During SXSW 2021, IGN managed to speak to Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann about the upcoming The Last of Us series in production at HBO. According to the co-creator of the series, the first season will adapt the first game, and though it stays pretty close sometimes, other times it'll deviate greatly because of the different narrative medium.
We talked at length that season 1 of The Last of Us series is going to be the first game. As far as the superficial things, like should a character wear the same plaid shirt or the same red shirt? They might or might not appear in it, that’s way less important to us than getting the core of who these people are and the core of their journey. Things sometimes stay pretty close. It’s funny to see my dialogue there from the games in HBO scripts. And sometimes they deviate greatly to much better effect because we are dealing with a different medium.
For example, in the game, there’s so much action you have to have to train the player about mechanics. You have to have more violence and more spectacle to some degree than you would need on a TV show because you don’t need to train people on how to use a gun. So that’s something that’s been really different, and HBO’s been great in pushing us to move away from hardcore action and focus more on the drama of the character. Some of my favorite episodes so far have deviated greatly from the story, and I can’t wait for people to see them.
While we're waiting for the first season of HBO's The Last of Us series to drop, check out this amazing deepfake video of the first game with the faces of Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey grafted onto Joel and Ellie.
