The era of video game adaptations have been lost in the darkness for a long time now, but with the release of “The Last of Us”, they are slowly coming back into light.

“The Last of Us” stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as the main duo Joel and Ellie, and their efforts to navigate through an apocalyptic wasteland filled with fungus-infected zombies and militia soldiers.

What really captivates the audience isn’t just the eerie feeling of suspense the show delivers on, but also its insane amount of emotional weight

*SPOILER WARNING*

The story starts off with Joel and his daughter Sarah,played by Nico Parker, interacting in the normal father daughter relationship conversation, with Joel being forced into a commitment to bring over a cake for his daughter’s birthday. All the while, there is a terrifying quietness in the surrounding area as if the story itself is holding its breath from the overwhelming fear of the inevitable.

At the end of the episode, the fungal infection takes over their hometown. The series does an excellent job of copying scenes from the game directly and with 100% accuracy into the series. This episode for example, uses a point of view take of Joel driving the family truck around his town while chaos erupts around them. As for the emotional weight that was promised, Sarah is shot and killed by a soldier after being mistaken for an infected.

As the story continues, it’s clear that the show runners wanted to make this series as close to the source material as they could. With the visually accurate depiction of the second and third-stage infected “Clickers” and “Bloaters”, to the emotional death of brothers Sam and Henry; both of which appear in the 5th episode of the series, with themes of how loss of loved ones can lead us, the humans, the survivors, to search for vengeance in unjust ways interwoven throughout the journey.

Episode seven takes a different route as it is adapted from the games DLC content. It is considered viewers favorite as it depicts what critics call a “heartbreaking duet” between Bella Ramsey’s Ellie and Storm Reid’s Riley. Taking place three weeks before episode two, episode seven depicts what happens when blossoming love is ripped away by the inevitability of fate itself, and that no matter how hard we try, we will never be able to escape it.

“The Last of Us” is currently streaming on HBO Max.