HBO: The Last of Us

[ironwez20]

I'm looking forward to this now.

I think I can separate it far enough from the games to accept it as an alternative vision of the world.

Same. As long as it’s done right. The halo series is separate from the games and it seems to have gone to **** . I’m fine with alternate takes but only if they work well.

 

[Asta]

Same. As long as it’s done right. The halo series is separate from the games and it seems to have gone to **** . I’m fine with alternate takes but only if they work well.

I never got into Halo, apart from ending up with a mass of Mega Bloks vehicles, ships and figures, but I did try to watch that first episode. I ended up jump-skipping through after a while.

I find post-apocalyptic series and films appealing, and the idea of an empty world has filled my imagination ever since I watched Omega Man as a child.

I find documentary films like Homo Sapiens fascinating too. Quiet, lonely, deserted places. All it lacked were the zombies and monsters lurking in the shadows!

So, as you wrote, if they do it right it could be good. Just has to build an immersive, decaying world, create the right atmosphere, and then capture the compelling dynamic between Joel and Ellie.

Even though they don't physically resemble the game models, they're both good actors.

 

[ironwez20]

Yea I’m fine with them not looking like the game versions. I hope they nail this better than the resident evil adaptations .

talk about struggling to make something that literally isn’t hard to make.

 

[R_R_X]

I’m still very curious how they’ll handle the elements of the controversial second game. Or will we get a new story entirely. Seems like they are sticking to the main plot of the first game . Seeing Sam and his brother makes me think this season may end how the original game ended.

Seeing how they've covered pretty much every chapter of the game during filming it's safe to say season 1 will cover the first game in it's entirety, I think this will get very high ratings so a second season is guaranteed, they will definitely keep the same storyline but there is a lot of room for improvement and change, the tv show could let them go with the original idea of having Abby and wolves infiltrating Jackson.

I think I read somewhere Sam is going to be deaf on the show, interesting deviation from the game but not sure it's really necessary, we won't have the "ending up alone" converstaion now that's for damn sure.

Overall I just want to see apocalyptic setting done properly with the huge budget they have, one thing TWD always missed even before it completely shat the bed was a good budget to sell the post-outbreak world, a bunch of woods and empty roads simply don't cut it so I hope they really go all out with this show, still not sold on the casting and I probably won't after the show is out but like Asta said I'll just look it as an alternate reality of the game.

 

[Asta]

Overall I just want to see apocalyptic setting done properly with the huge budget they have, one thing TWD always missed even before it completely shat the bed was a good budget to sell the post-outbreak world, a bunch of woods and empty roads simply don't cut it so I hope they really go all out with this show, still not sold on the casting and I probably won't after the show is out but like Asta said I'll just look it as an alternate reality of the game.

The thing that the story of TLOU has going for it is that it's a journey.

Sometimes you can get away with stories told in static locations, because the characters are fascinating in themselves. But I love journeys in stories, travelling to new places, always seeing something new.

It's expensive to do well, and TWD often ended up being very static. Either an entire season in the prison, or switching between several well used permanent locations to preserve the budget. When they did travel, as you wrote, it was often just through wilderness, which looks the same whether it's pre or post apocalypse.

I want to see ruined cities and ghost towns.

 

[Otomofan]

Video games and anime and to an extent comic books are already perfected art forms....WHY do they keep turning them into movies? It's so boring watching a movie already knowing everything about the plot and characters.

 

[ironwez20]

Video games and anime and to an extent comic books are already perfected art forms....WHY do they keep turning them into movies? It's so boring watching a movie already knowing everything about the plot and characters.

Well it’s cool seeing some of the stuff come to life. It’s fun seeing characters in live action and being portrayed in a different setting. Seeing the world you love fully realized.

I’ve been wanting a sonic movie since I was 3. I wanted to see him on the big screen and in live action. I wanted to see what a movie would look like.

Hollywood just kinda feels the need to suck at video games. Which I find hilarious since video games are so easy to adapt.
The story is there you just need to adapt it and you can add little tweaks but overall just stick o the damn story.

like I said Hollywood has a tough time with resident evil which is by far the easiest thing to adapt on film. What’s so damn hard about making a damn movie about fighting monsters in a mansion? Or in a city? You don’t need super powered matrix rip offs or to blend the two games together so it’s all rushed.

anyway getting off track. With things like comic book films we saw how great those can be so it’s easy to see why many want video game and anime movies treated the same .

 

[ironwez20]

Seeing how they've covered pretty much every chapter of the game during filming it's safe to say season 1 will cover the first game in it's entirety, I think this will get very high ratings so a second season is guaranteed, they will definitely keep the same storyline but there is a lot of room for improvement and change, the tv show could let them go with the original idea of having Abby and wolves infiltrating Jackson.

