Reviews | The Last of Us episode 8: these are the biggest differences between the video game and the HBO series

The penultimate episode of the first season of The Last of Us It has represented a moment of great turbulence, both for those who know the plot of the original game and for the viewers who are discovering this story every week through HBO and HBO Max.

Last week we witnessed an extraordinary job of adaptation that they achieved by embedding the plot of the DLC left behind within the sequential order of events. Giving more context, nuance and depth to Ellie and her past.

Now, with When We Are in Need, the eighth and penultimate episode before closing the current arc, we see that one of the moments that has generated the greatest doubt and expectation since the platform announced that it would adapt the video game has come to pass.

And it is that those who knew the original plot had their serious doubts about whether they would narrate the entire story of Ellie with David in the series, since the events were too violent, raw, wild and disturbing.

Now, once we watch the episode, we confirm that they dared to do it and they figured it all out in a very cunning way.

The main differences between the video game and episode 8 of The Last of Us

Broadly speaking, this episode is quite faithful to the original plot, to the extent that there are dialogues and sequences that are a virtual carbon copy of the PlayStation title. But there are some important changes that make everything much more fluid.

For example, the chapter starts with David, raising a greater context about the character and his community. In the title the inhabitants of the town are not portrayed in a profound or human way, while here we see how they face mourning and hunger.

In this part of the game we originally control Ellie and the main weapon we use is a bow and arrow. Here this factor is omitted, so what our protagonist hunts is a deer with a shotgun, which meant getting rid of the iconic scene where she kills a rabbit in the snow.

Within the plot of the game we never know what role David plays within the community beyond being its leader. Here we find out that he is a priest and that before that he was a teacher in Pittsburgh and that takes us back to a city omitted from the game.

Troy Baker, the actor who played Joel in the game, appears here as James, David’s second-in-command. the character acquires greater weight and dimension here, when in the title we barely remember him for his violent death, which is the same in the series.

Perhaps the most radical change is that there are no infected anywhere in the episode. Something that radically contrasts with the game where even David and Ellie must team up to survive their attacks.

Everything is more compressed but it leads to the same climactic scene, where the fire in the restaurant here is now accidentally set by Ellie.

Joel’s interrogation and torture remains largely intact, but the process for reaching Ellie changes. Originally Joel arrives at the fire and stops her from the massacre by pummeling David.

Here Joel catches up with her outside, but the scene of their reunion is still very emotional.