The Last of Us: Stories, Mediums, and Adaptations.

by Tanmay Jain

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I can't remember whether I watched The Last of Us season 1 or played the game first. For the most part, the characterization of the story across the two mediums have merged in my head. The season functioned as a companion piece, elaborating on the world and the subtext of the game, while giving a humanistic quality to the characters. Something I’m sure the creators were under pressure to recreate in The Last of Us season 2. 

Season 2 is noticeably insistent on taking its own separate take on the original storyline. While the first season recreated the major beats, adding stylistic and cinematic quality to its presentation, it never tried to one-up the narrative. The second season goes through those same beats like checkpoints, it knows the chapters it has to cover and copies the titles of each, so the gamer audience can connect it to the story. The content of these chapters, however, remain a distorted image. 

Adaptations are a tricky thing. Adapting a contemporary work is almost always hard to justify, especially when the original work is so universally lauded. It’s not the same as adapting Shakespeare into contexts completely foreign to the original work. The Last of Us, the show and the game, inevitably has the same point to make. It’s all about how it does so. The way you tell a story is restricted by the medium you’re telling it in. But these practicalities are rarely a proper limitation, rather an invitation for the creators to find new ways to convey to the audience what they want to. The shape of the medium becomes a crucial part of defining the experience. So the major part of the modern game-to-screen adaptation, it’s all about remoulding the story to a different medium, to fit a different relationship between the audience and the character and author. 

The Last of Us is as cinematic a story as you’ll ever find in gaming. It relies heavily on its extended cinematics (cut-scenes) to tell its main narrative. It features many sections with not much for the gamer to do but keep pressing the W button to keep walking  as Ellie and Joel talk. But the restriction of the game is its inability to tell stories other than its protagonist's. That’s where the show comes in. 

Now, Season 1 did this best. The prime example is the third episode, Long, Long Time. What was just some notes the player can choose to read, becomes a full episode that does not feature our protagonists at all. Even the sequences in Episode 1 and 2 that trace the rise of the infection. These elaborations focus on the parts that the game could not tell, because first, it wasn’t necessary for the experience it was aiming for. Second, the medium would not allow it (successfully, at least). Even with all of that, the main narrative was the same. Because it did not need updating.

The second game is significantly more narrative focused than the first one. A lot more cinematic cut-scenes, a lot more sequences with no action, just storytelling, a lot of careful work in the narrative; a lot less room for world-building to be elaborated upon. The world of Seattle and the war between the two factions is very directly tied into the main plot lines, as would become apparent for the TV viewers in Season 3 with Abby’s storyline. The world of the infected is already elaborated on, so one does wonder, what is left for the show to add?

When I started watching the second season, I could tell it felt foreign. The writing felt overcooked, the characters tracing the paths walked by their game equivalents, with not much explanation as to why. Around episode 4, the discourse also made it clear that the game was significantly different. And thankfully, that is when it dropped for PC. So I ran through that in a week before returning for Episode 5. And when I did, the show felt all the more foreign. I could feel the writers scrambling to leave some semblance of individual personality in there that would, perhaps, make it as unique as the game. 

I could also feel the limitations of the cinematic medium kicking in. Some 5-10 minute sequences were cut, because it was probably not worth re-creating the massive sets required for them. A lot of the major set-pieces of the game that were majorly combat gameplay focused were entirely erased. An entire plot point was removed, presumably because that too leads into an extended gameplay sequence. The attitude here wasn’t as much to streamline the storytelling, but rather, to surgically extract the scenes deemed to be of narrative importance and throw the rest in the trash. 

There is a common belief that the narrative in games serve to justify or hold up the gameplay sequences, or vice-versa. But great games do not differentiate between them when it comes to story importance. When you see Ellie cutting through hordes of WLF soldiers or sneaking around in bases and the forest, tracking and foraging, upgrading her weapons; that’s her character. It shows the depths of violence she’s willing to resort to for revenge. It also sets up the WLF as formidable villains. You come across a base and see how well fortified it is on screen, only to immediately and easily find a way in, defeating the purpose. You have to fight through it, through tactics or firepower. The WLF in the show is like a ragtag group of mercenaries, not an army. The show gives us a clip of a big army marching in one scene ,then never shows Ellie or any of our characters ever having to truly face it. 

The sequences where you’re crawling quietly through dark corridors and basements may not add to the plot, but it shows the risks Ellie is taking and how she feels with it. Season 2 Ellie barely fights any infected. She has, so far, displayed significant incompetence in fighting them. She hasn’t killed dozens of nameless enemy soldiers for the sake of killing that one person in revenge. Which is the point of the story. Collateral damage. Ellie is the bad guy. But not in the show.

Another aspect of the narrative that the game thrives in is its pacing. There are extended flashback sequences, telling the backstories of both Ellie and Abby. But no gamer would go that long without actual gameplay. This works out great for the narrative, as they’re able to punctuate the gameplay and the story beats of the main narrative with its flashbacks; connecting the sequences for optimal emotional weight and story significance. The TV show lumps it all in one episode. The game worked its medium’s limitations for its benefit, while the TV show wasn’t able to maintain that level well within its own medium’s boundaries. 

So you slash the narrative and pacing, for practical reasons, for perhaps a disregard of the importance of interactive storytelling in the narrative; then what do you change for the adaptation? Because, as much as the audience wants it, an exact copy of the scenes from the game would not gel well with these self-respecting artists, and a prestige television network like HBO. This is where the overcooked writing comes in. Scenes where it seems like just extra lines of dialogue were stuffed in between the scripts from the game. Character conflicts/relationships completely changed or forcibly exaggerated to fill in what was lacking. 

What was surprising however, was the humongous misstep the show made in re-imagining Ellie’s character. HBO and Craig Mazin are reputed to be among the most expert craftsmen in character-driven storytelling. And with an adaptation that already sketched out Ellie’s character very well, there wasn’t much room to fail. And yet, maybe it was the urge to make changes that led them to a completely unnecessary and ultimately detrimental route. Ellie is no longer the brooding, grieving, suffering and lost young adult she was. She’s now a snarky, anti-social, man-child who refuses to grow up. On one hand, she’s driven for revenge, but she’s also hopeful about her future with Dina, and a humanitarian wanting to save what she perceives to be “innocent” lives (in a war she knows nothing about, by the way).She’s essentially divorced from her reality, mainly because the reality we’re told she’s in never truly manifests itself. This is where the endless murders she commits in the game would have helped. Not to mention, the complete character assassinations of Tommy and Jesse to support the completely uninspired self-destructive Ellie. The online discourse would have you believe that the fault lies entirely in Bella Ramsey. They are, no doubt, highly miscast. But they are a talented actor, a fact quite obvious in the first season, but even they can only do so much in a role that doesn’t fit them. 

Clearly, the adaptation is made for commercial reasons. The epic production values and careful work done by proper artists doesn’t dispute that. But the great difference in season 1 and season 2 of the show makes me wonder, what is the point of these adaptations? Is it made to coddle those audiences who refuse to step into a different medium? They never asked for something they weren’t even aware of. Is it made to “bring to life” the experience that was beloved by the game’s original audience? To an extent, perhaps. But many of them would argue that the experience was already as great as it could be. Does every story need to exist in every medium for every possible audience? 

Mediums define their stories, and it’s not a bad thing. The idea that a live-action TV/Film treatment is a gift for these stories to truly bloom or something is an excuse fed to audiences by corporations that care for nothing but commercial success. That doesn’t mean all cross-medium adaptations are set to fail; but without a clear understanding of storytelling within different mediums, they’re bound to add nothing of value.