I think I read somewhere Sam is going to be deaf on the show, interesting deviation from the game but not sure it's really necessary, we won't have the "ending up alone" converstaion now that's for damn sure.

Overall I just want to see apocalyptic setting done properly with the huge budget they have, one thing TWD always missed even before it completely shat the bed was a good budget to sell the post-outbreak world, a bunch of woods and empty roads simply don't cut it so I hope they really go all out with this show, still not sold on the casting and I probably won't after the show is out but like Asta said I'll just look it as an alternate reality of the game.

Right. That got old fast. A bunch of people walking in the woods all the time fighting zombies. I hope we see more then just that. I’m so glad I don’t watch that crap series anymore .

 

[R_R_X]

The thing that the story of TLOU has going for it is that it's a journey.

Sometimes you can get away with stories told in static locations, because the characters are fascinating in themselves. But I love journeys in stories, travelling to new places, always seeing something new.

It's expensive to do well, and TWD often ended up being very static. Either an entire season in the prison, or switching between several well used permanent locations to preserve the budget. When they did travel, as you wrote, it was often just through wilderness, which looks the same whether it's pre or post apocalypse.

I want to see ruined cities and ghost towns.

Right. That got old fast. A bunch of people walking in the woods all the time fighting zombies. I hope we see more then just that. I’m so glad I don’t watch that crap series anymore .

The Walking Dead suffered greatly from AMC not giving it a good budget, even then it did pretty well in the first few seasons since they were adapting the main storyline from the comic pretty faithfully with a few additions of their own, some of it was good but the majority of the new material they added was pretty bad, once they began to completely deviate from the comics is when things got really bad, then the writting began deteorating with each episode and all my interest was lost since one can not be entertained just with woods and horribly choreographed fights, the only thing that remained consistent throughtout the seasons was the excellent pratical effects by the legendary Greg Nicotero and his team, I wish he would've lended his talent to The Last of Us.

 

[Asta]

The Walking Dead suffered greatly from AMC not giving it a good budget, even then it did pretty well in the first few seasons since they were adapting the main storyline from the comic pretty faithfully with a few additions of their own, some of it was good but the majority of the new material they added was pretty bad, once they began to completely deviate from the comics is when things got really bad, once the writting began deteorating with each episode then all interest was lost since would could not be entertained just with woods and horribly choreographed fights, the only thing that remained consistent throughtout the seasons was the excellent pratical effects by the legendary Greg Nicotero and his team, I wish he would've lended his talent to The Last of Us.

I started to prefer Fear the Walking Dead, apart from season 3 which almost put me off that series for good. Now there's been so many crossovers that the two have pretty much blended together in my mind.

The first season of TWD felt ground breaking and shocking.

I remember watching the first ever episode, and being so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open, and as much as I wanted to keep on watching I eventually fell asleep. Woke up right near the end as the crane shot rises up and up, revealing the hordes of dead around the tank.

I was still in a half sleep/half awake state, and not quite sure what I was watching. The crane shot rising ever upward, and ever so slightly spinning, and with all the dead it combined to create the weirdest, most macabre experience.

Went to bed after that and the scene was so stuck in my head that I had nightmares about zombies!

 

[R_R_X]

I started to prefer Fear the Walking Dead, apart from season 3 which almost put me off that series for good. Now there's been so many crossovers that the two have pretty much blended together in my mind.

The first season of TWD felt ground breaking and shocking.

I remember watching the first ever episode, and being so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open, and as much as I wanted to keep on watching I eventually fell asleep. Woke up right near the end as the crane shot rises up and up, revealing the hordes of dead around the tank.

I was still in a half sleep/half awake state, and not quite sure what I was watching. The crane shot rising ever upward, and ever so slightly spinning, and with all the dead it combined to create the weirdest, most macabre experience.

Went to bed after that and that scene was so stuck in my head that I had nightmares about zombies!

I think I recall you telling that story but boy the first season despite having it's flaws was really unique, especially the pilot directed by Frank Darabont and the following episodes with the group trying to escape the city, unfortunately once they went to the woods we never saw those type of settings again, and then they moved on to a bunch of communities which all looked the same and it was just boring, at least in the comic there were no budget restraints that made those look small and uninteresting.

