I don't think that TLOU would have been so praised story-wise, if all the cutscenes where freeplay like Half Life. We would be running around looting stuff and would not experience that part as the creators intended, with the editing, with the framing, and all the cinematic languages that play a hand. I think that TLOU in particular was interesting not "only for being a videogame", but for being one that blended perfectly the interactive and non-interactive elements of storytelling. I think that the ladder scene that you mention stands out precisely because of everything that came before. I mean, did you also feel bored during cutscenes the first time you played it, without knowing how the story unfolds? I think that TLOU is a videogame that incorporates together elements of "pasive" and gameplay narrative, but the final feeling that you get out of it, is (in my opinion), that you experienced a movie or miniseries. I think that's why everyone was hoping for an adaptation way before it was a thing. Now, I do agree with you about the fact that the show can't offer the same feeling, since we know the plot and how it ends. Indeed, it's stronger parts are the ones where it re-interprets the events of the game, showing things we didn't see before (i.e. Bill and Frank). But then again, you're supposed to let go of the fact that this is no longer a game. Otherwise, what's the point of an adaptation in the first place. But going back to the place of cinematics in videogames, I think it comes down to a matter of balance. The more freedom we have as players, the more difficult it is to build an emotionally engaging and impactful bond, or even a coherent plot. Linearity gives you more control over the beats of a story. Both tools need to be there to complement each other, and I think that the TLOU game happens to be an example where that equilibruim crystalized almost perfectly.
Agreed with everything. except one its not we know how it unfolds that it cant have the same impact. its that we played as joel, we live in his shoes. We understand what he is doing is wrong when lying to ellie but we stick by him knowing that because attactment to him tv, film or book cant do that because its a whole new level of interactivity with the character...
The cinematic language definitely lends itself to making the story of Joel and Ellie really obvious, really dramatic. What are your thoughts on moving the Bill and Frank story from something untold, something that needed to be deduced, something that made you wonder - to being explicitly told? I had so many people hype me up for that Episode of the show, and while it was good - I felt like I missed the memo (maybe because Brokeback Mountain came out nearly 20 years ago Idk) on how it was so revolutionary. I do agree that TLOU (both Part 1 and Part 2) really do such tremendous jobs of the 'passive' and the 'interactive.' I think that's why this ladder scene is so good. I don't know if I totally think that 'freeplay during cutscenes' would limit the narrative impact, I think it just relinquishes control of the narrative to the player. And I think gamedevs are afraid of that - that's part of the reason why I think they added the Triangle button prompt to the doctor in the Part 1 Remake. But it's a balance, for sure. It's all a balancing act. Really appreciate you leaving a thoughtful comment!
@@QuestMarker Thanks for the reply! Yeah I guess it boils down to what kind of experience you prefer. In my case, if it's made with quality and skill, I don't mind control taken away for a little while to get some nice story/charachter nugget. But can totally understand if that's not your case. About Bill and Frank, once again, it comes down to being made with quality and skill. What I liked is not that they laid out the "origin" story expanding the lore or anything like that. It's only that it was so cute, and furthermore, so fittingly cute in its darkness. But I think that most importantly, you missed the element pf surprise. You were told what you were supposed to feel instead of just running into it. If I'm not mistaken, that was tje first big departure from the game's format, so it caught us off guard. Alternatively, I thought that the leader of the hunters chasing Sam and Henry, who's also a new charachter, was one of the weakest elements. So it's more about the results. But you do get that sense of discovery when it's different.
@@slickstar96 I personally don't get so attached to the protagonist. If they are being shitty, I appreciate how they are playing on us "supporting the bad guy" like Breaking Bad. But I have no problem in calling out his almost evil ways some times. Actually, for TLOU2, I didn't even need the surgeon backstory retconn. Any of his past victims from his hunter days is more than justified to do what they did. So it doesn't bother me that we don't make Joel run or pull the trigger for him on the show. But that's just how I experience these things.
