This past Sunday Last of us aired the season finale. HBO hit surpassed their last show similar scale, Dragon House.

But like this Game of Thrones spin off, Last of us also draws its narrative from another medium – no, not from a series of best-selling books, but from groundbreaking video game.

“It’s like a family reunion that I haven’t heard from in years. And now it’s a worldwide phenomenon,” says show executive producer Neil Druckmann. “I mean, the game was incredibly successful. But now she’s on another level where I can’t avoid her. She is everywhere. She’s in TV commercials, they’re talking about her on the street.”

Druckmann co-wrote the 2013 PlayStation game at Naughty Dog and helped bring it to HBO with showrunner Craig Mazin.Chernobyl). Their work was made easier by the fact that they used the source material to work with.

Merle Dandridge, who played resistance leader Marlene in both films. Last of us show and play.

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Merle Dandridge, who played resistance leader Marlene in both films. Last of us show and play.

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The promise of storytelling in video games

“Some of the best stories were in video games,” says Merle Dandridge, who played resistance leader Marlene in both the game and the TV show.

Dandridge was among several of the original cast cast in the teleplay. She has a long and storied career in video games, including the iconic Alyx Vance in 2004. Half life 2. “Not only [Alyx] badass, she’s not only smart, she’s damn cool – someone I want to hang out with. In those days, I didn’t know much about video game characters, but for a black and Asian character to be represented in the game world, I thought they saw me and wanted to show it on the screen. They’re interested in expanding the perspective of what’s possible in games.”

Alyx Vance rendered in then impressive detail from Half Life 2: Episode One.

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Half life 2 came after a wave of more story-driven shooters that later Last of us, which also set the stage for representation in its nuanced portrayals of members of the LGBT community, as it features several gay love stories. But it took a long time for such cinematic narrative achievements to become a reality.

Acting is growing up

When video games became mainstream in the 1980s and 90s, controllers had a limited number of buttons and software could transmit a limited amount of data. This limited not only graphics, but also high-quality sound, not to mention professional voice acting.

But as technology advanced and the gaming industry flourished, Hollywood sensed an opportunity. By the early 2000s, the company was making money from films based on Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat another tomb Raiderwhich sometimes drew large audiences but was not critically acclaimed.

While live action adaptations failed, the games themselves became more realistic. Borrowing technology from television and film, the digital experience of real actors performing serious material has become increasingly common.

Troy Baker, who played Joel in the game, played James in the show’s eighth episode.

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Troy Baker, who played Joel in the game, played James in the show’s eighth episode.

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“There have been great performers in the history of gaming,” says Troy Baker, a 300-plus-credit veteran voice actor who played protagonist Joel in Last of us row. “I think the script has gotten better, and it’s not just that we’re bringing in these big Hollywood writers and telling these great stories. The point is that we understand that the story and the game need to be in sync.”

Last of us not only dubbed the voices of the best in the business: the actors also dressed in high-tech motion-capture suits and acted in concert with each other.

“I have found that in the motion capture scene and even in the voice booth, the joy of playing and the feeling of complete immersion can fully exist in this world of imagination,” says Geoffrey Pierce. He played Joel’s brother Tommy in the original game and later joined the show as Perry, a new role created especially for him.

“It’s like being a kid when it’s all in your imagination that they built this whole set out of boxes and you have a toy gun or something and you’re like absolutely in a state of play. Because everyone is in these ridiculous outfits, you just forget about it and just focus on work.

Geoffrey Pierce, who played Joel’s brother Tommy in the game, has been cast in a new role on the HBO series.

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Geoffrey Pierce, who played Joel’s brother Tommy in the game, has been cast in a new role on the HBO series.

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From PlayStation to HBO

Neil Druckmann said over and over that the actors surprised him and changed the way the characters were written. Over time, these characters found their way into other media, from comics to live theater performance! It is now a successful TV adaptation, played by various actors.

“I hear Pedro [Pascal] say phrases that Troy improvised and it’s just mixed in [Joel]DNA, says Druckmann. “I find it really great because it’s a mix of Troy, mix of Pedro, mix of everything that was created at Naughty Dog and rebuilt by this whole new team, and amazing filmed under the auspices of HBO.”

The show also expanded on the original game. In the last episode, we see Ellie’s mother, now played by Ashley Johnson, the first actress to play Ellie. Her performance deepens our knowledge of the setting, along with flashbacks around the world during the zombie outbreak – scenes that are completely original to the adaptation.

Ashley Johnson, who played Ellie in the game, played her mother in the final episode. Last of us TV show.

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Ashley Johnson, who played Ellie in the game, played her mother in the final episode. Last of us TV show.

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Last of us on HBO ended much like the first video game, leaving us to consider the morally dubious actions taken by the characters who manage to survive in their cruel and toxic world.

As Druckmann says, “We tell the story of love and loss that every person has experienced who has lived long enough.”

Hollywood finally seems to be able to do justice to such video game stories. Netflix Popularity cyberpunk Edgerunners, another Arcana: League of Legends and, along with Last of usprove that game adaptations are widely popular.

James Perkins Mastromarino contributed to this story.

In Keynote Address at Google’s Annual Game Developers Summit Google said his Google Play Service Games for PC, which brings Android games to Windows users, will enter the markets of Japan and other European countries and will receive new names and tools for game developers. It should be noted that over the next few months, the service will add several popular games, including Garena Free Fire, Ludo King (a popular board game in India) and MapleStory M. In the meantime, Google Play is introducing early access to machine translation in the Play Console, which will allow game developers to translate their game into more than eight languages ​​for free within minutes, the company said.

Launched in beta testing in January 2022Google Play Games is designed to expand the reach of Android gaming by allowing consumers to play mobile games on their Windows PCs, in addition to supported platforms such as Android and ChromeOS mobile devices and tablets. With this service, gamers can pick up where they left off on one device when switching to another—something many Apple-focused games already offer, such as when users switch between iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices.

Initially available in overseas markets such as Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan, the service expanded into the US and other countries in November and currently operates in 13 markets including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Now Google says the service will roll out to Japan and several European countries within the next couple of months.

It also introduces a range of features aimed at game developers, including an emulator that offers a developer-focused build
Google Play games designed for debug and build process. This tool allows developers to deploy games directly, including by uploading APK files using the ADB command, and allows them to use Android Studio to tweak graphics and hardware settings to test different player configurations. (Developers will have to register here, the first to show interest in the service.)

As Google explains, the partnership with Intel allows developers to streamline the process of joining Google Play Games on PC with their existing mobile builds. If the mobile game is already working well on desktop, they can now apply to join the service.

The company also publishes new release checklist to help game developers make sure they have completed all the required steps
before submitting a build for approval, and added more metrics for games in Android Vitals. The latter includes newly launched frame rate metrics in the Play Console or through the Developer Reports API, which allow developers to check if their games offer at least 30fps, the technical quality required for the Google Play Games service for PC. Other technical updates have also been implemented to improve performance and user engagement, in addition to a new machine translation feature that will use Google Translate and Transformer-based language models to translate games into more than eight languages, including Simplified Chinese and Japanese.

Google has also teased the upcoming release of Next Generation Player IDs, which will keep a user’s Player ID the same across platforms for any games, while still allowing them to be unique across games. This Play Games Services-based feature will arrive later this year.

Still considered beta, Google Play Games for PC requires users to run Windows 10 on a PC with 10 GB of available solid-state drive (SSD) storage, an Intel UHD Graphics 630 or equivalent, 4 physical CPU cores, and 8 GB of RAM. The company has yet to share an official public launch date.