This is why I much prefer TLOU, not only does the relationship with Joel, Ellie and the player feels way stronger but the journey is so much better and diverse as you've already mentioned, in large part due to all the places you visit in the game, the abandoned cities make for the perfect apocalyptic setting since you feel just how empty and dead everything is, something woods will never give you, and even in Part 2 we're thrown into different places like Santa Barbara and it's just so cool to expirience and explore other parts of that world, and then seeing how different each faction is from each other and how they adapt to those different enviroments, I really hope the next TLOU game keeps this up and we're able to explore even more parts of the States or maybe even other countries, fingers crossed HBO keeps up the high budget so we can finally see some good live action apocalyptic settings that the genre has been missing for a while now.

 

[Asta]

I think I recall you telling that story but boy the first season despite having it's flaws was really unique, especially the pilot directed by Frank Darabont and the following episodes with the group trying to escape the city, unfortunately once they went to the woods we never saw those type of settings again, and then they moved on to a bunch of communities which all looked the same and it was just boring, at least in the comic there were no budget restraints that made those look small and uninteresting.

I found the video of the ending, but forgot to add it to my post:



That last bit still has a weird, trippy feel to it.


At the time I thought it was the start of something really special, but the series eventually became more mundane. The shock value of that first season was also muted by becoming more familiar with the dead. It also devolved into those static communities, and the characters spent so much time navel gazing rather than exploring.

Nevertheless I still watch all the series.

This is why I much prefer TLOU, not only does the relationship with Joel, Ellie and the player feels way stronger but the journey is so much better and diverse as you've already mentioned, in large part due to all the places you visit in the game, the abandoned cities make for the perfect apocalyptic setting since you feel just how empty and dead everything is, something woods will never give you, and even in Part 2 we're thrown into different places like Santa Barbara and it's just so cool to expirience and explore other parts of that world, and then seeing how different each faction is from each other and how they adapt to those different enviroments, I really hope the next TLOU game keeps this up and we're able to explore even more parts of the States or maybe even other countries.

TLOU was so good that I became deeply invested in it without even having played it. The story, acting and locations were so suited to the media of film. So it should be a short step to the actual live action series, but for the complications of creating the locations.

Pedro and Bella's take on that relationship will be interesting to see, as they have the acting chops to pull it off.

TLOU2 got me too, but differently. Ellie was at times hard to like, due to her decisions and stubbornness. Yet Abby, who you're not supposed to like, started to seem the more reasonable one. The whole thing played with your mind, but I loved that boldness of story telling. It was a comic book style melodrama, but it really tugged at the emotions.

 

[R_R_X]

TLOU was so good that I became deeply invested in it without even having played it. The story, acting and locations were so suited to the media of film. So it should be a short step to the actual live action series, but for the complications of creating the locations.

Pedro and Bella's take on that relationship will be interesting to see, as they have the acting chops to pull it off.

TLOU2 got me too, but differently. Ellie was at times hard to like, due to her decisions and stubbornness. Yet Abby, who you're not supposed to like, started to seem the more reasonable one. The whole thing played with your mind, but I loved that boldness of story telling. It was a comic book style melodrama, but it really tugged at the emotions.

Yeah there's lots of potential in TLOU for live action stories, I just wish this was a spin-off instead of an adaptation/retelling, Joel and Ellie are so unique, I don't think Pascal and Ramsey will ever match them for me, but that's just me, I'm sure people who haven't played the game will find the original characters extremely strange when they go look them after watching the show.

I didn't like that, the story manipulates the player to feel a certain way about the two girls depending on what beat they're going for, there's an entire sequence where Abby just plays fetch with her dog Alice, this comes after 10 hours of the player killing dogs as Ellie, in fact you are forced to kill Alice during Ellie's final day in Seattle, then you have Abby, who's been presented the whole game as extremely capable and stronger than most, get turned into a pathetic twig at the end, again trying to create pity in the player for Abby while vilifying Ellie, their strategy worked, lots of people fell for the cheap tricks they pulled and viewed Ellie and Joel as villains in their own story and sympathize more with Abby, I hope the HBO writers do this better and don't portray Ellie like some post apocalypse terminator and Abby like some altruisitc hero willing to sacrifice everything to save those weaker than her, I wanted to see Ellie struggle to cope with her actions and the murderes she committed just like I wanted to see Abby struggle with the fact she brutally tortured a man to death and got no satisfaction from it, in the end both characters felt almost inhuman in the way they treated everyone around acted so selfishly, as you said this felt more like a melodrama focused on the revenge/forgiveness message, using the characters as tools move the plot forward.

I still liked almost everything aside from the execution, the actual story concept has tons of potential it just wasn't written or told organically, I have to admit tho, all the Joel and Ellie material got me emotional, as I said there's tons of potential in the concept and it shines through in those moments with them two and the tail section of the game, let's hope the show can take this concept and make it work in a way the game could not.

