Back in early March, Sony and Naughty Dog revealed that The Last of Us would be adapted into a HBO television series written by the award-winning Chernobyl writer Craig Mazin. And although Troy Baker — who lends his voice and motion capturing to protagonist Joel — has little involvement in the series as of now, he’s shared his excitement and passion for the adaptation in an interview with Fandom.
According to Baker, what initially won him over (other than being a huge fan of Mazin’s previous work) was “that while there were a lot of people in Hollywood that stood up and took notice [of The Last Of Us and its success] and were thinking, ‘Oh, a lot of people like this — we should turn it into a movie,’ Craig came at it from a fan’s perspective. He just wants everybody to know this experience.”
Back in 2014, it was announced that The Last of Us would be getting a movie penned by lead writer Neil Druckman and directed by Sam Raimi. However, after years of delays and script issues the movie was finally scrapped. At the time Baker admittedly didn’t see the need for an adaptation at all (an opinion shared by Staff Writer Cameron Hawkins) but recalled what Druckman told him: “Because the reality is, there are people that will — for whatever reason — never pick up a controller and play this game, and I believe that Joel and Ellie’s story is that important to tell.”
But despite Baker’s own misgivings, he’s clearly far more optimistic about the TV series. “I think that episodically you can far more effectively tell this story because trying to condense that experience of 16 hours into 2 hours is impossible… it goes past the point of distillation, into reduction. I think being able to do this episodically and go, ‘We’ll do this for say, three or four seasons’ and be able to almost 1:1 tell [the story of the game] presents a great opportunity for more people to experience this story.”
Baker continues on after explaining that it’s the interactive aspects of the game’s storytelling that continues to captivate him. “Nothing else will ever be that. But I think [with The Last of Us TV show] we can come close. That we can give a different kind of experience for those who — for whatever reason — don’t want to have that type of interaction with the characters.”
Recently The Last of Us Part 2 has been involved in a huge controversy involving major story leaks and screenshots being posted online, especially on social media. However, Sony announced that they confirmed the individuals responsible for the story leaks of The Last of Us Part 2, and that apparently they didn’t come from Sony or Naughty Dog.
Currently The Last of Us Part 2 is available for digital preorder on PSN and will require at least 100GB of free space to download. The physical version will ship in two discs.
The post The Last of Us Part 2’s Troy Baker Reveals Why He Believes in the TV Series Adaptation by Allisa James appeared first on DualShockers.