The Last of Us fans are getting ready for next month. We know that next month, we’ll finally get to sit down and start watching the upcoming season of the HBO adaptation. This show blew fans away when it initially debuted and was one of the catalysts, in my opinion, that started to really see video game adaptations flourish. Of course, we saw some slight changes and expansions to the video game narrative with the first season. Here’s one of the reasons why Neil Druckmann, the man behind the video game franchise, and the showrunner Craig Mazin made these adjustments.
Speaking with Game Informer, Neil Druckmann offered his two cents on changing the video game narrative for this show. It stems back to a conversation that the production had with HBO. According to Neil, HBO was firm on the idea of only having as much action and violence as required to tell the story. There wasn’t a push to see more than what the viewer needed to understand the storyline Neil and Craig wanted to tell.
That approach felt really successful to us and the processes might be very different but the results are going to be the same. So let’s look at the game, look at it at a high level. What are its themes? What are we trying to say for these characters? What are the essentials for the things we want to hang on to because they already work? What things do not quite work because […] certain sequences work better for the game versus TV or vice versa? Putting characters in different scenarios than what we’ve seen in the game […] allows us to flesh out these characters even further and then we get to know them in a different way, sometimes more than what you see in the game. – Neil Druckmann
As a result, it allowed the team to rethink how the storyline could be told. There were moments in the game when players understood more about a character through an action sequence, much like how the character Bill was introduced to the story, which is drastically different from what we had in the HBO series.
Further on in the interview with Neil, Game Informer was also told about the process they followed when writing scripts. For instance, this next season, the overall thought process was to see how Craig viewed the story. They were able to showcase the sequel game installment so the showrunner could highlight areas that worked or needed some adjustments.
As the person that has already worked on this story with [The Last of Us Part II writer Halley Gross] and is intimately familiar with it, I have certain biases coming into it so I try to just have an open mind when I get into conversation with myself, Halley, and Craig. How do we break this season? And those conversations started on Season 1, and they’re continuing on this season. First, I want to see what [Craig’s] reaction is to the material. What does he think we should keep? Where does he see some potentially problematic areas? Often, 90% of the time we’re in agreement, and then we just start brainstorming. Wouldn’t it be cool if we went on this little detour? And then we explore that idea and if we feel like it really enriches the story, we commit to it. If it doesn’t really help, we might say, “That’s a cool idea but let’s shelve it for now.” And we just go beat by beat and march through the story. – Neil Duckmann
From there, it was a process of trying to understand where to make certain breaks for episodes, how to showcase a part of the story in this new medium, and then constantly refining. Neil even went on to say that there are moments in this upcoming season that act as seeds for later seasons. It’s unclear if HBO will renew The Last of Us so that season three can continue telling The Last of Us Part 2. However, these planted seeds should grow and pay off if they do.
For now, we’ll have to wait just a little longer before the season can debut. The Last of Us season 2 is set to debut on HBO on April 13, 2025. In the meantime, you can read about Neil Druckmann’s comments on whether the show will continue past the games and Craig Mazin’s plan to step aside if that day comes.