While I wholly appreciate the disection and conversation you have created around TLOU, the inmersion of the game and gaming over more traditional media. I also believe that TLOU is probably the best adaptation of a game, ever. While that isnt a high bar, in theory, it has been an incredible feat in reality. Nothing has cunjoured the immesne satisfaction of playing or the nostalgia of the games moments such as the TV show. It went above what was requried and paid tribute to the game and the fans and was a great swansong to what makes it great. I am not sure anything else has managed to so clearly hit the mark and while the cut scenes have helped they only used those in clear moments and went off script in others alllowing it to be its own thing while also remembering where it came from and skated through the line of both to deliver something of true vewing value to both the players before and to the newbies. It even got my wife playing the game. She couldnt use joysticks before this game, she had to learn how to play and has now replayed both TLOU 1&2 and This is from a game now 11 years old.
There's no denying the production quality (and overall quality) of the TLOU show, for sure. I don't want to dismiss or underplay that. It's an awesome adaptation - but I don't think its revolutionary (or novel) when it comes to post-apocalyptic media or storytelling. I didn't really spell it out - but the Children of Men driving sequence vs. the TLOU driving sequence really stands out to me just how trope-y the game was, and what it was pulling from, and how well it did a job of taking the language of this story from other mediums and putting it into a game. That's why its so special. So seeing that driving sequence back again on screen made me want to go re-watch Children of Men rather than necessarily be excited by the HBO show, you know? Maybe I'm overly critical, you tell me! Also, what did your wife think of Joel in the end? Did she think he was a bad dude? One of the things I'm utterly FASCINATED by is the audience reaction to the hospital sequence. When we played as Joel, there's a lot of hoo-rah in rescuing Ellie. Because we played as Joel for the past 8+ hours. But the show does a lot a lot more obvious things to make Joel seem like a bad dude, so does the hospital sequence feel more villainous to someone who only knows of Joel from the show, and not the game?
My two cents about the button prompt adden in the remake that they refer so much back to it in Part 2 that they needed harder canonical control over what the aftermath looks like. A fleck of revisionism which I can easily see Naughty Dog indulge in.
4 seconds in and you're already wrong. The HBO series was not only the first game adaptation to be nominated for awards in the cinematic field, it got nominated for TWENTY FOUR Emmys (won 8), and got THREE Golden Globe nods. Get over yourself
totally fair! If I may be snarky - Crash also won Best Picture. award ceremonies aren't always a great barometer. I think if you're a fan of the post-apocalyptic/dystopian genre, I don't think the TLOU (as just a show) adds really much to that genre of storytelling. There's no denying its level of quality, but I'm not completely convinced its terrific in its ideas and themes. I think what it does really well, is be a video game that incorporates a lot of those ideas into the world of interactivity. But feel free to disagree! I always welcome disagreement. I'm not always here to convince folks, just trying to be thoughtful. Sometimes that necessitates being a little self-indulgent in my own thinking haha
Loved this! I really agree that the Last of Us show lost what made the game(s) notable in the first place. The show stumbles through a bunch of the moments people remember fondly without earning any of them, because its sprinting through the plot of a game that had 3 times as much space as a season of TV to work with. I was someone who liked the Bill episode the most, because it was the least like the source material: it took the premise and made something out of it for film specifically. This is tangential, but my friend at The Nukes made an excellent video essay called "The Input Prompt that Broke My Heart: God of War: Ragnarok" that I think is worth your time! Your analysis of the way inputs can have an affect on our experiences feels very much in conversation with his own analysis of the same idea (albeit via different games).
