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The Last of Us (HBO Spoilers)


Relic

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Yeah, that was just as good as the game.  Honestly, I think it worked even better on the show because they could use the music and cinematography to portray the horror of what Joel was doing much better than when you're in control and have to gun everyone down yourself, which puts you in survival mode.

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45 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Could anyone who is a parent stand by and allow them to kill that girl for the possibility… not the guarantee… of a panecea?  

That ain't the problem. The problem is that no one asks what ellie wants.

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1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Understood.  That said if someone said my unconscious Daughter’s death could save humanity… I’d have attempted exactly what Joel attempted.

I think I would not, because I'd know that is not at all what that proverbial daughter wanted. And we know Joel knows that because otherwise - why lie? 

I am a bit less happy with the show than folks. It suffers from the same issues the game does in many places combined with being often a shot for shot remake of the game far too often for my liking. I had a lot of hopes that with the first three eps going the way they did that we would get more expansion of the world and more wide stories - the talk show, the Indonesia part and Bill and frank all showed promise there. But the rest was almost exactly the same as the game, down to the composition of shots. And when they differed I felt a lot of times it was made worse - the David behavior is a good example, as is making Joel not nearly as horrific as he is in game.

I get that because the game is so beloved they can't go too far afield, but at the end it didn't feel like a needed thing for someone who knew the game.

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3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Did they tell Ellie doing what they were doing would kill her?

They didn't tell her anything. They didn't talk to her. They knocked her out and prepped her for surgery. 

It's exactly what they do in the game too, mind you - no one gives Ellie choices. She has absolutely no agency as far as that goes. But we know from her conversation before and after that she would have been willing. 

Or maybe at the time she wouldn't! But doesn't matter, cause no one cares.

5 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

On the flipside, I'm not interested in playing the game now. If the story is as close as people say, I don't feel like going through the same emotions while getting killed and beat over and over again.

The game has some other value to it, imp, but probably not worth it. The main value is that it does make certain beats better, like the David part. But the gameplay itself isn't that worthwhile (it's a lot of waist high walls and stealth killing) and some of the beats are worse. 

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Ive never heard of the game before this forum and have zero interest in it. 

The show works great on its own. The fact that theres a game that preceded it makes that no less so.

Reading the posts I guess im glad to not have those source expectations to contrast or whatever it is that people arent liking about this show.

Its much more interesting than Station 11 imo.

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I didn't really like the change of why Ellie was immune. In the game Ellie gets infected from the bite, but it happens to be a mutated benign form of the fungus. So they need to harvest the fungus from her brain to be able to continue work on a cure or vaccine. With peri-natal exposure simply making it a more benign symbiosis, and preventing further infection from establishing, there's an argument for doing a shit load of non-lethal testing before going straight for the brain and lethal action. To me the show gave people more reason to agree with Joel's actions, even though when you break it down to ethical principles the Fireflies were completely wrong to deny Ellie informed consent in both the game and the show, so Joel was right to stop the surgery, but also wrong to deny her the chance to choose. So the lie is what Joel did really wrong, not so much the rescue. In the game there were still a bunch of firefly soldiers with guns, so there was considerable urgency and threat for Joel to get to safety. There was more justification in killing Marlene with that threat still there than in the show with apparently no one left in the hospital to threaten Joel after he gut shot Marlene.

I feel like most of the big scenes all landed better in the game, for me at least.

I'm very happy with how the season went, but it did not surpass the game.

If you like survival horror I think the game is still worth playing even though you know how the story ends. It's a game I've enjoyed playing multiple times, and really the Bill chapter is so completely different that it's worth playing that through (and not simply watching a let's play), and I like the David chapter much better since you spend a lot more time with David before it's confirmed he's a cannibal and out to exact revenge on Joel. If you can pick the game up for cheap, I say do it.

 

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1 hour ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Ive never heard of the game before this forum and have zero interest in it. 

The show works great on its own. The fact that theres a game that preceded it makes that no less so.

Reading the posts I guess im glad to not have those source expectations to contrast or whatever it is that people arent liking about this show.

Its much more interesting than Station 11 imo.

The Show Station 11 isn’t bad but the book Station 11 is amazing.

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Very good episode, I thought, as well. Having seen the gameplay loop of The Last of Us, and in particular the way the combat works in a video of the final segment of the game, I feel like you need to be very much a gamer to think the game did more justice to the story than the show, at least as far as the finale goes.  It was almost comical watching game-Joel pulling improvised grenades and Molotov cocktails out of his ass to repeatedly wreck the Firefly mooks.

That said, what exactly is the part of the finale that Bella Ramsey suggested was going to divide the viewership? The vast majority of people are going to be absolutely in tune with Joel choosing Ellie over the possibility of a vaccine.

(While I liked Joel's rampage on the show compared to the painful constant duck-crouch-lob grenade of the game, how the Fireflies are able to keep going against FEDRA when they are so absolutely shitty at CQB was pretty funny. The Firefly mooks are, if anything, worse than the ones from the game -- at least the AI was good enough to sometimes look like they were coordinating.)

 

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Pretty decent ending. Like others, I felt that the concluding episodes were weaker than the beginning episodes. The scenes that take place before the apocalypse and Bill's episode were the strongest moments of the series.

Some of the over the top moments did belie the otherwise grounded approach to the show, always when it was necessary for Joel and Ellie to confront overwhelming odds. The CG zombie horde in episode 5 was one instance. Their escape from the cannibal camp was another. This culminated with Joel - who had up to this point been presented as a somewhat hobbled old man who lost his edge - suddenly with the power of love becoming a Marvel superhero, sharpshooting his way through an army of Fireflies.

But overall the strengths of the show made me overlook some of the sillier elements. Of the recent shows, I think House of the Dragon - despite its flaws - was a better series. Better Call Saul and Andor remain the clear winners as the top seasons of the last 12 months.

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7 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Understood.  That said if someone said my unconscious Daughter’s death could save humanity… I’d have attempted exactly what Joel attempted.

So doom the human race? 
 

I remember playing the final level of the game, and feeling like suck a jerk.

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