The Last of Us on HBO it has proven to be a series robust enough and full of details to dedicate a reflection to each chapter.
We wait a prudent window of a couple of days after its premiere to give the audience time to watch each new episode to be able to talk about its plot freely.
Since, as you have suspected for a week, the plot is full of spoilers that are shaping the experience of its narrative to achieve a unique journey with many unexpected twists, even for those who played the original title on the PlayStation.
Long Long Time, the third chapter of this first season is the perfect example, where we see how the story is enriched to levels as deserved as surprising.
Yes, we have finally reached that point where the actions adapted on the screen at first glance do not have a direct correlation with the sequences seen in the video game.
But at least in the case of this episode the script makes a very clever adaptation move, as we finally see something we only imagined in the game at this point in the story.
The main differences between the video game and episode 2 of The Last of Us
Long Long Time offers us a glimpse into the lives of the characters of Bill and Frank, taking full advantage of the wealth of resources offered by the narrative of a TV series. Strictly speaking, everything we see in the chapter is not a 100% original invention for the HBO production.
Rather, it actually shows us a story that could barely be glimpsed in the title if the player chose to explore every corner of Bill’s territory in depth to read every note, journal text, and optional dialogue.
If you did that instead of trying to move the plot forward as quickly as possible, you would have access to the story of the rise and collapse of Bill and Frank’s veiled love affair.
An exploration that was slyly posed in a video game that happened with the death wish in an apocalyptic scenario, and where the long route was crowned with the discovery of Frank’s hanged corpse, as an indirect consequence after Bill’s character was broken. flared up like a paranoid madman as he got older.
That would be the main difference with the game that led to the episode we saw, without infected attacks on Bill’s camp and with a story that finally shows us the relationship between the couple, without notes, diaries, or indirect sources involved. . And with a different outcome due to Bill’s change in attitude over the years as someone more sensitive.
Roughly speaking, Frank never appears properly in the game, only his corpse after hanging himself. A decision he made after his escape plan from Bill’s camp went awry and he ended up infected.
The relationship between the two was so bad at that point that Frank hated his partner. And at the end of this section of the game Bill never dies, at least not explicitly.
In the same way, the subject never openly trusts Joel, but they owed each other favors and therefore agrees to help him. Today we see that the series basically improved the plot in one of the less solid sections of its plot.