“The Last of Us” reveals the limits of video game adjustment

Warning: Spoiler for “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 5.

To see someone else who plays a video game A particularly entertaining way to spend their free time. And yet according to a recently carried out survey of Midia researchThe average gamer spends 8.5 hours a week and observes how other people play games in OnliNe and only 7.4 hours play themselves.

Video game fans are clearly more than happy to transform your hobby into a passive activity, but what happens when the same experience is transferred to the world of prestigious television?

When you have seen HBOs “The last of us“You may have noticed that in the course of the second season it feels a bit like playing a video game for you.

This is not completely unexpected. After all, the source material of the show “The Last of Us Part II” is a well -written, interactive drama with a large voice output and many shocking twists. The adaptation to an HBO series would always feel a bit like a shot-for-shot remake of the game. But with “The Last Us” season 2, episode 5, we see the limits of this adaptation.

The episode primarily follows Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina (Isabela Merced) while trying to infiltrate this The Washington Liberation Front headquarters In her search for Abby (abby () to be found and killing (Kaitlin Dever). This includes sneaking through an abandoned building full of zombies infected with mushrooms, which of course quickly goes sideways. But before your mission can even start, we get a bit of exhibition dialog that you may get in a video game that you may receive in a video game before you start a new level.

When Ellie and Dina prepare for the introduction, Dina explains how she watches the WLF and triangulates her movements throughout Seattle. She also notes that the group spoke freely in an unsecured Walkie-Talkie network.

“It's good, they are cocky,” says Ellie. “There is an advantage for us.”

After a little more planning, Ellie adds: “Let's be ruthless.”

If this were a video game, this would be the moment when the Save symbol appeared and gives them a last chance to collect additional balls and resources before they set off for a challenging mission.

The rest of the episode really feels like a video game. Ellie and Dina have to slide through a large, abandoned building that actively avoids the WLF (because zombies), which sneak around, shoot enemies and races with evil races. At some point they encounter an “intelligent” zombie and quickly slip a plan.

“It will try to flank us, but I say we flank it first,” says Ellie, and usually only delivers the type of dialog video game characters after you have not managed to exceed an obstacle yourself and to need help clearly.

While the episode is approaching its climax, the entire focus of enemies is running away, the WLF and the cult-like scars. In the “Last of Us” games, it can be a lot of fun to sprint through carefully designed levels full of interactive obstacles. But when you see it on HBO, it gets old quickly.

Finally, Ellie sneaks into a WLF outpost in the last moments of the episode and confronts Abby's girlfriend Nora (Tati Gabrielle). Nora runs in front of her and Ellie hunts close to it. (Yup, more races.)

If you compare the scene from the episode with the same sequence in the game, there are some remarkable differences. The HBO adaptation simplifies the chase and removes all the nameless WLF soldiers that Ellie has to murder on the way. But ultimately the effect is the same. The only difference is that you passively observe a very similar sequence instead of an interactive experience.

The episode ends with a mighty last scene in which Ellie Brutally murdered and signals how her obsession with revenge has got the price of her humanity. However, it is not enough to compensate for an overwhelmingly unsatisfactory hour of television.

This is all the more disappointed because “The Last of Us” seemed to be more ready in season 2 to deviate from the game in season 2. Yes, Joel still died at the beginning of history, but the way his death was played out felt differently in a way that reflected the shift from Playstation to HBO. This just makes it all the more frustrating how the series falls back in something that is much closer to a shot-for-shot remake.

If the HBO series feels like playing the game to someone else, why don't just play yourself? Or do you at least watch someone else play it online?

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