I see that by Mark, they won't think it through, they'll just shoot you. Rule three, you do what I say when I say it. Are we clear? Yes. Repeated. What you say goes.
For the past few weeks, millions of people have spent their weekend evenings glued to The Last of Us on HBO, the next episode premieres tonight. I've actually watched every single TV and film adaptation of any video game ever. Gene Park reports on video games for the Post. The Last of Us is easily the most faithful adaptation in terms of how much it hues closely to the game script and what happens in the game. No other video game TV or film adaptation does anything that one-to-one than the HBO's latest does.
As a TV show, The Last of Us has won critical acclaim, and critics and viewers have praised the performances of the lead actors Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey along with the show's story. But while a lot of people are hearing about The Last of Us for the first time as a TV show, Gene has been in love with the story since it was first released as a video game almost 10 years ago.
From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. It's Friday, February 10th. I'm Kim Bellware. Today, how The Last of Us went from PlayStation to HBO and how its success is changing the cultural landscape around video games.
What is the general premise of The Last of Us video game? The Last of Us at its basis level is a third person action-to-venture game released for the PlayStation 3 back in 2013. It follows a story of Joel who is trying to survive a post-pandemic apocalypse. He runs into a girl named Ellie. This whole story revolves around Joel, who suffered a very traumatic loss of his daughter early in the pandemic, now having to bring this girl across America to a hospital where they could possibly engineer a vaccine. And it's basically a road trip movie that's very dark and very sad and very touching as you see the walls of both of these folks come down and they start to grow on each other.
I'm sorry about your daughter, Joel, but I have lost people too. You have no idea what loss is. Everyone I have cared for has either died or left me. Everyone except for you. So don't tell me that I would be safe from someone else because the truth is I would just be more scared.
Really the game isn't so much about the zombie apocalypse as it is about what these two mean to each other and the consequences of what that really should mean to themselves and to the rest of the world.
Okay, so in 2013 when it came out on PlayStation, what did you think of the game at the time? I thought it was groundbreaking. It was really the first kind of video game that really not only attempted to match prestige television but was able to pretty much match it. The presentation, the acting, all of it was very top-notch and it's why even back then many people said this is like an HBO prestige television show. So it seems to come full circle for the creators that they're now basically creating an HBO prestige television show out of a game that felt like it.
Jean, the show's third episode features Nick Offerman as a character named Bill and that really left an impression on a lot of viewers. I'm wondering if that's another plot line taken straight from the game.
Playing the game is interesting in that you are always in the perspective of Joel for the most part. The TV show differs in that they were able to push the perspective away from Joel, Pedro Pascal's character and focus it on the story of Bill and Frank.
Bill and Frank are these two gay lovers in the middle of a pandemic, post-apocalypse. Bill is a doomsday prepper and he's very conservative-coded. He loves his guns, he loves his trucks. He's very mistrustful of the government as he was basically preparing for this doomsday scenario.
You live in a psycho bunker where 9-11 was an inside job and the government are all Nazis. The government are all Nazis.
你住在一个疯狂的掩体里,认为9-11事件是内部工作,而政府都是纳粹分子。政府都是纳粹分子。
And he's dumb was upon Frank or rather Frank's dumb was upon him. Frank is this very nurturing survivor who is coming from Baltimore and Baltimore has been completely ransacked by monsters.
Here's a thing Frank, if I feed you, then every bomb you talk to about it is going to show up here looking for a free lunch. And this is not an Arby's. Arby's didn't have free lunch was a restaurant.
What's interesting about episode three and the Bill and Frank episode is that there was really only one zombie in the entire episode. So it kind of goes back to what the creator Neil Druckmann said. There's very few zombies in our zombie show and that's the point. The whole point of the show is to really, really focus on the relationship with the characters and what these characters mean to each other and what that could mean for us to.
So for someone like me who has watched the show, would you recommend fans of the show also play the game? Absolutely.. I actually watched the whole season and played the game at the same time. But it was an interesting experience to be able to compare notes between the show and the game and one to see how much of it was a one to one recreation in the game, but also to see what they were able to do with the TV medium that they could not do with the game's medium. Again, being able to change perspectives so you can kind of broaden the world a little bit more than what you saw through the game.
After the break, I asked Jean about the state of the video game industry and why it seems to be having a cultural moment right now. We'll be right back.
休息后,我问了Jean游戏行业的现状以及为什么目前似乎正经历着文化高潮。我们很快回来。
Given the reception that the show has had from fans of the game, you know, you hear with adaptations, especially based on comic books, but sometimes, you know, books or other pre-existing works, you're not really loves that adaptation. So is it rare for a video game adaptation to receive high praise from gamers and critics alike? Absolutely. Where and if anything, I don't think I've ever seen this before, ever. Probably the closest thing would be the Sonic the Hedgehog movies that came out in the last recent years.
And people liked to discount those movies because they're children's movies. But again, those movies did very well in the commercial box office. And critically, it wasn't blasted. It was actually pretty fairly well received, especially if you view it from the lens as a children's movie. And the fans love it too. The fans absolutely adore the Sonic the Hedgehog movies. So other than that, there hasn't really been a video game adaptation. Other than anime adaptations, especially in Netflix, that's done a really good job. Most recently with Arcane, the League of Legends franchise, as well as Castlevania, which came on 2017, written by Warren Ellis, those two are probably universally praise as well. But other than that, there hasn't really been a live action adaptation that has been well received by critics and fans at the same time as much as this.
