The Last of Us: Is HBO's David Even More Evil?

foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] I swear anybody else got a sudden craving for venison no just me then episode 8 of HBO is The Last of Us plunges us deep into its darkest chapter yet we meet David work out fairly quickly that he's got as many layers of Secrets as he does clothing and see what's next for Joel and Ellie directed by Ali Abbasi it's another Faithfully recreated section of the game but not without its own interesting spin on things we're going to dig into all this like a piping hot bowl of Stew savoring the way it adapts this section of the game chewing the fat about the subtle differences and picking a few Easter eggs out of our teeth along the way but in the process we're going to be spoiling everything that goes down on this week's show and probably your appetite while we're at it so if that doesn't sound appealing now is the time to politely excuse yourself you know you really shouldn't be out here all on your own from where I'm sitting you shouldn't be at her on your own fair enough all right first things first let's take a look at everything the show is borrowed directly from this chapter of the game it's quite a bit so buckle up you know what I see when I look at you me so Silver Lake Colorado is where we find David's community and it's the same place we find them in the game now who likes American geography because this next section is just for you there are in fact three locations known as Silver Lake in Colorado one is a lake west of Boulder the second is a Suburban Lake in Loveland and the third is a lake near Telluride from a quick Google image search and a stroll around Maps we're pretty sure that none of these are where David is though and that this is a fictional settlement entirely this is further supported by the fact that the 81303 ZIP code shown on this sign is one located in Colorado but none of these three locations we listed are found anywhere inside that area so I'm beginning to think that maybe some of this show is made up anyway all that geography made me hungry so let's head to Todd's Steakhouse which is the same as the one in the game we don't actually see the inside of the restaurant in the game until Ellie's final confrontation with David but what is in the game is the when we are in need he shall provide Banner that's hanging on the wall well while the banner might be the same the religious almost cult-like approach to David's character is new we're gonna get into that properly later a couple of miles away it is pretty clear that Joel is still not in a good way to despite Ellie's best efforts to sew him up his wound is clearly quite infected and is looking like a real pus party in there what is nice for him though is that he's wrapped up in the exact same green checkered blanket from the game so at least it's a nice toasty pus party I never need to say those words again Joel will need all the warmth he can get because it is freezing outside in the basement he's holed up and is not exactly warm looking either it does look a lot like the basement from the game though and if you're worried about that horse don't worry it's hanging out in the garage with rations running low and Desperation on the horizon Ellie goes out to hunt mirroring the first time we take control of her in The Last of Us game it's worth noting here that in the game this is the first time we set foot in Winter whereas we've been walking through snow for two episodes of the show at this point Ellie finds a deer that definitely sounds like a burping clicker at first what do you think a clicker soda of choice would it be Court of Pepsi perhaps Dr clicker comment below please nothing mad the deer hunting sequence is similar to the game and after taking Joel's lessons on board from the last episode she manages to hit it first try but only wounds it so Ellie's got to follow its Trail to finish the job though Bella Ramsay is clearly much better at this than I was playing as Ellie in 2013 but it's really not a fair comparison she has a powerful rifle in the TV show while in the game you get stuck with a lousy bow and arrow because those were all the rage in 2013 video games in the game Ellie finds the deer first and is confronted by David and James in the TV show it's the other way around another little Switcheroo is that James when the TV show is played by Troy Baker is the guy who plays Joel in the game incidentally in the game James is voiced by Reuben Langdon who is also Dante in the Devil May Cry series anyway David is played by Scott Shepard here but in the game he's played by Nola North who's very famous for playing Nathan Drake in naughty dog's other hit series Uncharted and he actually makes a little Cameo this episode that's right he played Ellie's horse okay I made up the last part but the rest of that is true any sudden moves I put one right between your eyes ditto for buddy boy in this first encounter a lot of the dialogue is taken straight from the game in including Ellie referring to James as a buddy boy and threatening to put one right between the eyes of David buddy boy can go get it he comes back you get half the deer anyone else shows up I put one right between my eyes buddy boy can go get it he comes back with what I need the deer is all yours anyone else shows up you put one right between my eyes that's right as Ellie and David take shelter there's some familiar dialogue to anyone who's played the game for example no such thing as luck no I I believe everything happens for a reason no such thing as luck you see I believe and everything happens for a reason just like in the game after letting Ellie leave a group of David's men track her down to the street where the house that