 

[Asta]

Yeah there's lots of potential in TLOU for live action stories, I just wish this was a spin-off instead of an adaptation/retelling, Joel and Ellie are so unique, I don't think Pascal and Ramsey will ever match them for me, but that's just me, I'm sure people who haven't played the game will find the original characters extremely strange when they go look them after watching the show.

Joel and Ellie: The Missing Years.


They'll never be able to match the originals, so they'll always be a secondary version or a retelling.

I didn't like that, the story manipulates the player to feel a certain way about the two girls depending on what beat they're going for, there's an entire sequence where Abby just plays fetch with her dog Alice, this comes after 10 hours of the player killing dogs as Ellie, in fact you are forced to kill Alice during Ellie's final day in Seattle, then you have Abby, who's been presented the whole game as extremely capable and stronger than most, get turned into a pathetic twig at the end, again trying to create pity in the player for Abby while vilifying Ellie, their strategy worked, lots of people fell for the cheap tricks they pulled and viewed Ellie and Joel as villains in their own story and sympathize more with Abby, I hope the HBO writers do this better and don't portray Ellie like some post apocalypse terminator and Abby like some altruisitc hero willing to sacrifice everything to save those weaker than her, I wanted to see Ellie struggle to cope with her actions and the murderes she committed just like I wanted to see Abby struggle with the fact she brutally tortured a man to death and got no satisfaction from it, in the end both characters felt almost inhuman in the way they treated everyone around acted so selfishly, as you said this felt more like a melodrama focused on the revenge/forgiveness message, using the characters as tools move the plot forward.

I still liked almost everything aside from the execution, the actual story concept has tons of potential it just wasn't written or told organically, I have to admit tho, all the Joel and Ellie material got me emotional, as I said there's tons of potential in the concept and it shines through in those moments with them two and the tail section of the game, let's hope the show can take this concept and make it work in a way the game could not.

I always assumed it wouldn't work so well if you were having to play the game, and be forced down a certain path. But as a passive observer, as watching a film, I found the dynamic worked for me.

 

[R_R_X]

Joel and Ellie: The Missing Years.


They'll never be able to match the originals, so they'll always be a secondary version or a retelling.



I always assumed it wouldn't work so well if you were having to play the game, and be forced down a certain path. But as a passive observer, as watching a film, I found the dynamic worked for me.

The first comment reminds of that cancelled animated short that would've served as a recap of the first game and also show some moments between Joel and Ellie we never got to see, it's a shame it never came to be, but some stills from it were leaked to the public.

Yes there's a huge case of ludonarrative dissonance as I've mentioned in some of my older messages, it makes it really hard to enjoy the game when you realize what they're doing.

 

[Asta]

Yes there's a huge case of Ludo narrative dissonance as I've mentioned in some of my older messages, it makes it really hard to enjoy the game when you realize what they're doing.

To me it felt as though they'd written the story like a film, and then squeezed it into game format. Like trying to put a square block in a round hole with the aid of a sledgehammer.

So I can appreciate some of the more reasonable criticism of TLOU2.

 

[R_R_X]

To me it felt as though they'd written the story like a film, and then squeezed it into game format. Like trying to put a square block in a round hole with the aid of a sledgehammer.

So I can appreciate some of the more reasonable criticism of TLOU2.

It definitely feels like that, one of the biggest criticisms of TLOU 2 is that they almost forgot they were making a game, which is why the 10 hours with Ellie feel so boring and repetitive gameplay wise, once they got to the Abby portion they must've realized they couldn't keep the player engaged in just 10 more hours of murdering and walking so they created all the best levels in the portion of the game because, well, it's a game!

We also should've played a bit as Joel in the beginning instead of just riding through the opening credits, again felt very much like a movie.

 

[Johnny Utah]

The first Last of Us game is my favourite game and one of my favourite pieces of narrative fiction ever.

I agree that I love seeing ruined cities and ghost towns in post apocalyptic stuff, your brain fills in the blanks. When we first meet Ellie, she's tense around Joel. But as you venture through the game and come across the various threats together, it's amazing to see them bond.

One of the main things I loved about the story is the fact that other humans are as dangerous as the infected out there. The cannibal section was genuinely unsettling the first time I played it, when Ellie sees the hand being chopped off into a pile, and Joel comes across the bodies hanging upside down.

The cannibals in TWD season 5's opening scene came close to that, but nothing else has since.

 

[Asta]

Where it all began for me...

 

[dominishin]

Huh, just caught onto this. I'm actually more excited that Craig Mazin is involved. Chernobyl is one of the best things to come out of TV.