If you don’t think the episode was related to the story or the premise of the world the story is in, then you might be a moron
What a short story, I chuckled thinking about some of the people who were probably really digging that character until they weren't.
The narrative comprehension of everyone in this thread complaining about how the episode "had nothing to do with the story"'
Solid episode though a tad boring. It achieved it's impact though which was character development for Joel and Ellie's relationship. There's a good portion of people who criticize this episode because it involves gay storyline.
Haven't played the game. Very strong episode. Don't care how it relates to the game and other people who haven't played the game complaining about this because it was ghey can go **** themselves. Showing the story of a closeted gay dude from a small town who can only experience love in the context of a zombie apocalypse when everyone he knows is gone is some brilliant storytelling. Bravo.
As luck would have it my Xfinity did have the first three episodes of Last of Us available last night so I binged watched all of them. Great series and really impressed with the direction, acting and story. Really feel on edge with many of the creepy scenes and the buildup to them is outstanding. Really buy into the characters and the jarring loss of some characters who appear like they are main characters who will be around for a long time pushes the emotional investment in the story. I got so much into the show that after the second episode I googled anti-fungal agents. For those wondering fungal cells are actually more closely related to animals than they are to plants, bacteria or protozoa. Their cell walls though are made with chitin (the same stuff in our fingernails) but the chemistry they use to make that is different than in animal cells. Many fungicides attack that chemistry with chemicals that do little harm to animal cells. While cordyceps does turn ants and other insects into zombies like shown in the show it would be a huge evolutionary leap for it to infect mammals. Also cordyceps is gruesome for ants it doesn't wipe out ant colonies. Ants appear to be able to recognize infected individuals and isolate them and/or kill them before they can infect more. So a cordyceps infection might not be as fast moving as shown in the show but could be recognized and stopped before it became widespread.
Do you have a 4k tv that supports HDR? Because then it's worth getting HBO Max. Because I'm pretty sure the cable version is like 1080p at best and not HDR. The streaming app from HBO has the show in it's highest quality form. It makes a difft for me at least. But I know a lot of people don't care or notice much of a difference.
I haven't read through this thead yet but I'm not surprised the gay characters and their storyline are a big topic of controversy. Without giving away spoilers I really got into that story and thought it was beautifully done. I admit feeling a little squeamishness at the beginning of that storyline but quickly didn't even think about they were gay but just another love story. The sex was a very small part of the story and even then it was handled very well. I didn't get the sense that it was done for shock reasons. Also for those who are concerned about how such stories could influence people, to somehow making people gay, as a straight male I liked the story, didn't feel any 'stimulation' from watching two gay men express their affection and don't feel any less attracted to women after seeing that last night or this morning. If someone does question their sexuality after seeing that episode I think that is more a matter of what's going on inside you than on the producers of Last of Us.
Btw, is this your first experience with the story or did you play the games? I actually am curious of thoughts from someone who is experiencing this story for the first time. If you haven't played the games, episode 3 was the biggest deviation but a very well done deviation in my opinion as it fleshed out Bill's character a lot more. In the game you know Bill was gay and had an estranged relationship with a guy called Frank that you never meet. So the tv series really fleshed out their relationship.
I do yes but I'm trying to limit the amount of streaming subscriptions to both not watch so much media and to save money.
Gotcha. I usually pay for steaming subscriptions on a month by month basis based on if there is a big show that I wanted to watch. I'm suspending my HBO max subscription right after this series finishes. I do the same for other streaming services. Like I suspended Disney + as soon as Andor finished. This way I'm not paying for like 10 subscription services at a time. I also don't have a cable subscription so steaming services are basically my cable subscription. I'm just tired of cable. They still haven't adopted 1080p broadcasting yet due to the bandwidth limitations of Cable. The imagine quality is just multiple tiers ahead with streaming services and if you have a good TV it's worth ditching cable for in my opinion of course. You are going to get the full intended quality of the shows. It was a massive difference for example watching House of Dragons at my friend's place for one weekend through Cable and watching it at my place with HBO Max. Quality difference is rather drastic.
I've never played the game and didn't even know it was a game until yesterday. So the deviation from the game storyline didn't affect me at all. I watched the after show segment so did see that it was a big departure from game. Without knowing anything about the characters or the back story prior to seeing it as I said I thought it was beautifully done. Nick Offerman does a great job as Bill and you really see an evolution of the character. He starts out as a typical Nick Offerman character, a stereotypical quet gruff man's man, but gets very deep emotionally. He's able to express many complex and conflicted emotions with very few lines and even just in his eyes. I'm not a gamer so it's hard for me to consider how different the adaption of a story from game play to show or movie is. I'm not sure I would appreciate that storyline though without Nick Offerman doing such an outstanding job acting. I'm not sure how a CGI character in game play could express the range of emotions that he did.
I don't have cable for watching but have Xfinity as my ISP. They put up a fair amount of content though for streaming.
No doubt that the TV show format allows more time to flesh out the characters and their depth which is exactly what they did with Bill and Offerman was a great choice. But man I gotta tell ya, modern video games especially The Last of Us series with Naughty Dog studios have really come far in making video game characters full of life and emotions. Modern motion capture tech captures very subtle facial expressions now where you don't get that uncanny valley thing that older games had. I suggest watching some gameplay and cutscenes of the TLOU part 1 and 2. It's rather impressive.
To echo what fchowd0311 said, video games have significantly improved the fidelity of their cutscenes such that you can generally capture the complex expressions, movements, etc., that actors use to convey their emotions. TLOU is a great example of this, as are some other games (I recall some touching moments in God of War, which is another IP that is being adapted for TV...though I fear it will be bungled). I think the big challenges that would make it difficult to do something like Episode 3 are: 1) Generally speaking, you want to keep "cutscenes" to something like 3-5 minutes, followed by a decent chunk of (action) gameplay. You can maybe stretch to 10-15 minutes for intros/endings, but outside of games like Metal Gear Solid (which are heavily criticized for their cutscene length), you need to keep that ratio going. I can see some parts of Episode 3 being adapted to gameplay, but I don't think the experience would be any better (likely worse). And the rest...probably not so easy to adapt to gameplay scenarios. The experience could be padded greatly to account for this, but then the gameplay parts would be the "filler." So yeah, all-in-all, this type of story would be very difficult to adapt to gameplay (well....good gameplay). Just like the game version would have been difficult to adapt into a good TV show episode IMO. 2) Ignoring #1, even if you just straight up did an 80 minute 1:1 recreation with video game cutscene tech, I think you'd probably still lose some things. As good as the tech is, at the end of the day you're still (generally) on a CGI stage with props wearing funky equipment. These are damn good actors, so maybe they find a way to make it work, but I'm thinking it would be really difficult to get some of the improvised dialogue and movements in that environment. At the end of the day, it is nice to just go outside and shoot a scene in the dirt with some strawberries vs trying to do all that in a special effects warehouse. A lot of games involve aliens, monsters, space ships, etc., which requires you to use similar equipment/processes anyway, but for these more "grounded" settings, I think it is difficult to do better than "real-life" acting. (Plus it is probably cheaper/easier to do it that way) On a side note, every time I see Anna Torv (Tess in the TV version of TLOU), I think "hey that's the girl from Heavenly Sword": (you can actually see what I mean about capturing actors' performances in video games with that video, but that stuff is ~20 year old tech/processes now)
Dang... down memory lane. Didn't know she did Nariko from Heavenly Sword (2007). That game was visually for it's time.
