baker's voice (or as Southern) but he doesn't need to be. He got all the nuances down pat.

Belle Ramsey is absolutely Ellie. Anna Torv did a great job as Tess and was who I pictured to be honest.

The song ending the episode is the perfect choice.

Now we wait until Sony announces The Last of Us: The TV Show: The Game version so I can Platinum it a fourth time.

[NoFistsJustFlips]

Nailed it. That was a damn good representation of the game. Even knowing what was coming with Sarah it still got me in the feels because it was so well done and so close to exactly how it played out in the game.

Also glad the dog didn't get got. I hate when TV shows harm dogs. Even ones that throw infected children in a fire pit.

[Casey]

All I can think about is how the dog, Mercy, must have felt when Sarah was trying to lead them back inside that house. I don’t blame them for running away. Wherever you are Mercy, I hope you’re doing okay.

Yeah this show is great, HBO does it again. I’m hoping that other Sony properties (Horizon) won’t get fucked up, and this will probably set a pretty high bar for future Sony IPs turned TV series.

[J.T.]

Gameplay for TLoU left a lot to be desired, but the story line was one of the most immersive I've ever experienced.  The absolutely note perfect pilot just makes me wish that this thing had been developed into a television series first and then maybe made into a game.  Bravo, HBO.

I had high expectations since the story is so great and since HBO has a reputation for world class television adaptations and I wasn't disappointed.  This shit hits you on so many levels: human being, parent, citizen of the world. 

If this show doesn't win all of the awards, I will be pissed.

Edited January 17, 2023 by J.T.

[Brandon Bones]

I’ve never actually played the game.  But 2 years ago I found nicely edited YouTube vids of both games that played really well as a passive watch.  I really got sucked into it.

I love this story. I’m very invested in these characters.  I’m so ready for HBO to bring some justice to this franchise.

Boy did they, if this first episode is to be believed.  It was excellent up and down.  I figured Ramsey had about 3 seconds to sell me on her presentation of Ellie.  She did.  So did everyone else too.

Everything else they changed was massaged nicely into the consolidation.  Plus they even managed to expand a few things about Outbreak day that made some good sense. 
 

More.

[EVA]

I’m really interested to hear how this episode worked for people who aren’t familiar with the game. It definitely seems to have succeeded in selling the game’s fans on these actors and creative team “getting it right” in terms of adaptation, but for this to be as big of a hit as HBO wants it to be, it also needed to convince the Unsullied that these are characters worth caring about to begin with.

Because without that, I don’t know why anyone would bother taking their umpteenth jaunt through a zombie wasteland after a decade of The Walking Dead.

For my part, I really liked it. I think using an extended prologue to make Sarah resonate as a character, more than just a totem like she was in the game, was very wise and will pay off down the line. And Nico Parker is a cheat code in that kind of role. The bloodline is strong in that one.

[EVA]

I’m always happy to see Anna Torv but always sad to be reminded that MINDHUNTER is gone.

[J.T.]

4 hours ago, EVA said:

I’m really interested to hear how this episode worked for people who aren’t familiar with the game. It definitely seems to have succeeded in selling the game’s fans on these actors and creative team “getting it right” in terms of adaptation, but for this to be as big of a hit as HBO wants it to be, it also needed to convince the Unsullied that these are characters worth caring about to begin with.

I don't think it will be a hard sell. It is the gameplay mechanics that IMO most "fans" view through rose colored glasses.

The Last of Us was already an amazing story and the show should easily win over the unsullied that give it a chance.  The first episode set a very high bar for the rest of the season.  I hope it holds together.

Edited January 16, 2023 by J.T.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

I'm not a big gamer, I've never played the game although I had obviously heard of it because I'm a human being who lives on planet Earth but I'm pretty much as 'unsullied' as they come when it comes to this and I fucking loved the first episode.

Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, HBO, the dude who wrote probably the best piece of television of the 21st century in Chernobyl? Yeah, I'm all in on this. 

[Eivion]

Guess I will make time for this either tonight or for tomorrow. I never really got past the opening mission or two, but I dug the actual opening of the game.

[Craig H]

20 hours ago, EVA said:

I’m always happy to see Anna Torv but always sad to be reminded that MINDHUNTER is gone.

BRING BACK MINDHUNTER, FINCHER. Or give it to someone else. Literally everyone from the show would still do it again.

Anyway, thoughts about the first episode. Much like my refusal to play the game because I don't need something that grim dark in my life, I don't think I'll continue watching this. The first episode mostly lined up with what I saw from the game, so that's good, I guess. Everything else was top notch. Just with Craig Mazin, seeing how grim Chernobyl was, and knowing what I know about The Last of Us, I can only imagine it's going to be the darkest TV series ever. My wife has no clue about anything in the game and she tapped out when they were driving through the town trying to escape. She said it was just too much for her and she's someone who loves horror movies.

