I’m not some massive superfan of the original The Last of Us game. I only really became familiar with it through the various controversies over its sequel that basically lead to me getting fully spoiled on both games. But what I am interested in is video game adaptations, and the challenges that come with it. So, I did what any pretentious nerd would do and played through the entire first game and the DLC last week just so I could look at the game and the HBO adaptation side by side.

There’s a lot of differences between the two so far, more than I expected. But they’re mostly small, incidental changes. Most of which improve the story because there are no concessions that have to be made for gameplay (e.x the Robert subplot goes from a lengthy sidequest to a handful of scenes) so there isn’t really that much room to analyze the differences.

But there is one big change I want to talk about, and that’s the extended intro with Sarah. So the intro of The Last of Us is important for obvious reasons, establishing the world and Joel’s character before the outbreak. But there’s one more subtle thing that you might not consider when it comes to adapting it. In the intro, you play as Sarah. You are seeing these events play out through her eyes, even though she shares nearly 100% of her screentime with other people. So, how do you convey that in television when you don’t have the advantage of a player literally controlling her viewpoint and movement?

The answer was to give Sarah more scenes to herself. Rather than starting the story the night the outbreak hits Texas, we start the morning before and follow Sarah through her day. This has the benefit of more firmly establishing her as the POV, but also allows the buildup to the eventual pandemic to be more gradual. There are plenty of little moments that play into our own real-world pandemic anxiety, especially early into it before it truly reached pandemic status.

The reason this is so important is because one of the things that makes the chaotic opening where the outbreak forces the Millers to evacuate is that we’re seeing it through the eyes of a child who doesn’t fully understand what’s going on. And they only heighten those emotions with a delightfully tense scene where Sarah slowly discovers her neighbor has been turned into a terrifying, cannibalistic nightmare, instead of one simply jumping Joel in front of her like in the game. In fact, by separating Sarah from Joel for a longer period of time, they’re able to create far more of a sense of mystery leading up to the reveal of that first zombie.

This is what makes adapting video games so interesting to me, because it isn’t just a matter of hitting all the right beats. There’s a level of interaction that is difficult to translate into any other medium. How do you not only capture the events of the story, but what it’s like to live through them? It’s more difficult than it originally seems, but there’s a clear understanding of both the original material and the medium of television on display in order to recreate that experience, even as so many scenes have been changed. I’m hoping I can expect this to continue in later episodes.