The Last of Us 2 is one of the best video games ever made - but season 2 of the HBO show understands everything wrong

I love the last of us part 2. I loved it in June 2020 when I played it for the first time at the start. I loved it more than I repeated it in 2021. I returned in his frightening world about the last of us remastered, to PS5 in 2024 and this year to consolidate it only as one of my favorite video games ever. It could Even take the top.

I also enjoyed “The Last of Us” on HBO and the first season (which covered the events of the first The Last Us Video Game) for the best video game adaptation ever. I should also worship “The Last of Us” season 2 when you consider that it adapts what I adjust for an even stronger starting material.

And yet, I get four episodes in the eagerly awaited return of the popular HBO show. It's not that “The Last of Us” Season 2 is bad per se. It is isolated from the most prestigious. But as someone who keeps the game series at heart, I am increasingly annoyed by the sheer number of changes.

I understand that it is an adaptation for a completely different medium. Some things will be different because they were in season 1, but this time the basic problem is almost none of the changes (and some are considerable) to tell the story in a more interesting or more enormous way. Instead, take a story that I love and make them much worse.

Spoilers for “The Last Us” season 2 and the last of us are 2.

Script

Kaitlyn Dever as Abby in

(Photo credit: HBO)

The premiere of the second season of “The Last of Us” kept the same high standard from the first season.

It was episode 2, “through the valley”, in which my alarm bells rang and this hard sound has only become louder since. Let us first address the bloat in the room: the siege of Jackson was a highlight moment for many spectators, including some employees of the Tom's Guide. But I couldn't help but feel that it added a little about the spectacle.

In the video game, Jackson remains an unnoticed safe harbor, while we are overrun in the show of rabies infected, with the city suffering significant victims. The cynic in me has the feeling that these blockbuster deposits were only added as an over -taxer to fix the complaints of “not enough zombies” that plagued the first season of the show.

Gabriel Luna as Tommy in

(Photo credit: HBO)

In my view, it served little narrative purpose, and the following episodes, which include a three-month overflow, basically made the Fallout a non-event.

Now that the campaign has shifted to the central setting of Seattle in Part 2, the entire siege sequence is basically hardly more than a few cool recordings for the trailer and a flattering comparison to “Game of Thrones' iconic hardhome fight scene. Oh, and I think it swollen the budget.

Outside of Jackson, the show also slaughtered the famous (in) famous moment of the game: the brutal death of Joel. Even the bizarre decision to stage them in a brightly lit and very airy space, and not in the moist and claustrophobic basement of the game, the episode author Craig Mazin (also co-showrunner) has made some really confusing decisions.

By spelling her background story and her motivations, the newcomer Abby (an excellent Kaitlyn Dever), before defeating Joel to death with a golf club, the spectators were robbed of any puzzles that surround the character. In the game Why Abby played Joel as much motivation for Ellie's Revenge mission as the settlement of the score.

(Lr) Kaitlyn Dever as Abby and Pedro Pascal as Joel Miller in

(Photo credit: HBO)

There is no secret in the world of the show; We know who Abby is and we know why she obsessively persecuted and brutalized Joel. There is nothing more to discover. It's all just a countdown for the inevitable confrontation between Abby and Ellie. The entire thrust of the first half of part 2 has been lost in an obvious attempt to immediately formulate things to the viewers.

It is also a little sin to revise Joels the most memorable line from the game from the game (“Why don't you say what speech you rehearsed and that went over.”).

It only gets worse

Episode 2 is currently the highest episode of the show on IMDB, so I was ready to accept that with my painting I made a mountain out of a mole operation over the changes and just rolls with things, but since then the changes have only become more head scratches.

(Lr) Bella Ramsey as Ellie and Isabela Merced as Dina in

(Photo credit: HBO)

The relationship time bar of Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina (Isabela Merced) was postponed to confess to their mutual attraction after they arrive in Seattle to hunt Abby and their co -snacks, which has only contributed to astonishing Ellies fantastic character arches in the game.

For example, Ellie reacts in the game when Dina shows that she is pregnant. She is angry that Dina will be a “burden” for her mission to avenge Joel. In the show it becomes a moment of the celebration when she jokes “I become a father”, and the two complete their romance. It reduces what Ellie's spiral should be a very dark place.

