Adapt and Survive: How HBO’s 'The Last of Us' Perfected the Jump From Game to Television

Cast your mind back to January 15th last year. After a long wait, HBO’s The Last of Us aired for the first time. For those of us who‘ve played and loved the game(s) that inspired the show, this was a nerve-wracking moment. A year later, we can rest easy knowing the show succeeded in carrying a beautiful and haunting story to a new audience.

Turning 15-20 hours of intense gameplay into 9 hours of primetime television is no small feat, so I wanted to look at a few small ways in which the creators took a key element from the game and made it TV-ready, without the benefit of an extended runtime. For those of you who haven’t played the game or watched the show, beware... HERE BE SPOILERS (also, please go play, then watch The Last of Us, in that order):

At the end of episode four, ‘Please Hold to My Hand’, we are briefly introduced to two brothers: Henry and Sam. TV Henry is a hunted man; Kansas’ militant rebels want him dead for betraying their leader’s brother. If this is true of Henry’s video game counterpart, it is left unsaid.

TV Sam is not only much younger but, in another departure from the game, he’s also portrayed as deaf. While serving as a powerful bit of representation for the deaf community – Sam is played by Keivonn Woodard, who is himself deaf, and earned an Emmy nomination for his portrayal – this also demonstrates the TV writers’ ability to communicate the essence of the game’s characters within a far more limited screen time.

Those of us who’ve played the game know Henry and Sam well. We spend hours with them: a cat and mouse chase with an armoured truck full of bloodthirsty raiders; an abandoned sewer sanctuary overrun with infected; and a tense crawl through a suburban street while avoiding sniper fire.

Over this time, we learn who Henry and Sam are. Henry wants to join TLOU’s answer to the Rebel Alliance, the Fireflies. Sam just wants to be a kid. He and Ellie begin to bond, Ellie taking on the role of elder sister as, for a moment, they’re both allowed to be children in a world where the weak are prey.

Ellie and Sam share a comic book

In the show, Henry and Sam’s full story is told in episode five, ‘Endure and Survive’. As viewers, we don’t have the benefit of long in-game cutscenes, nor surviving fraught firefights together. No casual chit-chat between Ellie and Sam as you walk through abandoned suburbia, marvelling at cars choked with undergrowth, or wondering what lives people lived before the outbreak. There simply isn’t the same time to establish who Sam and Henry are.

The decision to make Sam deaf means that a TV audience immediately ‘gets’ his relationship with Henry. Not only does his youth make him vulnerable, but in a world where making noise at the wrong moment can get you killed by bandits, clickers, or worse, we immediately feel just how much he relies on Henry to protect him, to be his big brother in every sense. Mazin/Druckmann overcame the lack of hours of context and relationship building, to perfectly set the scene for Henry and Sam’s eventual fate.

Another device the writers deploy to devastating effect is the addition of the magic eraser board. Unlike game Sam, TV Sam doesn’t have any throwaway lines, or dialogue that can afford to get lost in the mix. When he is speaking to his brother, he uses sign language, which is translated for the audience with subtitles. However, when he talks to Ellie, he uses the eraser board. This means that almost everything he wants to say is simple and clear, framed for the audience in its own shot each time. His final message ‘Stay awake with me’ is a desperate plea to keep the lights on against the encroaching darkness, a moment that starkly sets up the imminent death of Ellie’s own childhood. Would this turn have been as impactful had Sam’s character been a carbon copy of his game self?

Sam's final message

The success of The Last of Us is proof that both gaming and TV/film can tell the same story, each using their innate strengths to the greatest effect. Many that have come before have borrowed a game’s title and little else (I’m looking at you, Resident Evil). While some have been too literal a translation, shoehorning game mechanics into the film as a fourth-wall shattering nod to fans (DOOM, go and sit in the corner).

With audiences’ appetites for the superhero genre seemingly on the wane, alongside the sheer number of video games crying out for their chance in the cinematic spotlight, I think we’re in for a very interesting few years. Let’s hope that the next wave of video game adaptations show as much respect for and understanding of the source material, alongside a true command of the cinematic medium, as The Last of Us.