Really glad you enjoyed it! Funnily enough, I have a lot of thoughts about the Bill episode. I definitely thought it was overhyped, and while I liked the 'backstory' of Joel and Tess there, I wonder if it was actually more poignant finding the notes and reading the story yourself rather than seeing it very obviously laid out on the TV. Whereas, I really liked adaptation/translation of the cannibals. That added a lot more perspective. And I'll definitely need to check out The Nukes. Thank you for the recommendation! Funny that its about God of War >.< While I haven't yet played Ragnarok, I'm haunted by 2018 haha I flip flop across every frikkin video I make whether I actually like that game or think its bad
Another great video, John! I'm constantly impressed by your writing and editing and so fascinated by your thoughts about even the tiniest details in games. 😊 I haven't seen the TLOU show for the exact reasons you mention. I don't think it's a bad show, but I think it is, in many ways, a pointless adaption, because the game already is so cinematic. Like you said: It's not the story that makes TLOU so compelling, it's the way it is often told - through interactive gameplay.
My fear about video game adaptations is that they’ll just become cheap cash grabs made by people who’s only point of reference to the games they’re adapting are chatGPT articles.
It's interesting but I feel like it's more of a lucky accident here. They're making a game that has a lot of repetition, and they try to subvert it from time to time, that's the workbench in 2, the ladder here, but also the comment about once again getting a palette for ellie to cross the water. Guess I have a less optimistic reading of it because I don't like the game that much, but for me it's not that unique to games. The fact that you do an action and the game doesn't react the same is, yeah, but the feeling and the narrative around it isn't. You can get this kind of subversion and moments that mirror previous actions in movies too, it can even be with just framing and camera movement, not literal actions from the characters. Every medium has its tools. It didn't work in the TV show because they didn't earn that moment, there was no setup, just like the ending has a lot less impact because the zombies just don't feel like that much of a threat there. It was streamlined, and by removing all the "bad" bits of repetitive gameplay, they also removed parts of what gave the story its meaning. I think the show is better because it's not as boring for me, but yeah it's an issue (also twisted metal was the best adaptation). And it also showcase to me what the intention with TLOU always was, it's made to be prestigious and the good bits feel like accidents. Just like that perfect ending which is just copied 1:1 from that movie, probably because they though it was cool. To be a little more positive, I think Brothers A Tale of Two Son achieves this in a much more powerful way, because that's the point of the game, not just a small subversion of expectations. It's also interesting to me because it's a Joseph Fares game, a guy that chose to come to games after making movies (and not someone who wish he was making movies), and who is continually trying to find unique things games can bring to narratives with their interactivity. I feel like games have tried to take shortcuts with interactivity honestly, we've heard so many times that QTEs were there to make you more immersed, same with the climbing section that ask to hold a button, etc. But it's never been true, you don't feel exhaustion from pressing a trigger for 30 seconds, you don't feel more inside of the game because you mashed a button. In TLOU this example works because of the repetition, it's conditionning. The fact that we press a button isn't important here, what matters is that when we hear the bell we expect food. Maybe they did thought of that, but I think it's a much more basic way of thinking, that you gotta make people feel immersed by pressing buttons, and sometimes it works. What matters is doing the work beforehand to make those interactions meaningful in the first place, but like with animals, all kinds of stimuli could do the trick, the interface isn't the important part.
I don’t really understand the criticism for the show here. I mean, you already explain how the ladder moment is so impactful because of how it uses the fact that tlou is a game to create an emotional moment that could only work that way in that medium. How can you then expect the show to recreate that same moment? See that´s why I (and many others) find the show to be so brillant. Because it knows that because it’s a different medium it can’t just copy the game. There are moments in the last of us that wouldn’t work in the show and so the show doesn’t even try to make a ultimately worse copy of those moments. Instead it uses it’s medium to create moments that the game could never have pulled of. The story HAS to be told in a different way. To me it sounds like you reject the entire concept of tlou as a show, instead of the show as a show. Which is fine, but maybe that should´ve been addressed in the video.