Joel's resting is in the game she hears them approach while she's inside the house next to Joel but in the TV show she's out wandering around the streets anyway Ellie tries to escape on her horse but doesn't get really far because video games and video game adaptations really do horrible horrible things to horses it's not even the last time this is gonna happen to Ellie after being captured the Caged Ellie scene plays out almost identically including David's very Indecent Proposal and napping one of his fingers in half now back at the house Joel picks off David's men as they hunt for him which is very similar to when you regain control of Joel in the game the following scene where Joel interrogates the two men to find David's location is exactly the same as in the game even down in the way that he gets his captive to point out Ellie's location using a bloody knife that Joel wedges into his mouth you're gonna point to where we are and where your Resort is and it better be the exact same spot your buddy points to in about same exact spot your buddy points to it's the first time we see Joel's technique of getting two people to point at the same place on the map in the game but we saw him do a similar thing at the beginning of episode six to that elderly couple exactly where and your answer better be the same as your wife's this is also something that Ellie takes with her in The Last of Us Part Two which now kind of makes more sense thanks to the TV show as she was present when Joel first did it rather than in a game where she isn't it also signals the first time we really see Joel Revel in committing violence like needlessly dispatching both men in an almost identical way he knifes his first victim in the TV show but in the game he snaps his neck the second guy well he comes off worse against the metal pipe in both versions no I believe him no maybe Joel isn't this happy-go-lucky dad who dreams of being a pop star it seems like this guy might have some complicated uh moral decisions keep an eye on this one I'm infected and now so are you back at David's Ellie's bite reveal and subsequent Escape is again almost identical to the game as is the way that Ellie kills James meaning that we are just a Candlestick maker short of the full set as she butchers Baker get it there's also the inescapable irony of Ellie killing the actor who played Joel as Troy Baker experiences the ultimate betrayal he's gone through a lot here maybe what he needs is a nice relaxing golf Retreat for now though Joel is busy descending the layers of hell as he discovers Ellie's backpack and a bunch of very dead and then soon to be eaten human bodies which are also seen in the game Ellie's boss fight with David it's pretty faithful or recreated for the show a lot of the dialogue is exactly the same during the fight as well as the way that Ellie stealthy moves around and lunges with the knife although she finishes David off with a Cleaver in the TV show whereas in the game it is a machete after Ellie has fully covered herself in David's blood the lines that Pedro Pascal reads as Joel here are the same as heard in the game most crucially of all though are the words baby girl this is what Joel called Sarah as she died in his arms and cements Ellie as a daughter-like figure for him okay baby girl coach that end fight isn't exactly the same as the game though what's new is that while Ellie does go to town on David in both the show and the game in the game Joel makes his way into the steakhouse and pulls her away after her tenth swing of the cleaver whereas in the show she just kind of gives up after a mighty 21 swings before making her way outside and being hugged by Joel We counted these swings personally and wanted to look away all 21 times once again the show is laying some groundwork for Ellie's heel turn in part two of the game which by the way has a picture of her covered in blood on the cover there are some other changes for the game too let's Circle back to the very beginning of the episode quickly this whole introductory sequence to David and his community is entirely new and adds quite a few wrinkles to this already very wrinkled up disgusting situation Tabernacle of God is with men now here we see David reading from the Bible behold the Tabernacle of God is with men this is a passage from Revelation 21-3 revelation of course is the final book of the New Testament and the only one that takes place during the apocalypse it contains a whole lot of prophetic prose it makes sense that David's reading from it as he considers himself something of a messiah-like figure as alluded to later on in the episode I'm a Shepherd surrounded by sheep and all I want isn't equal well that Banner that we mentioned earlier does appear in the game we never get the information that David himself is a preacher so this Christian bordering on cult-like angle is new this is further shown in the scene later where Ellie's caged and he reveals that he now worships the cordyceps claiming that they have the ability to love just like any human or God we're not quite on David's wavelength with this but it does mean that maybe the infected who gave Tess her last kiss was just looking for a relationship after all hey whatever happened to him he seemed like a fun guy anyway one rather tragic subplot is this young girl's story we find out that this is the daughter of the man that Joel killed at the end of the last episode and she asked David when can we bury him and David uses the excuse of the ground being too Frozen for this to happen but it probably should have been a little suspect the venison delivery showed up after a hearty meat stew was already on the table so to put it bluntly I made you eat your parents David's Community are