HBO’s The Last of Us TV series will feature less violence than the original video game, according to Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann.
The HBO series of The Last of Us will feature less violence than the original video game and its remake, according to Neil Druckmann, vice president of Naughty Dog.
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A few weeks after the first season aired, expected for January 16, 2023 in Italy on Sky and NOW, Druckmann explained that the TV series will have less violence due to the different language used compared to the videogame medium.
“We need a certain amount of action, or violence, that we could use for mechanics so you could connect with Joel and get into a flow state. Then you would really feel like you’re connected with this on-screen avatar and you’re seeing the world through his eyes,” Druckmann said in an interview with SFX.
“But that doesn’t exist in a passive medium. One of the things that I loved hearing from [co-creator Craig Mazin] and HBO very early on was, ‘Let’s take out all the violence except for the very essential.’ That allowed the violence to have even more impact than in the game, because when you hold on showing the threat and you’re seeing people’s reaction to a threat, that makes it scarier. And when we do reveal the infected and the Clickers, you get to see what brought down humanity and why everyone is so scared.”
According to Druckmann, therefore, violence is intrinsic to the gameplay itself (think, for example, of Joel’s violent finishers or those he suffers in the event of a game over from the infected) and helps players identify themselves with a virtual avatar. In a TV series, the rhythms of the narration are clearly different and this should not revolve around gameplay mechanics and numerous fights. In this sense, therefore, a high use of violence could even be harmful.
According to a report from The New Yorker, Druckmann is working at Naughty Dog on a new PS5 game that will be structurally much more like a TV series than any of the studio’s previous work.
