The Finale (Fan Creations)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Monday, March 13, 2023, 11:15 (620 days ago) @ Cody Miller

As regards the show, what ultimately matters is how effective it was as a show, and I think the consensus is that it was very effective.

There are many major outlets criticizing the ending today. I don't think your statement is necessarily correct.

They don't care. They like the show, and the show is what they know. And they'll never experience the game. There's a gap between gamers and non-gamers, and I felt it intensely after playing The Last of Us. Here was this great story, and I had so many story-loving friends who could never experience it. Now they have experienced a form of it, and they seem grateful. I am, too.

The person I quoted had a very bad experience with the finale. I told her what playing the game was like, and she said "Yeah, I did not get that feeling at all watching this. It was just weird." And she was on board and invested into the show up to this point.

Not to doubt you, but was her opinion wholly hers uninfluenced by you? I don't think of you as shy about letting it be known what you think and your certainty regarding what you think. I've got my test subjects so I'll report back, but thus far they've bought into the characters and their relationship, even when I expressed concerns similar to yours.

But you NEED to compare it to the game. Due to the nature of AAA game to film adaptation itself. Remember, the move doesn't give you any new tools in your creative arsenal to tell the story with; it only removes them.

I don't think the latter is exactly true. The game requires interactivity to be a game. Remove that requirement, and you've got newfound freedom to show and tell different kinds of things in the universe that wouldn't be interesting presented in a puzzle (as gameplay demands). Examples would be Sarah's "normal" day, Jakarta, tasting strawberries--the list goes on.

It's not like a book to movie where the experience is so different it's not comparable. When you do this, you are saying "This story would have been better as an 8 hour cutscene", and so you have to actually see if that choice was valid.

I'm not saying that, so I don't have to proclaim one is better. Maybe they're more comparable than a movie and book, but it's still not really comparable because you can't have the immersion amplifier of interactivity in the show on the one hand, and on the other hand eight hours of cutscenes wouldn't be a game. I would say there are aspects of the game that better serve the narrative, and aspects of the show that better serve the narrative. Ultimately, I think it's best to say whether they work independently. Mileage may vary, of course. I'm looking forward to reading more reviews of the show that don't compare it to the game. Personally, for me, the game was better, but it has going for it the unalterable fact of being the first way I experienced this narrative. Many millions of people judged the narrative in show form as worthy on its own, else they would not have continued to tune in.