So the creator of both the show and the game, Neil Druckmann, he said that he was intentional about debiating from the game. And you had a chance to interview him last month. What did he tell you about how he chose what to change and what to keep similar? One thing that was interesting he said is that, you know, the game came out in 2013 and it's about a pandemic. The show is now coming out in 2023 and we've all very recently experienced a pandemic. So acknowledging that reality and the audience's wisdom on how pandemics work kind of changed how they tell that story.
In the game, the virus was able to spread through spores that are spread throughout the air and the characters are having to wear masks. So the tanked food all hits the store shelves around the same time Thursday. People bought it, beat some Thursday night or Friday morning. Day goes on. They started to get sick. Afternoon. Evening. They got worse. Then they started biting. Friday night September 26, 2003. On Monday, everything was gone. Now that we're all very masks, we're veterans of wearing masks. I think the viewer would be a little bit more worried about how much spores would actually be able to seep into our masks and how realistically people would not be able to get infected wearing masks. So that was one thing. It'd be really limited to getting bitten or getting infected in some other means.
So Jean, let's step back a little bit and talk about the video game industry at large. How does this video game industry compare to say something like the movies or the television industry? It's a common talking point among gaming analysts and game critics that the video game industry is much larger than the TV and film industry. And it's been that way for a few years. It's why there's so much passion from Hollywood to chase the video game trend. It's not only very untapped, but the way detail the stories are so different. And that's why, again, that's so hard for video games to translate into a more linear format like TV or film.
With the last of us, the audience participation also includes relating to the characters. It's why Hollywood and other forms of media are looking at video games because the video game industry is so large and it's only growing.
So what do you attribute to this popularity? Because video games have been around for decades. So why are they really just having this moment now? I think video games are now multi-generational activity. I'm 41 years old and I was playing video games since I've been six years old. And there are people older than me that I'm playing video games before that. And people my age also have children and they're passing video games on.
And video games have not stopped being fun. If anything, they've actually been even more entertaining, more engaging. But also, video games encompass every media. They can tell a story like a TV or film.. They can also tell a story like a book in terms of how much detail they're providing. They can tell a story like a Broadway musical. And they can tell a story through music.
So it really, really does encompass all types of media, audio, visual, text, music. And I think that's why it continues to grow because you just never get bored of it. Especially in terms of some of it's even tactile. The PlayStation 5 lets you feel like the strength of pulling a bow. So some of that is even goes into feel. So it really just engages all your senses and ways and no other types of media can.
So now, Jean, recommendation time, let me ask, if I'm someone who has seen the last of us and I want to get into video games, where do I start? I would probably just start with the PlayStation friends because PlayStation Studios have really, really honed in on that kind of storytelling.
The last of us, again, was groundbreaking. But it also helped set a foundation for how PlayStation would tell its stories. So the next brand from PlayStation that will probably be anticipated is the God of War Series. And the God of War Series, again, became a story about family, about relationships. And I believe Amazon is going to be producing that TV show. But you don't have to wait for that TV show. You can just play the God of War games right now and you can get very, very compelling drama.
《最后的我们》再次创新,为 PlayStation 讲故事奠定了基础。因此,下一个备受期待的 PlayStation 品牌可能是《战神》系列。而《战神》系列再次成为关于家庭、关于人际关系的故事。我相信亚马逊将制作这部电视剧。但你不必等待这部电视剧,你现在就可以玩《战神》游戏,获得非常引人入胜的戏剧。
So I do think that if you stick with a PlayStation, a PS4 or a PS5, if you can find it, that would probably be the closest thing to sticking with the kind of stories that you want to see if you really, really enjoyed the last of us.
In addition to the God of War, are there any more video game adaptations or games themselves that should be on our radar? What else are you looking forward to? The next big product that will come out of this video game adaptation fusion would be the Super Mario movie coming out April by Illumination Studios. And that's starting Chris Pratt and Jack Black. It's an animated movie, but you can bet that that movie is going to make well over a billion dollars in a box office. It's going to be massive because there's any character that could rival the popularity of a Spider-Man or the even Mickey Mouse. It would be Super Mario.
Jean, thank you so much. Thank you, Kim. Jean Park is a reporter for the post covering video games and gaming culture. Today's show was produced by Arjun Sang with help from Lucas Trevor and Sabi Robinson. It was edited by Lucy Perkins and mixed by Sean Carter.
That's it for post reports. Thanks for listening. Our team includes Maggie Pennman, Reno Flores, Ted Maldon, Martin Powers, Ella Hayzadi, Lucy Perkins, Eliza Dennis, Alana Gordon, Ariel Plotnik, Arjun Sang, Jordan Marie Smith, Bernie Sfernovsky, Sabi Robinson, Emma Talkoff, Sean Carter, and Renita Jablonsky. I'm Kim Bellware. We'll be back on Monday with more stories from the Washington Post.