I don't think that TLOU would have been so praised story-wise, if all the cutscenes where freeplay like Half Life. We would be running around looting stuff and would not experience that part as the creators intended, with the editing, with the framing, and all the cinematic languages that play a hand. I think that TLOU in particular was interesting not "only for being a videogame", but for being one that blended perfectly the interactive and non-interactive elements of storytelling. I think that the ladder scene that you mention stands out precisely because of everything that came before. I mean, did you also feel bored during cutscenes the first time you played it, without knowing how the story unfolds? I think that TLOU is a videogame that incorporates together elements of "pasive" and gameplay narrative, but the final feeling that you get out of it, is (in my opinion), that you experienced a movie or miniseries. I think that's why everyone was hoping for an adaptation way before it was a thing. Now, I do agree with you about the fact that the show can't offer the same feeling, since we know the plot and how it ends. Indeed, it's stronger parts are the ones where it re-interprets the events of the game, showing things we didn't see before (i.e. Bill and Frank). But then again, you're supposed to let go of the fact that this is no longer a game. Otherwise, what's the point of an adaptation in the first place. But going back to the place of cinematics in videogames, I think it comes down to a matter of balance. The more freedom we have as players, the more difficult it is to build an emotionally engaging and impactful bond, or even a coherent plot. Linearity gives you more control over the beats of a story. Both tools need to be there to complement each other, and I think that the TLOU game happens to be an example where that equilibruim crystalized almost perfectly.
Well said, sir or ma'am.
Agreed with everything. except one its not we know how it unfolds that it cant have the same impact. its that we played as joel, we live in his shoes. We understand what he is doing is wrong when lying to ellie but we stick by him knowing that because attactment to him tv, film or book cant do that because its a whole new level of interactivity with the character...
The cinematic language definitely lends itself to making the story of Joel and Ellie really obvious, really dramatic. What are your thoughts on moving the Bill and Frank story from something untold, something that needed to be deduced, something that made you wonder - to being explicitly told? I had so many people hype me up for that Episode of the show, and while it was good - I felt like I missed the memo (maybe because Brokeback Mountain came out nearly 20 years ago Idk) on how it was so revolutionary.
I do agree that TLOU (both Part 1 and Part 2) really do such tremendous jobs of the 'passive' and the 'interactive.' I think that's why this ladder scene is so good. I don't know if I totally think that 'freeplay during cutscenes' would limit the narrative impact, I think it just relinquishes control of the narrative to the player. And I think gamedevs are afraid of that - that's part of the reason why I think they added the Triangle button prompt to the doctor in the Part 1 Remake. But it's a balance, for sure. It's all a balancing act.
Really appreciate you leaving a thoughtful comment!
@@QuestMarker Thanks for the reply! Yeah I guess it boils down to what kind of experience you prefer. In my case, if it's made with quality and skill, I don't mind control taken away for a little while to get some nice story/charachter nugget. But can totally understand if that's not your case.
About Bill and Frank, once again, it comes down to being made with quality and skill. What I liked is not that they laid out the "origin" story expanding the lore or anything like that. It's only that it was so cute, and furthermore, so fittingly cute in its darkness. But I think that most importantly, you missed the element pf surprise. You were told what you were supposed to feel instead of just running into it. If I'm not mistaken, that was tje first big departure from the game's format, so it caught us off guard. Alternatively, I thought that the leader of the hunters chasing Sam and Henry, who's also a new charachter, was one of the weakest elements. So it's more about the results. But you do get that sense of discovery when it's different.
@@slickstar96 I personally don't get so attached to the protagonist. If they are being shitty, I appreciate how they are playing on us "supporting the bad guy" like Breaking Bad. But I have no problem in calling out his almost evil ways some times. Actually, for TLOU2, I didn't even need the surgeon backstory retconn. Any of his past victims from his hunter days is more than justified to do what they did. So it doesn't bother me that we don't make Joel run or pull the trigger for him on the show. But that's just how I experience these things.
The channel is definitely gonna blow up with more essays like this
man I really hope so! that'd be nice. really glad you enjoyed this!
