The series The Last of Us is not yet released that it is already beginning to infuriate some fans because of its assumed differences with the original games.
When a successful license is adapted into a film or series, it is systematically expected at the turn. Series The Last of Us from HBO is no exception to the rule and fans are already on edge, even though Neil Druckmann, creator of the license, is working on it alongside one of the most talented directors of his last years. , Craig Mazin (Chernobyl). The two men have however never hidden that the series would go much further than the first game and would even allow itself to add or modify certain things. Except that the latest revelation to date does not pass.
The Last of Us series makes changes, you don’t like it
During a recent interview for Collider, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann discussed the changes made to the series, such as the few differences concerning certain characters. Tess, for example, will be older and more marked by events, while Frank, Bill’s friend who died in the game, will be of greater importance. Fairly common adjustments given the ambition of the project, but the change that does not pass concerns one of the most important points of the franchise: the infection itself.
Unlike video games, the series The Last of Us opted for a more realistic approach to infection. Mazin also says that they took into account that people know what a pandemic looks like since Covid19. They then decided to further anchor The Last of Us in the real world by bringing on the infection little by little. We should also know all the secrets this time.
Neil Druckmann says that one of the major goals was to ensure that the series did not turn into a simple “zombie series”. To do this, Druckmann and Mazin have therefore decided to incorporate several monsters from the license, such as Clickers, and even a new creature, to stand out. As a bonus, they decided to completely review the mode of propagation of the virus, so the spores, very present in the games, are simply abandoned here. Instead, the series The Last of Us will treat the infected in a completely different way, giving them a hive mind, namely, the ability to transmit information to each other, as if it were one.
There are some additions we made to the series that I really liked. We wanted to avoid making a simple series about zombies. So we have several creatures, like the Clickers, that are already helping separate us from it. But with the infected youngsters, we discussed a lot about what they might look like, because we removed some things from the game. In the game, there were spores in the air and the survivors had to wear gas masks to to protect yourself. But we decided early on that we didn’t want to do that for the show. Then, by dint of thinking about the ways in which the infection passes from one infected person to another, like fungi, we thought that it could become a kind of interconnected network. It got very scary to think that the infected could all work together against us in a unified way, a concept that I really liked and that was developed in the series.
Neil Druckmann via Collider
Don’t touch my license!
A major change that has a hard time getting through to fans, and you just have to see what is being said on social networks to see that it bothers. The spores are indeed a major danger in The Last of Us Part 1, which required the survivors to protect themselves from the environment by all means. It also made for particularly stressful sequences in games when they invaded the atmosphere in a sort of thick, grainy haze across the screen. Not to mention that some infected in the game used it as a weapon, for example by launching “pockets” of spores, like the Colossi for example. In any case, fans are worried about the turn this adaptation is taking and the reactions are numerous. Everyone is waiting to see how the series plans to deal with Cordyceps and the infected. See you in a few days.
Series The Last of Us will land on HBO Max from January 15, but unfortunately still has no release date or platform in France.
