How 'The Last of Us' translates a video game to an HBO show

HBO has already greenlit the popular show for a second season — an especially remarkable feat for a video game adaptation.

Hailed by critics as a groundbreaking step for the medium, “The Last of Us” game debuted on PlayStation in 2013. Brilliantly acted and animated, “it felt like the storytelling aspirations of a certain kind of expensive video game were finally being fulfilled,” says Joshua Rivera, TV critic for the gaming and culture website Polygon.

Ten years later, the game — often compared to prestige television — got its own HBO show. Unlike many unsuccessful attempts, this one stayed true to the original. “Games are not historically treated as like a sacred text when adapting,” says Rivera. But, “the show has this incredible cast that you want to watch in the same way that you want to be the person driving the story in a video game.”

Perhaps that’s because Neil Druckmann, the game’s co-creator, now serves as the show’s executive producer. Druckmann and showrunner Craig Mazin took care to preserve the game’s narrative, going so far as to recreate scenes shot-for-shot and line-for-line.