When word spreads of a well-loved game coming to the screen, it's quickly followed by a collective groan. We've spent hours with our most beloved characters on console, only to find that their stories are rarely well delivered by live-action translations. Take two of my favourite series: The Last Of Us and Uncharted. Both were developed by Naughty Dog, and both were received very differently by myself when it came to their on-screen iterations. After spending an unfathomable number of hours guiding Joel and Ellie through an apocalypse and keeping Nathan Drake from falling into a ravine, it's safe to say I was wary of both adaptations.
Highly visible, actors are one of the most important contributors to a show or film, yet the writers are the ones who have the original characters deep in their marrow. On learning that Neil Druckmann, Naughty Dog's co-president and writer of The Last Of Us, had many roles within HBO's adaptation, I breathed a sigh of relief. Sadly, neither Druckmann nor original Uncharted creator Amy Hennig were responsible for penning Drake's first big-screen adventure – not merely raising a red flag, but doing so with an "Oh crap!" as Drake dangles from the proverbial flagpole.
