HBO's The Last of Us sets a new gold standard for videogameadaptations, but some of the game's power is still lost in translation.
Contents Thanks in no small part to efforts by PlayStation Productions and the success of movies like Sonic the Hedgehog and TV shows like Arcane, there will only be more adaptations of your favorite video games coming. We’ve come to a sort-of apex with The Last of Us on HBO, a prestige TV take on one of gaming’s most celebrated titles. It has legitimate stars, a big budget, Chernobyl’s showrunner at the helm, and is raking in viewers.
In both the video game and the show, The Last of Us begins with chaos. We’re put into the perspective of Sarah, a Texas teenager who, with her father Joel and her uncle Tommy, tries to escape what becomes known as Outbreak Day. The mysterious infection had been building for a while, causing people to act aggressively, and on Outbreak Day is when it all boils over. Sarah sees lines of cop cars with their sirens blazing and people running around screaming.
However, what even the best video game adaptations miss, either due to the medium’s constraints or ignorance, is how power dynamics go hand-in-hand with a game’s narrative. Storytelling in games isn’t just in dialogue or narration. It factors in interactive elements to tell that story, to convey a point to the player about the world they’ll inhabit for likely dozens of hours. The Last of Us can copy scenes from the game, but that doesn’t mean their resonance will fully translate.
Meanwhile, Arcane goes in the opposite direction and removes almost any references to League of Legends gameplay. Considering that the game is almost all gameplay and little narrative minus what you get from character backstories, this was the right move. Viewers still get the joy of seeing familiar faces in an original story. The creators understood that it would be difficult to adapt League of Legends on its own and instead played with what other stories it could tell in the universe.
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