Neil Druckmann, the creator of The Last of Us, has explained why and how the show decided to incorporate elements from The Last of Us Part II into the HBO live action adaptation, even though the series was meant to only cover the first game.
The Last of Us TV show adaptation is extremely intriguing because it tells the game’s story almost beat for beat, with some significant changes here and there.
For instance, the final episode’s cold opening is a brand-new scene that fans have never seen before and the third episode is entirely focused on a plot we never see in the game.
The story has the potential to grow significantly, and with the benefit of hindsight, it can also be deepened by sowing the seeds for future events to be explored in future seasons.
Neil discussed how the production team selected what to include in the series during an interview with the Kinda Funny podcast.
He pointed out that while creating the first game, they were still figuring out the plot, but with two complete games ready to go when creating the first season of the series, there was much more room to establish everything.
As a result, he pointed out, they could potentially tease Dina, show the town of Jackson in the first season, introduce viewers to Shimmer the horse, and many other such elements fans of the games were already so familiar with thanks to Part II.
Druckmann also mentioned that since the Left Behind’s DLC was released after the initial game, the show gave them the opportunity to emphasize Riley’s influence on Ellie in the main plot more than ever before.
Check out the complete explanation from Druckmann down below!
We are currently unsure of what will appear in HBO’s The Last of Us season 2.
There have been hints that the second game will be altered for the show, but we don’t know what exactly will be altered or how.
In either case, we can probably anticipate that some of those first season elements will tie in nicely with the upcoming season.