This is super high quality and deserves more than 800 views
really glad you think so! let's goooooo
While I wholly appreciate the disection and conversation you have created around TLOU, the inmersion of the game and gaming over more traditional media. I also believe that TLOU is probably the best adaptation of a game, ever. While that isnt a high bar, in theory, it has been an incredible feat in reality. Nothing has cunjoured the immesne satisfaction of playing or the nostalgia of the games moments such as the TV show. It went above what was requried and paid tribute to the game and the fans and was a great swansong to what makes it great. I am not sure anything else has managed to so clearly hit the mark and while the cut scenes have helped they only used those in clear moments and went off script in others alllowing it to be its own thing while also remembering where it came from and skated through the line of both to deliver something of true vewing value to both the players before and to the newbies. It even got my wife playing the game. She couldnt use joysticks before this game, she had to learn how to play and has now replayed both TLOU 1&2 and This is from a game now 11 years old.
There's no denying the production quality (and overall quality) of the TLOU show, for sure. I don't want to dismiss or underplay that. It's an awesome adaptation - but I don't think its revolutionary (or novel) when it comes to post-apocalyptic media or storytelling.
I didn't really spell it out - but the Children of Men driving sequence vs. the TLOU driving sequence really stands out to me just how trope-y the game was, and what it was pulling from, and how well it did a job of taking the language of this story from other mediums and putting it into a game. That's why its so special. So seeing that driving sequence back again on screen made me want to go re-watch Children of Men rather than necessarily be excited by the HBO show, you know? Maybe I'm overly critical, you tell me!
Also, what did your wife think of Joel in the end? Did she think he was a bad dude? One of the things I'm utterly FASCINATED by is the audience reaction to the hospital sequence. When we played as Joel, there's a lot of hoo-rah in rescuing Ellie. Because we played as Joel for the past 8+ hours. But the show does a lot a lot more obvious things to make Joel seem like a bad dude, so does the hospital sequence feel more villainous to someone who only knows of Joel from the show, and not the game?
My two cents about the button prompt adden in the remake that they refer so much back to it in Part 2 that they needed harder canonical control over what the aftermath looks like. A fleck of revisionism which I can easily see Naughty Dog indulge in.
what prompt? there are prompts everywhere
ohh nevermind
4 seconds in and you're already wrong. The HBO series was not only the first game adaptation to be nominated for awards in the cinematic field, it got nominated for TWENTY FOUR Emmys (won 8), and got THREE Golden Globe nods. Get over yourself
totally fair! If I may be snarky - Crash also won Best Picture. award ceremonies aren't always a great barometer.
I think if you're a fan of the post-apocalyptic/dystopian genre, I don't think the TLOU (as just a show) adds really much to that genre of storytelling. There's no denying its level of quality, but I'm not completely convinced its terrific in its ideas and themes. I think what it does really well, is be a video game that incorporates a lot of those ideas into the world of interactivity.
But feel free to disagree! I always welcome disagreement. I'm not always here to convince folks, just trying to be thoughtful. Sometimes that necessitates being a little self-indulgent in my own thinking haha
Loved this! I really agree that the Last of Us show lost what made the game(s) notable in the first place. The show stumbles through a bunch of the moments people remember fondly without earning any of them, because its sprinting through the plot of a game that had 3 times as much space as a season of TV to work with. I was someone who liked the Bill episode the most, because it was the least like the source material: it took the premise and made something out of it for film specifically.
This is tangential, but my friend at The Nukes made an excellent video essay called "The Input Prompt that Broke My Heart: God of War: Ragnarok" that I think is worth your time! Your analysis of the way inputs can have an affect on our experiences feels very much in conversation with his own analysis of the same idea (albeit via different games).
Really glad you enjoyed it!
Funnily enough, I have a lot of thoughts about the Bill episode. I definitely thought it was overhyped, and while I liked the 'backstory' of Joel and Tess there, I wonder if it was actually more poignant finding the notes and reading the story yourself rather than seeing it very obviously laid out on the TV.
Whereas, I really liked adaptation/translation of the cannibals. That added a lot more perspective.
And I'll definitely need to check out The Nukes. Thank you for the recommendation! Funny that its about God of War >.< While I haven't yet played Ragnarok, I'm haunted by 2018 haha I flip flop across every frikkin video I make whether I actually like that game or think its bad
Dude solid video, keep it up!