In the show, the decision to travel to Seattle feels less like the premature call from someone who was blinded by anger and hate, and instead a fun trip for two young lovers.

This does not mean that the show cannot make any changes, but these changes should be better or in the service of the greater history, and so far only a few of them seem to do so.

Catherine O'Hara as a gail in "The last of us" Season 2

(Photo credit: HBO)

There is also a litani of other changes that have not come to me quite well, since Ellie Jesse (young Mazion) apparently revealed – that the evening before this death she ends with Joel – what the show of the ultimate moment of the game of the game will rob – and the inclusion of the new character -Gail (Catherine O'Hara), whose appearance is a little more than the motivation of the character, which is now Have something as magic from the first to the first as a magician as magic from the first.

How loyal is too loyal

My increasingly negative views “The Last of Us” season 2 have triggered a debate with the Tom's Guide team. Just how loyal an adaptation should be, has become a heavily discussed question, and I am a little surprised at how far the answers were.

While I acknowledge that a television will necessarily revise a video game parts of the starting material, and I guess that the broad strokes are kept in time (luckily the rumors were removed or delayed considerably, in fact that all changes had to be justified. Don't just be changes to the sake of it.

(Lr) Nick Offersman as Bill and Murray Bartlett as Frank in

(Photo credit: HBO)

Let's take “The Last of Us”, season 1 of “Long, Long Time” from season. And I loved it.

Why? Because it was a change to the better that expanded a bit of a partner in the original game. It was a main case of a change that made the world of “The Last of Us” so much richer.

If the improvements in history in the second season of “The Last of Us” had a similarly positive influence, I would be on board with them. But at the moment I have the feeling that I will be presented to us with a significantly weaker version of the story of part 2, which is hardly a convincing reason.

If I wanted to consume a worse version of the story of part 2, I could simply read the terrible fan fiction of fans who were so bitter about Joel's death that they tried to rewrite the game to meet them for their own preferences.

Jeffrey Wright like Isaac Dixon in

(Photo credit: HBO)

The show can still make positive changes. Episode 4, “Day one”, which gives us more time with the WLF leader Isaac (Jeffrey Wright, who repeats his role from the game) is such an example. But if so many additions, both large and small as well as sub -bills, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to see the positive aspects in a show that I have previously excited about it.

With all this dismay about changes in storyline, I didn't even touch some of the major problems in the second season like the very shaky pace. Spending three episodes (almost half of the relay) in Jackson seems increasingly bad.

While I can appreciate the need for a setup, it has taken so long for Ellie (and Dina) to Seattle for one season beyond half the way, but only leaves the start grid. At the current pace, the history of part 2 is adapted and we will need about four seasons to get through the climax of the game.

The ends justify the funds

Before I complete this increasingly lengthy hiker, it is important to recognize two potential contradictions to my symptoms.

First, I am absolutely aware that I am very close to the last of us part 2. The game has given a special meaning in my life when it was started for many people in a particularly difficult time (I am sure that they do not have to remember why 2020 was a tough year for many). I very much protect it.

Kaitlyn Dever as Abby in

(Photo credit: HBO)

If you have such a preference for a starting material, you will generally be more critical, and there is probably an element of me that only folds my nose when changing. These “problems” may not even register for non-gamers.

Second, the second season of “The Last Us” is four episodes for a run of seven episodes, whereby this adaptation of the Part 2 game has already taken over more than one season. Of course, there is still time that things come together, and for the additions such as the attack on Jackson and Newcomer like Gail, to become relevant and to play a large (and satisfactory) role in the final of the show.

Bella Ramsey as Ellie in

(Photo credit: HBO)

I will not copy HBOS “The Last of Us” just because the second season had a rocky start, and even with all my problems, there are still a large amount that the show likes, including the phenomenal set design and the remarkable line -up, bring the characters that I like to bring to life. Special shout-out to Isabela Merced, the episode 4 fully carried on her back.

At the moment I am quite concerned about where “The Last of Us” will go next, but even if it continues a way that I personally do not interest, I can always comfort myself with another play of the last part 2. It doesn't go anywhere.

The Last of Us 2 is one of the best video games ever made – but season 2 of the HBO show understands everything wrong

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