Sometimes, adaptations have to make major changes. And that’s because what works in one medium can become impossible to emulate in another. For example, when one sets out to play a game, one probably intends to spend at least 40 hours on it, if not more. But no one is about to pour 40 hours into watching a TV series. (Why not? We don’t know. But that’s the fact of the matter.) The Last of Us season two introduced a new major character from The Last of Us—Part II game, AbbyOpens in a new tab. But The Last of Us series changes Abby’s introduction, and some information about her that players only learn deep into playing the game revealed itself almost immediately.
This change confused and disappointed some game players, but showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann shared with the press that there was simply no choice but to change Abby’s introduction and character reveals from the games.
Druckmann offered the following about the changes made to Abby from The Last of Us games to its TV series, “In the game, you play as Abby, so you immediately form an empathic connection with her, because you’re surviving as her, you’re running through the snow, you’re fighting infected. And we can withhold certain things and make it a mystery that will be revealed later in the story. We couldn’t do that in the show because you’re not playing as her.”
Druckmann continued, explaining it was important for Abby to immediately be tied into the larger story of the HBO show. “Where that revelation happens in the game, if we were to stick to a very similar timeline, viewers would have to wait a very, very long time to get that context. It would probably get spoiled to them between seasons, and we didn’t want that, so it felt appropriate for those reasons to move that up and give the viewer that context right off the bat.”
Speaking with Collider,Opens in a new tab Druckmann further noted, “The fact that Abby is a Firefly is something we withheld in the game for a very, very long time. But here we just decided to reveal it very early and to just lean into it and show who she is. To me, the key was to find a certain ferocity and a relentlessness, and I think you’ll see some of that as the season goes on… There is a power that Abby gives you in the game as you’re playing her, but we don’t have gameplay. So… the information delivery system had to be different.”
Timing, connection, and storytelling sound like three very good reasons for The Last of Us season two to change Abby’s story from the games. The whole point of an adaptation is to adapt. The games are always there for people who want to play them.
