Some more changes in “The Last of Us” TV show that I thought were improvements on the game:
1) Tommy calls Joel to bail him out of jail. It’s a small scene but it does help establish that Joel is the older, more responsible brother while Tommy is the younger, more reckless brother. It gives more dimension to Joel’s line of “I bring you the cure for mankind and you wanna play the pissy little brother”.
2) Joel possibly being a Desert Storm veteran. Because if he was, then his line “you have no idea what loss is” becomes even more tragic since it’s not clear which part of his life he’s talking about. Is he talking about Sarah, surviving the post-apocalypse, or the horrors of the Gulf War? Technically speaking, he could be talking about all three events, which is just incredibly sad.
3) As an add-on for point 2, either Joel or Tommy being a Desert Storm veteran works better for the story since it makes it more believable that the Miller brothers were able to survive for 20 years in the zombie apocalypse.
4) “Che Guevara of Boston”. It’s one line, but it tells you all you need to know about Marlene and the Fireflies. Honestly, I got a better understanding of Marlene through that one line than the explanation in the original game.
5) Tess telling Joel to calm down and that going after Robert will make him go into hiding. I know that might seem trivial but the show is subtly telling us that Joel is incredibly dangerous. In the game, this was established by going into combat as Joel. The show can’t just rely on action scenes since that would screw up the pacing and tone, so the next best way to establish Joel’s badassery is through dialogue. “Robert is scared of you because you’re a dangerous motherfucker, that’s why I need you to chill”, that’s basically what Tess said.
6) Joel beats the guard to death in order to protect Ellie. In this one scene, Joel has already bonded Ellie to his memory of Sarah and Ellie was introduced to Joel’s savagery, which is pretty impressive considering that it’s a scene with no dialogue (for at least that section).
