I was shocked at how much was pulled from the game in episode 8. I’m not exaggerating when I say that easily 80 percent of the episode is copied — and I mean copied, from the order of events, set pieces, and dialogue — from the game. Part of me wonders if they phoned it in right before the finale. At the same time, it’s hard to complain when there was such accuracy in the details. For example, Joel’s blanket in the show looks exactly like the game version.
The sequence of events in the show was the same as the game. Ellie (Bella Ramsey) goes hunting, meets David and James, goes back to Joel, leads David and company away from their hideout, gets captured, eventually kills David, and escapes with Joel (Pedro Pascal). Much of the dialogue is taken directly from the game, including two of my favorite lines from Ellie and Joel.
For Ellie, she yells at David after breaking his finger, “Tell them Ellie is the little girl that broke your f***ing finger!”
For Joel, it was after he interrogated two of David’s men about where Ellie was. After getting the truth from one of them by mutilating his leg and shanking him to death, he answers the other man who scolded him for killing his friend. Joel snarks, “That’s alright. I believe him,” before impaling him to death.
Viewers will recall this interrogation tactic being used throughout the season — pitting two allies against each other, testing both of them to tell the truth about a location on a map by having them both point to it one at a time. This is Joel’s signature taken from the game, one that Ellie will inherit later in the series. But maintaining the dialogue specifically served to remind viewers of the viciousness within Ellie and Joel.