Badass and true to the game: The Last of Us' first ep is a must-watch

So far, this video game adaptation doesn't suck
Jan 17, 2023
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PHOTO: HBO

CAN YOU WATCH The Last of Us without ever playing the video game? Yes, of course. But it helps to know about the hype surrounding the adaptation in the first place.

Released in 2013, The Last of Us video game came out during a time when the zombie genre was already saturated. (We already had plants duking it out with the undead at that point.) As other survival horror franchises headed towards pew-pew-pew shooter territory, it became one of the games that put the “survival” aspect back in the genre.

But the biggest and most cinematic selling point of the TLOU video game was the reluctant team-up between Joel, a grizzled veteran and Ellie, a potty-mouthed teen girl — as well as the surrogate father-daughter relationship they develop while navigating a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

So who better to capture the badass vibe of this adventuring pair than the people who played fan-favorite warriors in another HBO series, Game of Thrones?

Pedro Pascal portrays a lot of strong fictional father figures (but he’s also that kinda daddy), including Oberyn Martell. Bella Ramsey, who’s Ellie, is best known for playing one of greatest fighters in GoT, Lyanna Mormont. Although the live-action Joel and Ellie only share screen time towards the latter part of the first episode, they are already able to establish the grumpy-hyper dynamic — including Ellie one-sidedly initiating conversation on mundane topics like musical hits from the ’80s.

(READ: This Pinoy game studio secretly worked on ‘The Last of Us Part II’ for years. This is their story.)

The Last of Us show sets up groundwork

To ease you into the fictional world without the benefit of ambient NPC conversations, lore dumps, or tutorials,TLOU the show takes a significant amount of time laying down the groundwork. There's a lot of table-setting to accommodate viewers who have never played the game before the plot starts plotting for real.

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The very first scene, in fact, is something you never see in the game: A fictional 1960s television interview explains how the Cordyceps takes over the host body and the possibility of evolving to infect humans. You know, just normal talk show fluff!

The scene then cuts to 2003, and we see what life was like before the outbreak and the early signs of what’s about to happen. The prologue helps establish the relationship between Joel (Pedro Pascal) and his daughter Sarah (Nico Parker) and his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna), which gets us invested enough to care about them.

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The prologue also gives us an accurate live-action version of the opening cinematic sequence from the game, with Joel, Tommy, and Sarah driving past burning houses, military vehicles, and police cars. That scene where Joel was carrying Sarah while the infected were chasing after them inside the diner was particularly inspired. They eventually end up on foot and, well, something significant happens. Then the timeline moves forward to 20 years later when the main story takes place.

From there, TLOU also takes advantage of the episodic format to do some world-building, fleshing out the backstories of other characters and the same events unfolding from beyond Joel’s protagonist goggles. We get to see more of Marlene (Merle Dandridge), Tess (Anna Torv), and Ellie (Bella Ramsey).

We have yet to see some of Joel’s other notable skills in full display, such as crafting weapons, playing the guitar, and that super hearing. (And maybe some of that parkour!) We’re also hoping for more Joel-and-Ellie moments with the teen referencing her book of jokes. We also can’t wait for Bill (Nick Offerman) to meet Ellie so they can start roasting each other.

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(READ: How faithful is The Last of Us show to the game? Let's look at Episode 1.)

Will the full season of Last of Us hold up?

The trailer has also shown scenes that happen much later in the game so we’re wondering if they will be able to power through the whole game’s story (including the flashbacks from DLC The Last of Us: Left Behind) in just one season without leaving too much on the cutting room floor.

Gamer know-it-alls can also energetically point at the screen in recognition when TLOU video game voice actors appear later in the series. There's Ashley Johnson (the original actor of Ellie/Anna) who plays Ellie’s mom in the show; Troy Baker (actor of Joel/James), appearing among a group of settlers; Jeffrey Pierce (actor of Tommy/Perry) who plays an original character; and there’s Merle Dandridge, who reprises her own character, Marlene.

So far, TLOU was able to recreate iconic scenes from the game that are so accurate that we might as well start button mashing. It’s not an easy task to satisfy an increasingly vocal gaming community, but The Last of Us manages to retain what makes the game so damn epic while improving the pace to quickly bring us to the meat of the plot.

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The Last of Us Episode 1 (When You’re Lost in the Darkness) is streaming right now on HBO Go with new episodes dropping every week.

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