cannibals in the game but we never get this added horrific wrinkle to their story which is new for the TV show David says only a handful know the truth also in the game we never see any other members of David's group outside of the few guys who try to kill you so seeing that they have children amongst them somehow makes it all the more Sinister and continues the show's trend of adding even more moral gray areas cannibalism is bad but so is letting kids starve to death so what do you do hey speaking of those few dozen men the show largely cuts out whole extended gameplay sequences as both Joel and Ellie where you're forced to take them down in the blizzard-covered town and around the abandoned hotel resort respectively and much as the series is done throughout it makes sense to streamline some of the more video gamey stuff that doesn't really do much to move the story ahead or at any particular spectacle and hey if you want a Prestige cable show where people get stealth killed in the blizzard go watch that first season of Fargo oh yeah they're also zero infected in this episode this is a big change from the game where Ellie and David Bond as they fight off a horde while waiting for James to return with the penicillin again you can see why Mason and druckman have chosen to cut this but it does mean they've had to come up with a few new tricks up their sleeve and for Ellie to trust David sooner so he went from teacher to preacher because what it rhymes yeah exactly the show gives a lot of extra backstory about who David used to be before the outbreak which just isn't in the game at all the key bit of information is that he used to be a teacher which is extra creepy and chilling when you take into account his behavior towards Ellie a little later on speaking of which when Ellie is imprisoned by David in the game she's kept somewhere else in the resort and slowly makes her way towards Todd's Steakhouse in the show she's just locked up in the back room of the restaurant making for quick access to her boss Arena of choice a lot of the extra details we get when compared to the game are about David and most of the extra info makes him an even worse person which is pretty impressive honestly is this weird cult uh uh well you sort of kind of got me there we find out that David lived in Pittsburgh we don't visit there in the show but a large chunk of the game takes place there including the whole Henry and Sam section which was relocated to Kansas City for the show but we do learn that the Pittsburgh qz fell and David describes a fight between the fireflies and fedra meaning that it's likely a similar situation to the Raider riddled City that we see in the game David obviously thrives on power or maybe he's just a very greedy man because he gets a noticeably larger helping of food compared to others suggesting that he isn't quite the charitable leader that he claims to be the way most the commune eats their food suggests that they're completely in the dark about the cannibalism and it's in contrast to Troy Baker's James who nervously nibbles at his presumably because he's in the Inner Circle and much more aware of what he's eating which makes David's super sized portion even more messed up and again we're pretty sure it's the father of this poor girl that they're chowing down on and not the venison of a Preacher Man I mean what's gonna be suspicious about anyway the way the camera lingers on this definitely not human meat isn't suspicious at all neither is this entirely non-suspicious way that this ordinary man says venison what is it venison that guy by the way seen later as part of David's Hunting Party is called Josiah he's the one in the fetching blue shirt Josiah is yet another religious reference in this episode as is the name that belonged to the House of David in the Bible his name was never actually spoken but IMDb reveals that it's yet another example of incredible attention detail that the show regularly has on display let's try to end on maybe the only happy note to be found in the whole of this hour early in the episode Ellie sees a white rabbit in the game an arrow very swiftly brings it into its life as winter is arriving in the TV show the rabbit is much luckier and Ellie Takes a Tumble and it makes a break for it so at least someone made it out of this whole ordeal unharmed and really by The Last of Us standards not killing a small animal is about as warm and fuzzy as it gets on that note what did you think of this episode was it properly fleshed out and full of juicy details or did they butcher the adaptation what did you think about Troy Baker's performance as somebody besides Joel most importantly do you have any good stew recipes sound off in the comments below and for more on the Last of Us check out our breakdown of last week's Left Behind flashback episode we will be back next week with a close closer look at the season finale well those giraffes show up finally well we'll have to wait and see and if they don't we Riot turns out he was murdered by this crazy man and get this that crazy man was traveling with a little girl you see everything happens for a reason

Channel: IGN

Views: 88,371

Keywords: HBO, The Last of Us, last of us, last of us game, the last of us episode 8, ign, ign the last of us, the last of us episode 8 reaction, the last of us easter eggs, the last of us breakdown, the last of us episode 8 secrets, the last of us 8 episode, tlou episode 8, tlou comparison, tlou easter eggs, tlou show, tlou secrets, tlou episode 8 clip, tlou episode 8 breakdown, tlou explained, tlou left behind, the last of us left behind, tlou, david, ellie, joel

Id: QUyX39CSYgA

Length: 14min 0sec (840 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 06 2023