It makes me wonder how many other people will be in that same boat and watch this and be like, jesus, I can't keep watching this show because it's ruining my day.

[Log]

I don't think I'll keep watching, but it was more the fact that this series seems like some already-tread ground. I was into it until they got to Boston. I just don't have any interest in the "the real threat is the other humans!" zombie thing. I already tapped out on Walking Dead years ago. I was just hoping this was going to go in a more interesting direction.

[Raziel]

I wasn't a fan of the games at all, so I'll skip (or maybe give it a shot when most of the season comes out and see how much it ends up deviating from the game).  

 

But I'm all here when they get up to the events of TLoU2 to counter the incel rage.

[EVA]

51 minutes ago, Log said:

I don't think I'll keep watching, but it was more the fact that this series seems like some already-tread ground. I was into it until they got to Boston. I just don't have any interest in the "the real threat is the other humans!" zombie thing. I already tapped out on Walking Dead years ago. I was just hoping this was going to go in a more interesting direction.

This is kind of what I was getting at in my last non-Torv post. If you’ve watched a zombie movie/show before, you can already guess about 90% of what’s going to happen in season 1. If you’ve ever seen or read a story about a gruff antihero who’s been charged with protecting a child, you know how most of this is going to play out. The first game is very trope-y!

What made TLOU feel special in the game space is that it was—at the time—a rare, big budget AAA game that chose to be slow and quiet rather than fast and loud. A game that was more likely to leave you feeling pensive than exhilarated. Games like that existed previously but largely not on the scale of a developer like Naughty Dog. It was a shock to the system.

The problem the show faces is that TV has spend the better part of the last two decades carving out the “slow/quiet/grim/sad/emotionally complex” niche. They’ve been happy to leave you feeling weird for a long time. There’s going to be nothing new or incendiary about TLOU: The Show’s vibe.

Now, the SECOND game actually is a really bold story that will challenge and divide TV audiences just as much as it did gamers. It’s the sort of story that only HBO would touch, and I hope Zaslav can hold it together long enough for us to see it.

But the show is also going to have to justify its existence for us to get there, too. And I’m interested to see if/how they do that. Based on the first episode and the reviews, it seems like they’re going to try to get there by digging deeper into the characters. Which is usually a good place to start.

[StuntmanCrowley]

I had no clue about the story other than it was extremely dark.

 

As a father of a 7 year old girl, I had to turn it off for well over an hour and collect myself after that scene to finish the episode.  

I loved it, the way it was shot, the acting, the cast, everything, but i think this might be a show that i watch through once, enjoy, but never, ever have a desire to revisit it.

 

The opening "Talk show" is a million, billion stars alone.  I loved the ominous, foreboding sense and I felt like the host....going from jovial with banter to just feeling a quiet sense of absolute dread at the reality of what "could be"

[Eivion]

Finally caught the first episode. Seems well in line with what I can recall from what little of the game I played and was well executed. Still not sure I will watch for reasons others have already mentioned with predictable beats and what little I know of how things will go if they do a secodn season focused on the sequel. Beyond that i got other HBO series I should really finally catch like HOD, His Dark Materials seasons 2 & 3, and Doom Patrol S4.

[Lawful Metal]

How many episodes we getting? Is the first season going to be the whole game? I’m hoping there’s some significant changes — we’re going to have to be introduced to some expendable characters in order to get the horror across. No point in a bloater or clicker if they ain’t ripping people apart

[Raziel]

I was gonna say they need to stretch the first game into a couple seasons to make Bella Ramsey not look out of place with the 5 year time skip, then I saw she's 19 so there's actually no issue there (she just looks really young).  But there's enough to do at least 2 seasons a game.

[EVA]

Mazin has said the plan is to cover 1 game per season. However, if this remains a big hit for HBO, I imagine there may be some pressure to divide the second game into multiple seasons to stretch it out.

[Craig H]

1 hour ago, Raziel said:

I was gonna say they need to stretch the first game into a couple seasons to make Bella Ramsey not look out of place with the 5 year time skip, then I saw she's 19 so there's actually no issue there (she just looks really young).  But there's enough to do at least 2 seasons a game.

I was also surprised that she basically stayed locked in time with how young she looked in Game of Thrones, and, for those with kids that watched it, The Worst Witch on Netflix.

[AxB]

Thy're going to have a hard time doing one game per season, when there's only two games so far.