Arts & Entertainment

“‘The Last of Us’ Is Not a Video-Game Adaptation,”

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— Gazelle Emami, culture editor, New York

​​New York book critic Andrea Long Chu is a devoted player of video games, so I had a feeling she’d have something smart to say when The Last of Us was turned into an HBO series. She liked the show and, like many who had played the game, was impressed by its fidelity to the source material — down to its shot-for-shot re-creations. But something was still missing, and she wanted to understand what was lost in translation from one medium to the other — not merely the “interactive” elements of a video game but what the nature of that interaction can teach us that no other form can. “I feel like I was trying to figure out why I have a stronger emotional response to games than to many other things,” she told me. I’m someone who rarely plays games, and Andrea’s essay made me think deeply about what I was missing.
The Last of Us Is Not a Video-Game Adaptation HBO turned the story into unmissable television. So why does it feel like something’s missing?
Illustration: Leonardo Santamaria
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