This video is truly amazing
7:38 nailed it on the head
She doesn't come🗣🔥🔥🔥🔥
Another great video! And an interesting opinion about the "good" video game shows I haven't seen presented before.
really glad you think so!
why did you call her tennis
Good video man
appreciate you, my dude. thanks for the comment!
bruh
bruv
6:00 “for the first time”
then you were playing it wrong
I don't think they needed to do the whole "grab that ladder/pallet" thing quite so many times for this to work. It gets a bit ridiculous. xD
Amazing video man! New subscriber here ;)
Another great video, John! I'm constantly impressed by your writing and editing and so fascinated by your thoughts about even the tiniest details in games. 😊
I haven't seen the TLOU show for the exact reasons you mention. I don't think it's a bad show, but I think it is, in many ways, a pointless adaption, because the game already is so cinematic. Like you said: It's not the story that makes TLOU so compelling, it's the way it is often told - through interactive gameplay.
My fear about video game adaptations is that they’ll just become cheap cash grabs made by people who’s only point of reference to the games they’re adapting are chatGPT articles.
It's interesting but I feel like it's more of a lucky accident here. They're making a game that has a lot of repetition, and they try to subvert it from time to time, that's the workbench in 2, the ladder here, but also the comment about once again getting a palette for ellie to cross the water. Guess I have a less optimistic reading of it because I don't like the game that much, but for me it's not that unique to games.
The fact that you do an action and the game doesn't react the same is, yeah, but the feeling and the narrative around it isn't. You can get this kind of subversion and moments that mirror previous actions in movies too, it can even be with just framing and camera movement, not literal actions from the characters. Every medium has its tools.
It didn't work in the TV show because they didn't earn that moment, there was no setup, just like the ending has a lot less impact because the zombies just don't feel like that much of a threat there. It was streamlined, and by removing all the "bad" bits of repetitive gameplay, they also removed parts of what gave the story its meaning. I think the show is better because it's not as boring for me, but yeah it's an issue (also twisted metal was the best adaptation). And it also showcase to me what the intention with TLOU always was, it's made to be prestigious and the good bits feel like accidents. Just like that perfect ending which is just copied 1:1 from that movie, probably because they though it was cool.
To be a little more positive, I think Brothers A Tale of Two Son achieves this in a much more powerful way, because that's the point of the game, not just a small subversion of expectations. It's also interesting to me because it's a Joseph Fares game, a guy that chose to come to games after making movies (and not someone who wish he was making movies), and who is continually trying to find unique things games can bring to narratives with their interactivity.
I feel like games have tried to take shortcuts with interactivity honestly, we've heard so many times that QTEs were there to make you more immersed, same with the climbing section that ask to hold a button, etc. But it's never been true, you don't feel exhaustion from pressing a trigger for 30 seconds, you don't feel more inside of the game because you mashed a button. In TLOU this example works because of the repetition, it's conditionning. The fact that we press a button isn't important here, what matters is that when we hear the bell we expect food.
Maybe they did thought of that, but I think it's a much more basic way of thinking, that you gotta make people feel immersed by pressing buttons, and sometimes it works. What matters is doing the work beforehand to make those interactions meaningful in the first place, but like with animals, all kinds of stimuli could do the trick, the interface isn't the important part.
I don’t really understand the criticism for the show here. I mean, you already explain how the ladder moment is so impactful because of how it uses the fact that tlou is a game to create an emotional moment that could only work that way in that medium. How can you then expect the show to recreate that same moment? See that´s why I (and many others) find the show to be so brillant. Because it knows that because it’s a different medium it can’t just copy the game. There are moments in the last of us that wouldn’t work in the show and so the show doesn’t even try to make a ultimately worse copy of those moments. Instead it uses it’s medium to create moments that the game could never have pulled of. The story HAS to be told in a different way. To me it sounds like you reject the entire concept of tlou as a show, instead of the show as a show. Which is fine, but maybe that should´ve been addressed in the video.