Neil Druckmann explains why violence has been toned down in HBO's The Last of Us

It's only two weeks away until we finally get to enjoy HBO's hyped show The Last of Us, starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsay as Joel and Ellie. The trailers we've seen so far promise very good things, but as is almost always the case, there will of course be differences between the game and the film adaptation.

Violence, as we know, is frequently very brutal and graphic. The series, on the other hand, will tone down the violence to reportedly give the story itself even more weight.

Neil Druckmann said this in a recent interview with SFX Magazine/GamesRadar:

"We need a certain amount of action, or violence, that we could use for mechanics so you could connect with Joel and get into a flow state. Then you would really feel like you're connected with this on-screen avatar and you're seeing the world through his eyes.

But that doesn't exist in a passive medium. One of the things that I loved hearing from co-creator Craig Mazin and HBO very early on was, 'Let's take out all the violence except for the very essential.' That allowed the violence to have even more impact than in the game, because when you hold on showing the threat and you're seeing people's reaction to a threat, that makes it scarier. And when we do reveal the infected and the Clickers, you get to see what brought down humanity and why everyone is so scared."

How well this works we will see very soon, The Last of Us premieres on HBO Max on January 15th and besides the already mentioned Pascal and Ramsay, there are other stars taking on key roles such as Nick Offerman as Bill, Merle Dandridge as Marlene (who also played Marlene in the games) and Gabriel Luna as Joel's brother Tommy, just to name a few.

What do you think about violence taking a more subdued role in the series?