Topic: The TV Show Thread

@Th3solution Those are some great thoughts! Personally, I still would have liked to have seen Joel and Ellie meet up with Bill. That’s such a classic section of the game in my mind and I did miss it. I’m okay with what we got though. It was a beautiful story.

As for Frank, I seem to remember him hanging himself and leaving a note saying something along the lines of, “I’d rather die than spend another day with you.” Hope I’m right on that. Yeah, they really flipped the script with this one!😂

@zupertramp Thanks! I’ll look into them. Slow doesn’t bother me if it eventually pays off. Miniseries work best for us. I love sports so no problem there!

Yeah it's funny because id argue knowledge of the games enhanced the experience, at least in that first ep, as we could see where the show zagged and zigged, what was changed or fleshed out and remark on those things. but I'm not convinced it'll work in the other direction. It takes about half of the first episode to get us basically to where Last of Us starts, for example. We all still think that opening is incredibly effective, even the old version with the PS4 art style (which I actually prefer but I assume that's a controversial topic for another time), but will someone from the TV show wonder where the rest of it is? I wonder if that'll be alienating more than anything else.

I'd also argue, maybe controversial, but the worst part of the Last of Us was playing it lol I suffered through so many boring ladder puzzles and infuriating stealth sections because I wanted to experience the next environment or development in Joel and Ellie's story. But now you don't have to do that any more, because this TV show exists.

@Pizzamorg Puzzles in games is something people will probably be divided on. I’m
playing The Pathless and it’s got this wonderful free roaming world with super smooth kinetic traversal with awesome sense of speed, a little bit like Spider-Man. But interspersed are puzzles of varying degrees of difficulty that you have to do to progress. I quite like them. And the second boss was a bit of a puzzle boss too.
And I did think to myself as I really struggled with a tough puzzle last night and almost looked it up online, “These puzzles are ruining this great experience.” But then when I figured it out it was really satisfying.

In the case of TLoU, I don’t think the puzzles were particularly difficult, as I recall. So it may be why you disliked them since there wasn’t that “Aha!” moment of satisfaction by pulling a ladder or board to the required place.
The second game did away with a lot of that, so your complaint was likely expressed by many. And despite liking the first game better, I do think the gameplay for the second game is better.

Regardless, I definitely think some of the TV show watchers are in for a rude awakening when they see how lean the story is in the game, comparatively speaking, and replaced with an escort mission with a bunch of stealth, exploration, and resource management.

Incidentally, while I’m watching the show I find myself looking around on the set as Joel and Ellie mill about, hoping I’ll be the first to find a comic or some bandages. A small part coming up that you haven’t seen yet in the show is an homage to the exploratory raiding of cabinets and shelves that you do in the game, but it’s brief compared to the constant searching you do in the game. 😅

@Th3solution The puzzles in "TLoU" are really "puzzles" - something other than walking and scrounging for the characters to do whilst they have a chat.

@LN78 Yeah, there is a modicum of narrative purpose so the two can bond and chat and create a sense of cooperation. I didn’t mind them personally. A lot of games have one party member push a crate or pull a lever for another party member. At least in TLoU there’s some occasional witty banter.

@Th3solution Absolutely - especially considering how much of the actual gameplay is contingent on absolute silence!

I actually think the second episode of the Last of Us was even better than the first. Feels unusual in a TV show to introduce and payoff a punch of stuff in the same episode, but I appreciated it. I wish more TV shows did this, for the longest time the pacing of TV was what killed my interest.

I also liked how they tried stealth, they ***** it up and it descended into total chaos from there. They just like me fr fr. Only here there are no insta death fail states you have to restart, and as such I am sorta coming round to this whole thing.

Going in I was like ‘why does this exist’ - but I guess this is why. Every fresh playthrough I dread sequences like this, and not for the reasons intended, and here I got to just enjoy a cool episode of TV, rather than seethe with frustration at a game for an hour being stuck in the same place.

Also, about the whole ladder thing above. I ain't suggesting ladder puzzles are inherently good or bad, really. I just think if you had never played a videogame before, and then the Last of Us was your first game, I think you'd wonder why there are so many sequences of moving boxes, platforms and ladders and wonder if that is normal in modern videogames.

@Pizzamorg One of the cool things about the new version of the game is that you can tailor the stealth, puzzle, combat and resource management aspects to your particular taste - so if you're rubbish at sneaking past the clickers (for example) you can just go into the options and make that a non-issue. I suspect this will make for a much less traumatising experience for people transitioning from the series to the game.

Oh wow, I genuinely had no idea about that. I might have to replay Part 1 when the show is over then, I kinda wanted to, but the price of entry is massive on PS5 (less so on PC which I think comes out in March?), but I was also kinda dreading some parts, but this is a game changer literally.

This article explains it in a bit more detail:
https://kotaku.com/the-last-of-us-part-one-ps5-settings-acces...
I'm playing through it just now and it's very shiny but I think I'd have been annoyed if I'd paid full whack for it. It's functionally pretty much identical to the old version.

Wow episode three of the Last of Us was magical. The world has changed more in ten years than I think I really appreciated. What was once implied and danced around in the game, now just gets to become text here in the TV show. Awesome stuff.

What a show! I think magical is indeed the right word for this episode, @Pizzamorg. I'm a fan of the game, a lot actually, but I think storytelling wise every decision made here was the right one.

This is probably a minority opinion, but Bella Ramsey has become canon Ellie for me within just three episodes. I think her performance is extremely strong, and I think many people's attachment to Ashley Johnson (who is great!) makes them unable to asses Bella fairly. I don't think there's an actor that could have fulfilled the role better.

@The_Moose Not to state the obvious but I don't think that particular actor would be very suitable these days. @Kidfried That's interesting. What criticism I've read about the acting in the show (from measured and rational sources, I mean) seems to have been pointed in her direction. In fairness I haven't watched it, but given the structure of the narrative in the game version I can't imagine she's had very much to do yet, so perhaps that criticism is a touch unwarranted.

@LN78 "Not to state the obvious but I don't think that particular actor would be very suitable these days."

Agreed, way too old to play a believable teenager these days.

@The_Moose 🙄.

@The_Moose You know he's called Elliot Page.

@LN78 Ramsey's performance specifically was praised by The Washington Post, Guardian and many other outlets actually. I can recommend anyone to just rewatch some episodes focusing on what Ramsey does, because it's amazing acting. She acts with her whole body, adopting a typical Ellie diction in her voice, and just keeps her performance natural at the same time. It's fair for anyone to not like a performance by the way, but from a technical perspective it's amazing what Ramsey does. And she's only 19 years old too!

@Kidfried "You know he's called Elliot Page."

Yeah now but not at the time of the lawsuit. I doubt the lawsuit would have happened if that was the case back then.

"Ramsey's performance specifically was praised by The Washington Post, Guardian and many other outlets actually."

That may be true but The Guardian also praised She-Hulk so....

That alone would make me question my career choice if I was Bella Ramsey.

It is difficult for me to get a read from Ramsey just in these first three episodes. At this point in the story with Ellie having her full guard up, she is kind of a massive ***** (justifiable or not) and the inherent unlikability of the character at this stage of the story makes it difficult for me to really objectively gauge Ramsey's performance.

That being said, I think episode three had two of Ramsey's best moments so far, one being that haunting sequence with the trapped infected she finds in the basement and then the 'warming up' sequence right at the end in the car, it at least shows she has great chemistry with Pascal.