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The Last of Us is back for a second season, and – naturally – this time we’re seeing an adaptation of the second game in the series. However, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have taken a different approach this time around. Where the first season was largely a one-to-one recreation of the game, with a huge chunk of the runtime dedicated to replicating the original cutscenes in live action, this second season appears to be making more changes to the game’s story. Events are restructured, reordered, and recontextualised with the addition of new characters and story ideas.
That’s not to say that the scenes we know and love have been scrapped, though – far from it. It’s just that they might not always be exactly how you remember them. And so we’ve taken the key moments from episode one that recreate the game and compared them against the source material, analysing what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. You can see both versions in the video above, or read on below for our written explanations.
Tommy’s Sniper School
Due to the show having been re-arranged to tell the story in a more linear fashion, the sequence in which Tommy teaches Ellie how to shoot across long distances is now one of the earliest scenes of The Last of Us season 2. In the game, this was told in flashback as part of the Finding Strings chapter, which occurs during day two of Ellie’s time in Seattle – many hours into the campaign.
That’s not the only change. As you can see from the thick blanket of snow, the time of year is completely different. While Ellie and Tommy trek through the sun-kissed Wyoming mountains in the game, they’re lying prone in a freezing winter landscape in the show. There is a connection, though; in the game, Tommy mentions that hordes of infected move through this region in the winter. Since it’s currently winter in the show, perhaps such a horde will turn up in the next few episodes?
Despite the changes to timeline and climate, the fundamentals remain the same. Show Ellie uses the same Springfield Armory M1A rifle as game Ellie does, while Tommy provides advice about how to snipe at shambling infected. He suggests she compensate her aim for distance, which is what you must do during this sequence in the game, as bullets drop over very long distances due to gravity.
Ellie and Dina’s Patrol
The midpoint of the season two premiere sees Ellie and Dina head out on a patrol. This is one of the earliest sequences from the game, and is replicated quite closely. In both the game and show, Ellie takes Shimmer from the stables, gears up to head out, and is scolded by Jesse for being late. The most significant change here is that, where in the game Jesse lists off all the things that must be achieved on a patrol, in the show Dina sarcastically explains their goals before Jesse can instruct them. This helps construct the show’s version of Dina, who is more brash than her game counterpart.
The conflict between Jesse and Dina helps set up the horseback conversation between the two women. This same chat, about Dina’s breakup with Jesse, also happens in the game, but Dina’s attitude to her former boyfriend is softer, discussing how Jesse’s parents will always feel like her family. In the show, the pair’s relationship is somewhat brushed off as more of an on/off thing.
Both the show and game’s patrol is interrupted by the discovery of the gory corpse of an animal – in the game it’s a moose, while in the show it’s a bear. This encourages Ellie and Dina to search out the infected who killed it. The key difference here is that in the show Ellie and Dina are just two of a larger patrol that doesn’t want to get into any unwarranted danger. In the game, Ellie and Dina are patrolling on their own.
Infected Attack
Ellie and Dina’s search for infected brings them to the same place in both the game and the show: the Greenpeace Market. In both versions they climb over the store’s truck to enter via the upstairs window and proceed to search inside. From here the events diverge – in the show, the pair take down a clicker and then Ellie falls through the floor alone. In the game, both Ellie and Dina fall through the collapsing floor, and Dina saves them both from a clicker by shooting it several times.
In the show, it’s not a clicker in the main store area but a stalker, a new, more intelligent infected type that doesn't appear until much later in the game. Ellie must face this foe alone, and the resulting fight sees the stalker bite her stomach, something that doesn’t happen in the game. Dina arrives too late to help, but by that point Ellie has already shot her attacker. This somewhat echoes an earlier scene from the game, in which Dina arrives to help a runner that’s attacking Ellie outside of the supermarket – in that instance Dina shoots the infected to save her partner.
Barn Dance
One of the most famous scenes from The Last of Us Part 2 is recreated in almost perfect detail for the show, but once again it comes at a very different time thanks to the reordering of the story. The barn dance, during which Dina and Ellie kiss for the first time, was originally shown as a flashback and occurred just before the game’s final act, but in the show it's the last major scene of the season two premiere.
Despite the shift to show this scene in chronological order, everything else about it remains largely the same, even down to the music, dance choreography, and camera direction. The dialogue between Ellie, Jesse, and Dina is almost word-for-word the same as the game’s original script, including Dina’s “I think they should be terrified of you.”
The pair’s dance is once again interrupted by Seth, but Joel’s reaction to his bigotry is much more violent. In the game, Joel only shoves Seth to indicate his anger, but the show’s version of events sees Seth thrown to the floor.
The Overlook
The episode’s final scene is a recreation of The Overlook section of the game’s first chapter. We see Abby and Owen climb up to an outcrop that overlooks the town of Jackson. In the game, Abby and Owen are talking, expressing relief of finding their goal and surprise at how large it is – “it’s a fucking city!” The show instead opts to keep the characters in total silence, building an ominous tension as they survey the town where their target lives.
For more from The Last of Us, check out our spoiler-free season two review and our spoiler-filled review of the season premiere. We’ve also asked the show’s creators whether Joel was right to save Ellie, and spoken to them about the terrifying stalkers who appear in this episode.
Matt Purslow is IGN's Senior Features Editor.
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