The Last of Us’ Mazin Unsure Whether Game Is Great Story or Just Pixels

“Will [adaption X] break the video game curse?” is a debate as cyclical and pointless in leisure criticism as “Are video games art?” is in video games media, however Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin is intent on mixing the 2 collectively to make his press tour as unbearable as doable.

Speaking to the New Yorker—in, in fact, a bit certainly titled “Can The Last of Us Break the Curse of Bad Video Game Adaptations?”—Mazin mentioned the sport’s transition from a player-controlled expertise to a passive one, and the way within the course of that may say one thing in regards to the collection’ method to violence. This can be an attention-grabbing thought, provided that The Last of Us as a recreation collection has all the time needed to stroll the narrative tightrope of telling a narrative in regards to the methods violence can destroy folks whereas additionally being an action-horror recreation the place your major interplay with the world as a participant is blowing the brains out of individuals and fungal zombies.

“When you’re playing a section, you’re killing people, and when you die you get sent back to the checkpoint. All those people are back, moving around in the same way,” Mazin says of the inherent construction of The Last of Us, and video video games generally. Tright here’s no want for a fail state in TV and flicks outdoors of broader story causes; their existence in video video games is essentially mechanical. But as an alternative, Mazin’s means of explaining this method is with the concept that persons are unable to emotionally connect with a fictional particular person (made up of polygons) dying in a online game in comparison with when a fictional particular person (portrayed by a reside actor) dies in a TV present. “Watching a person die, I think, ought to be much different than watching pixels die.”

This is… definitely an argument, and a boldly dismissive comment on the sport that you just’re each adapting and in addition just last week hailed as the best story video video games has ever advised. Both seem to be incongruent statements, however they communicate to an general dismissal of video video games as a medium that they need to be each paradoxically elevated past their means and declared foolish and emotionally meritless to be able to be taken significantly by wider audiences within the means of adaptation. They’re both silly time wasters with bleep blorp graphics that are actually worthy of consideration by being tailored, or they’re the best factor within the historical past of the world and thus demand the eye of being taken significantly by extra mature mediums. So what’s The Last of Us actually to Craig Mazin?

We’ll discover out in a couple of weeks when The Last of Us involves HBO Max.

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