I’m surprised by the choice to include specific interactions and lines from the game, sometimes verbatim, into a story that varies quite a bit (in the details, anyway) from the game.
I don’t know how it feels to people who didn’t play the game, but I think (after just one episode, granted) that it’d work better for me if it either went its own way or if it faithfully reproduced the story from game.
Pedro Pascal’s performance in Prospect primed me to like him in this role (accidental alliteration alert), and I do, so far. But the vibe of the show is actually quite different from the game, and he is a bit of a different kind of Joel.
I think it’s tough adapting such a cinematic game into a TV show. It’s more like doing a reboot of a classic movie than doing a more traditional cross-medium adaptation (e.g., novel to film).
@siracusa after finishing the PS5 Remake, and listening to you talk about the original in the Incomparable podcast, it seems they understood video game Joel was too detached from his humanity to be kept unchanged.
HBO’s Joel caring enough about Tommy that it was his motivation to get a move on is a stark contrast to game Joel just agreeing to the mission because they needed their guns back from the Fireflies.
I have a feeling the biggest change will be in how broken they portray him.
John Siracusa
Shadowbottle
Aleen
Richard Diaz
Jason