This weekend the year ends and 2023 begins, which means that there are only two weeks left for the premiere of the highly anticipated series of The Last of Us on HBO. For that reason, Neil Druckman and Craig Mazin did an extensive interview with The New Yorker where they talked about what awaits us with their adaptation, such as their level of realism.
Since its launch in 2013, the first The Last of Us game was considered one of the best cinematic experiences in video games, because in addition to having good gameplay as expected from Naughty Dog, TLOU had a very strong narrative thanks to the mind of Neil Druckmann, its creator and writer.
After several years of considering a film, in 2020 Neil Druckmann got together with Craig Mazin (Chernobyl showrunner for HBO) and they began working on adapting The Last of Us as a television series. Although Naughty Dog’s game has a very cinematic style, it was necessary to make changes for its live-action version, starting with its level of realism.
He has difficulty hearing on one side because of a gunshot. His knees ache every time he gets up… I guess there’s a tone where Tom Cruise can do anything. I like it worse than my middle-aged characters in the middle age of him.”
In the games, Joel is an almost superhuman being, as the gameplay demands, but this will not be the case in The Last of Us series. Pedro Pascal plays Joel in the live-action version and Craig Mazin said that he wants to give us a very realistic version, so we will see how the damage is reflected in his body throughout the series.
The producers of the series also spoke about their approach to violence in this new medium, since shooting and killing is our main way of interacting with enemies in the game, players may not feel weighted by such actions.
“When you’re playing a section you’re killing people, and when you die they send you back to the checkpoint. All those people are back, moving the same way”says Mazin, arguing that players are starting to see NPCs as obstacles and not really people.
