We’ve only seen two episodes of HBO’s version of The Last of Us so far, but as the season goes on, it will become clear that the show has less action than the video game.
Several things make sense about this. The big one is that video games make you move around. Players make the action happen, and they’d much rather fight a zombie than walk down a street. On the other hand, watching TV is a passive experience because viewers let the story unfold as they watch. In this case, the characters and the story become more important.
There’s another, equally logical reason why there won’t be as much action in The Last of Us TV show, though it might not be as clear at first. Craig Mazin, who is a co-showrunner, told the PlayStation Blog that healing in games is different from how it works on TV. “It’s just that we can’t just bend over, put on a bandage, and be fine. So, violence affects people in different ways. Smaller acts of violence cause a lot more harm, and the harm lasts a lot longer or is permanent.
Of course, it makes perfect sense. In real life, healing in video games makes no sense, but it makes perfect sense for the medium. But on TV, violence can help you get what you want. In the most recent episode of The Last of Us, For Example, Tess’s bite got worse almost in real-time, while Ellie’s got better.
The fact that these wounds went in different directions helped move the story along by showing Tess and Joel that Ellie is, in fact, immune. This important part of the story would have been lost if Ellie or Tess had just gone into a menu and clicked a few buttons. Mazin says that all the action is done in a steady, measured way.
“An action sequence should be a single word,” said Mazin. “So, one of the things we talked about was the role of action in the show, and we both agreed that we would enjoy the action scenes more if they were all different from each other and had clear effects on the story, whether they were small or big.
Go to the PlayStation Blog to learn more about the action in The Last of Us, such as how the infamous Clickers look and sound. The latest episode is on HBO Max.