“Will [adaption X] break the online game curse?” is a debate as cyclical and pointless in leisure criticism as “Are video video games artwork?” is in video games media, however Final of Us showrunner Craig Mazin is intent on mixing the 2 collectively to make his press tour as unbearable as doable.
Talking to the New Yorker—in, after all, a chunk certainly titled “Can The Final of Us Break the Curse of Unhealthy Video Recreation Diversifications?”—Mazin mentioned the sport’s transition from a player-controlled expertise to a passive one, and the way within the course of that can say one thing in regards to the collection’ strategy to violence. This could be an fascinating thought, on condition that The Final of Us as a recreation collection has at all times needed to stroll the narrative tightrope of telling a narrative in regards to the methods violence can destroy individuals whereas additionally being an action-horror recreation the place your main interplay with the world as a participant is blowing the brains out of individuals and fungal zombies.
“Whenever you’re enjoying a piece, you’re killing individuals, and once you die you get despatched again to the checkpoint. All these persons are again, transferring round in the identical approach,” Mazin says of the inherent construction of The Final of Us, and video video games usually. Tright here’s no want for a fail state in TV and flicks exterior of broader story causes; their existence in video video games is essentially mechanical. However as an alternative, Mazin’s approach of explaining this strategy is with the concept that persons are unable to emotionally connect with a fictional individual (made up of polygons) dying in a online game in comparison with when a fictional individual (portrayed by a stay actor) dies in a TV present. “Watching an individual die, I believe, must be a lot completely different than watching pixels die.”
That is… actually an argument, and a boldly dismissive comment on the sport that you simply’re each adapting and likewise simply final week hailed as the best story video video games has ever advised. Each seem to be incongruent statements, however they communicate to an total dismissal of video video games as a medium that they must be each paradoxically elevated past their means and declared foolish and emotionally meritless in an effort to be taken critically by wider audiences within the technique of adaptation. They’re both silly time wasters with bleep blorp graphics that at the moment are 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 critically by extra mature mediums. So what’s The Final of Us actually to Craig Mazin?
We’ll discover out in a couple of weeks when The Final of Us involves HBO Max.
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