The Last of Us followers will quickly be capable of learn the entire story in script format because of a brand new ebook from Dark Horse. Surprisingly, we aren’t speaking concerning the HBO adaptation right here. The Last of Us: Part I and Part II Scripts is a hardbound omnibus containing the scripts for the Naughty Canine video video games. Publication is slated for December 16, making it a well-timed reward thought for followers of The Last of Us.
The Last of Us: Half I and Half II Scripts is accessible to preorder for $66.63 (was $70) at Amazon. You will not be charged on your order till it ships, and Amazon will routinely apply any extra reductions it provides earlier than launch to your preorder.
$66.63 (was $70) | Releases December 16
The 616-page hardcover book contains the complete scripts for The Last of Us (2013), The Last of Us: Left Behind (2014), and The Last of Us Part II (2020).
The first game and the Left Behind DLC were written by Neil Druckmann, Naughty Dog’s current creative lead and president. The sequel was co-written by Druckmann and Halley Gross. The duo, alongside Craig Mazin, most recently penned the scripts for the final two episodes of The Last of Us Season 2 for HBO.
This will probably be a fascinating book to pore over and have by your side during your next playthrough. But it might be of even greater interest to aspiring game writers. Scripts, like many areas of game development, aren’t talked about by developers or publishers. Unless you work in the industry, chances are you’ve never had access to a script for a AAA game until now.
The fact that this book exists at all is honestly pretty remarkable–unprecedented, even. We couldn’t find a single other full video game script in book format. The closest published example we thought of was The Skyrim Library, a three-volume sequence compiling all the written lore present in The Elder Scrolls V.
The actuality is that many AAA video games merely would not make sense to launch in ebook format from a monetary perspective. Video games with choice-based dialogue bushes, branching paths, open worlds, and tons of of NPCs, and large lists of aspect content material would merely require far too many pages throughout a number of books.
The Last of Us, then again, units up significantly nicely for this format. No different sport has been described as cinematic or known as an “interactive film” as often as The Last of Us. Heck, lots of the scenes in HBO’s adaptation are pulled straight from the sport, no interpretation required.
The Last of Us does not have choice-based dialogue, branching paths, or a sprawling open world to discover. The gameplay expertise within the first sport is basically scripted. The sequel is extra dynamic, granting gamers extra freedom to strategy fight encounters and puzzles in numerous methods. However very like Naughty Canine’s Uncharted 4, the “open” set items are nonetheless essentially linear.
This doesn’t suggest that the scripts will learn identical to a screenplay or teleplay. There are nonetheless a lot of interactive parts to the worlds of every sport that may naturally be discovered amidst conversations between Joel and Ellie. The entire textual content that fills the area between strains of dialogue needs to be illuminating. Chances are high followers will glean new insights from the textual content.
Screenplays, that are usually 90-120 pages, aren’t printed practically as typically as they as soon as had been, however often we see teleplay collections for fashionable TV exhibits. HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation is not one among them–at least not yet–but HBO has latest expertise publishing scriptbooks for its exhibits. The scripts for all four seasons of Succession had been printed in 2023, and the scripts for Seasons 1-4 of Stranger Things shall be printed within the coming months.
Preorder The Last of Us Season 2
The Last of Us Season 2 releases on 4K Blu-ray September 23, and Amazon has a unbelievable deal on the Restricted Version Steelbook. Usually $47, the collectible 4K version is accessible to preorder for only $35. In the event you do not personal Season 1, the standard edition 4K Blu-ray is simply $18.58.