Speaking with Wired, Pedro Pascal talked about his familiarity with the game before making “The Last of Us” and how he ignored instructions to simply stay the hell away from the game.
“Their instruction was: Don’t play the game. I ignored them. I tried to play the game,” Pascal said. “And I was very, very bad at it. (But my nephew was fantastic.) It was important to me to play notes that were directly related to what was originally in the game — physically, visually, vocally.”
Now, it’s hard to blame Pascal because “The Last of Us” is not the easiest game. Not only is it rather scary, but the stealth and resource management aspects of the game can be quite challenging. I distinctly remember playing the second game and often just giving up and sprinting to the other end of a level, desperately trying to reach a save point before dying because I simply could not manage not to get spotted and shot at by enemies or bitten by infected.
As for Pascal’s performance, you can definitely see hints of what Troy Baker did in the game, but with Pascal’s own take on it, resulting in something entirely unique.
“The Last of Us” premieres Sunday, January 15, 2023 on HBO.