Ellie and Tina have embarked on their journey to Seattle, and the plot is increasingly deviating from the original game. This episode has revised the famous scenes from the game, and no one knows what will happen next...
1.At the beginning, Ellie and Tina's exploration of downtown Seattle is content that exists in the original game. However, due to the length, only the plot in the video store was retained. In the game, they also explored scenes such as banks, synagogues, and pet stores.
The plot of the video store basically recreated the original game, but in the game, the song Ellie played when tuning the guitar was "Future days", which Joel loved to play the most. Later, when she saw Tina coming, she changed to play "Take on me". It's a pity that the episode did not restore this detail.
In addition, in the original work, this bridge plot was placed in a side mission, so some players would miss this scene when playing. The production team once considered whether to add it to the main plot, but finally thought it was better to hide it.
Here's an interesting anecdote: At first, the production team was worried that they would not get the copyright of this song. It turned out that Halley Gross, one of the screenwriters, happened to know Paul Waaktaar - Savoy, the guitarist of the original a-ha band (he is the husband of Gross's best friend). Finally, the two sides reached a happy cooperation.
2.In the game, the two experienced many dangerous moments on the first day before arriving at the cinema. There was even a plot where Ellie was kidnapped and almost killed (even their horse died).
However, it's understandable that the episode is modified in this way. First of all, due to the length, there are only 7 episodes in this season, so it's impossible to faithfully adapt the more than ten hours of Ellie's story in the original work. It's a bit similar to the situation in the second half of the first season, where Joel and Ellie's adventure was greatly abridged and directly led to the Firefly Hospital.
Secondly, the game has the problem of "Ludonarrative dissonance". This term describes a serious conflict between what the game wants to express and the game's mechanism. For example, in Tomb Raider, Lara is just a young archaeologist, but in the game, she is a ruthless Rambo...
In the TLOU2 game, the most significant Ludonarrative dissonance is that "Ellie cruelly killed hundreds of WLFs on the way for revenge, but she still wavered in the confrontation with Abby's team, giving players an absurd sense of contrast". So it's very reasonable for the episode to reduce the number of people Ellie killed (so far, only the one in the subway station). After all, killing someone in reality is really not that easy.
3.In the episode, Tommy's plot is completely absent.
In the comparison of the previous episode, I mentioned that Tommy set out for Seattle to take revenge earlier than Ellie and Tina. Therefore, when Ellie was exploring, she could often see the traces left by Tommy (such as killed enemies and camping camps).
But in the episode, the plot directly skips these bridge plot，and an important plot depicting Tommy's dark side is completely deleted. I don't know how it will be handled later.
4.Isaac in the episode appears in advance.
As the leader of WLF, Isaac only exists in various notes in Ellie's story line. Ellie vaguely knows that this person is a big shot in WLF, but has never seen him. Isaac will not officially appear until Abby's story line.
Isaac's origin story has also been revised. In the game, it was mentioned that he was one of the founders of WLF, but in the episode, it was changed that he defected from FEDRA and joined WLF halfway.
The plot of Isaac torturing prisoners also exists in the game, but the whole process was not depicted. The handling of this part in the episode is more cruel and bloody than that in the game.
In addition, Isaac in the game was dubbed and motion - captured by Jeffrey Wright himself, and basically no one knows Isaac better than him.
5.The hanging corpse scene in the TV station is recreated, but the difference is that the scene is more bloody.
It should be noted that in the game, before the two arrived at the TV station, they had killed Jordan in Abby's team. But as I said before, Jordan's plot was placed on Manny, but Manny did not appear in this episode, and Tommy did not come to Seattle, so Manny may have a different ending later.
6.The infected chase in the subway station is a bridge plot in the game, but unlike the original work, due to the modification of the spore setting (in the game, people will be infected if they inhale spores, but this setting is cancelled in the episode), in the original work, Ellie was found to be immune because she broke her gas mask when escaping, while in the episode, it was modified that she blocked the infected attack for Tina.
In addition, the number of infected in the episode is obviously larger. HBO still loves to shoot big scenes...
7.Regarding Ellie's immunity to the fungus, unlike the scene in the TV series where the two confronted each other all night, Dina in the game quickly accepted this fact.
On one hand, in the game, Ellie had already told Dina that she was immune (but Dina didn't take it seriously at that time); on the other hand, Dina in the game was more calm and intelligent, and she immediately realized that Ellie was not lying to her.
8.In the game, Ellie did not have a relationship with Tina in the theater (the episode delayed the time when they confirmed their relationship), and she could not accept the fact that Tina was pregnant, which can be said to be the biggest difference between the game and the episode.
In the game, when Ellie learned that Tina was pregnant, she completely collapsed and even left Tina to go out for a walk.
The reason why Ellie collapsed is the combination of three emotions: anger, unwillingness and fear. She was angry that Tina kept it from her until the last minute; she was unwilling because she felt that she had lost to Jesse; she was afraid because she was not sure whether to take Tina on the road again.
Another function of this plot is to imply that Ellie has begun to be distorted in this revenge journey, and even began to lose control and hurt the person she loves most.
In short, in the game, Ellie finally decided to leave Tina in the theater to rest and carry out her revenge plan by herself, and then the story could unfold.
But the episode completely rewrote this plot. Ellie not only readily accepted the baby, but also chose to continue to take the pregnant Tina deep into the WLF hinterland. This is probably the most subversive change so far, which completely modified Ellie's character setting.
