The Last Of Us came out in 2013 to a gaming community that was still meddling and enjoying the fun of action games with mindless combat, an aspect of it wished to stray away from. The creators of the post-apocalyptic zombie video game wanted the perfect balance of action and emotional storytelling.
Just almost a decade later, The Last of Us is now considered one of the greatest video games to ever be made, and a modern classic. Its popularity has been spurted to the point where it now has its own TV series that’s due for release in the first month of the new year, and it plans on following the same philosophy that was implemented in the first video game.
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The Last Of Us Plans On Minimizing Violence In TV Shows
The era of zombie-killing video games was at its peak with Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, among many other games of similar nature. But one common aspect of all these zombie-survival games was that it allowed the player to mindlessly kill hordes of zombies, much without a cohesive backstory or development of its characters.
Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, when it came out in 2013, was a fresh change in this regard. It wanted to change how zombie-survival games were played by adding emotional depth to whom the user controls in-game.
The game is now a household name in the gaming community, setting the bar for what a perfect balance between combat(action) and intimate storytelling in a video game can look like. It also has an upcoming TV show based on the same name, created by Chernobyl creator Craig Marzin and Naughty Dog co-president Neil Druckmann.
Starring The Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal, the show is due for release in January next year. Druckmann gives an update on the TV series and why it plans on minimizing violence in it, much like the original video game. Speaking for an upcoming issue of SFX magazine, the 44-year-old programmer said-
“We need a certain amount of action, or violence, that we could use for mechanics so you could connect with Joel and get into a flow state. Then you would really feel like you’re connected with this on-screen avatar and you’re seeing the world through his eyes.”
He continues, adding more reasons for the decision-
“But that doesn’t exist in a passive medium. One of the things that I loved hearing from [co-creator Craig Mazin] and HBO very early on was, ‘Let’s take out all the violence except for the very essential.’”
“That allowed the violence to have even more impact than in the game, because when you hold on showing the threat and you’re seeing people’s reaction to a threat, that makes it scarier. And when we do reveal the infected and the Clickers, you get to see what brought down humanity and why everyone is so scared.”
The very essential violence will still be there. But it’s a TV series that runs at its own pace rather than what the user’s pace is in a video game, you wouldn’t want to be seeing action 24/7 in a TV series!
Fans React Negatively To The Use Of Essential Violence In The Last of Us
It seems like all the sweet talk from Neil Druckmann trying to convince fans that the minimized amount of violence will just be enough isn’t going to work.
Fans who understandably enjoyed the balance in combat/violence/action and intimate storytelling in the first video game have voiced their opinions on why Druckmann and Mazin’s plans just aren’t going to work-
For real-
Slowly and slowly-
It’s a mirage! –
Two sides! –
After all, gotta advertise it to everyone! –
It’ll be quite interesting to see how Druckmann and Mazin plan on striking the same balance that The Last of Us did back in 2013. But considering the fact that it’s going to be a TV show that can be directed in a thousand ways, it shouldn’t be that tough of a task for them.
The Last of Us is scheduled for a release on January 15, 2023, on HBO Max.
Source: Twitter
