The Last of Us

[Velorath]

First full trailer here. Coming to HBO Max January 15th.

[Riggswolfe]

I wonder how they'll balance being faithful to the games with not just retelling the game's story as a TV show. I also wonder how fast they'll go. For example, they could do game 1 in 1 season or make season 1 just the early parts with Tess all leading up Joel and Ellie leaving Boston.

[Tale]

I'm being bombarded with good reports elsewhere on the internet. But none of you have said anything.

[Trippy]

We don't have HBO Max? Also servers died from the streaming load.

[Velorath]

I'm being bombarded with good reports elsewhere on the internet. But none of you have said anything.

It’s one episode in and covered about the amount of story I expected and is technically competent. That’s about all I can come up with to say right now.

[Phildo]

I enjoyed it a lot, and so did my wife who's never seen the game before.  It's high quality and the actors are doing what I would consider a great job of portraying the characters.

[Sky]

I have to admit I'm more tempted to sub to HBO to watch this game show than to sit through the mediocre gameplay to watch this show game.

[Riggswolfe]

I have to admit I'm more tempted to sub to HBO to watch this game show than to sit through the mediocre gameplay to watch this show game.

The game is fun and well written though I do find it amusing when people talk about how it's the most amazing story ever. I'm like "it's a bog standard zombie post-apocalypse story with some father daughter found family stuff thrown in." It's good but it's not as amazing as people pretend.

[Samwise]

Like Vel said, it seems fine, but I'm going to hold off on telling everyone this is the show to sub to HBO for until a few more episodes in.

During one of the action sequences my wife turned to me and said "was this based on a book?  Or was it a video game?  This feels like a video game scene."  It definitely preserves its heritage, for better or worse.  I don't even remember the game that well but I definitely could feel the video game beats -- the fetch quest, the "you're the only one here so now you get this main quest," the cover-based stealth level, etc.

From what I do remember btw I agree with Sky, I remember the gameplay as being mediocre and something I pushed through to watch the movie (and I also agree with Riggs, it's not like it's the most amazing thing evar but it's a competently executed zombie movie and that's more than good enough for me).

[Rasix]

It's good so far. I like the casting choices and the visuals are just spot on. The opening 30 was a great in both its recapturing the game's feel, but also adding some more meat to Sara and Joel's relationship.

The first Last of Us's gameplay was OK, it was somewhat novel at the time blending the cover shooter, stealth, and survivally bits together while having a decent narrative and good level design. It was competently made. The story kept moving you forward and was interesting.

The second game is the first's gameplay with bad puzzles and a story composed mostly of misery and lack of character growth. Want to feel shitty? Play the game. I never will again. Doing dumb shit while being robbed of any sort of player agency is not sometime I'll sign up for again.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, I've absolutely had it with any game that insists I need to experience a story about characters being stupid and not growing at all via interactivity. That adds absolutely nothing to a story of that kind.

I'm on the fence about this--I just feel like zombie apocalypses are something I am completely tired of.

[Velorath]

I didn't have an issue with the gameplay in The Last of Us. Story-wise, yeah as a whole it's a fairly standard zombie story. I do think there are a number of good moments in the first game (and the DLC especially) that help elevate it a little bit. In regards to this series those, my looking forward to seeing some of that is tempered quite a bit by just how much I didn't like a lot of the story in Part 2. Even the end of Part 1 is a bit of a "Was that really the best or only way to resolve this situation?" moment.

[Tale]

I have to admit I'm more tempted to sub to HBO to watch this game show than to sit through the mediocre gameplay to watch this show game.

I felt like same about the game. I lost interest in the first one when I was struggling to get through a complex fight sequence after saving with too little health/ammo and no opportunity to gain any during the problem fight. I just didn't want to work that hard to watch a story.

So I'll give this a go.

[MahrinSkel]

It's one episode. But it was a really strong start.

--Dave

[Trippy]

I have to admit I'm more tempted to sub to HBO to watch this game show than to sit through the mediocre gameplay to watch this show game.

I felt like same about the game. I lost interest in the first one when I was struggling to get through a complex fight sequence after saving with too little health/ammo and no opportunity to gain any during the problem fight. I just didn't want to work that hard to watch a story.

So I'll give this a go.

I had the same issue with the game (the original and remaster), starting and stopping at least twice, until I finally switched the difficulty to "easiest" and made it all the way through.

[Threash]

Third episode was probably the best episode of any show ever.

[Velorath]

I liked it, but unsurprisingly I've also seen some blowback because of some of the changes made (and not from people saying that the show needs to stay 100% faithful to the game).

Edit: I'll drop this in as the main example of some of the sentiment I saw on social media last night. Most of the reaction did seem incredibly positive but I also can't tell the author of this pieces that he's wrong.

[Miguel]

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.  EP3 was - mesmerizing.  Like ..completely flawless.  Offerman and Bartlett were...I'm at a loss for words.

[Surlyboi]

Nick raided a store for a case of Caymus.

The dude knows his wine.

[Samwise]

Speaking of Fleishman being in trouble, Marilyn and Leonard showing up together in that last episode was a really fun surprise.

[Threash]

It was fun when they moved on so I could breathe a sigh of relief about them not being this weeks heart break.

[HaemishM]

Binged the whole season. Having not played the game, it was good to be surprised by some story beats. Some of it was really good (the episode with Offerman was a standout) and having the mushroom zombies not really being much of a focus was a positive for what is ostensibly a zombie show. The Preacher episode didn't offer any real surprises, as you could see what he was about from a long way off, but it was handled really well. After the buildup of that episode, the finale felt a bit compressed.

The most disappointing thing to me about the finale was the writing.


If the second game is even more of the "we are all horrible people and will make horrible choices," I can see not wanting them to continue the series.

[Velorath]

If the second game is even more of the "we are all horrible people and will make horrible choices," I can see not wanting them to continue the series.

They've already said they're doing more seasons, but yeah, that's pretty much all the second game is. It's an entire game filled with people doubling and tripling down on bad, destructive choices.

[Surlyboi]

Super bad. Everyone is fucking straight up broken and the world does not become a better place.

[Riggswolfe]

If the second game is even more of the "we are all horrible people and will make horrible choices," I can see not wanting them to continue the series.

They've already said they're doing more seasons, but yeah, that's pretty much all the second game is. It's an entire game filled with people doubling and tripling down on bad, destructive choices.

The second game was exhausting to play and also super emotionally manipulative. It left me feeling hollow by the end which I think may have been some of the point but it's a game I'll never play again.