With The Last of Us Season 2 having just wrapped with last Sunday’s season finale, the conversation is heating up again, not just about how closely HBO stuck to the source material, but about how this series blurs the lines between adaptation and transmedia storytelling.
Unlike a traditional adaptation, this series doesn’t just retell the game, it expands it. Season 2 in particular added depth to key characters, introduced new points of view, and reshaped the pacing in ways that felt uniquely tailored for television. The result is a narrative that complements the game rather than simply echoing it.
In true transmedia fashion, the game and the show exist as parallel experiences. If you’ve played, you pick up on emotional and narrative layers the show builds upon. If you haven’t, the show still stands on its own. It’s a rare case where the two mediums feel like part of a unified, living world, not just a copy and its original.
As the story moves into even more divisive territory, the creative team is clearly making strategic choices. So here’s the question:
Where’s the line between adaptation and transmedia? Does The Last of Us qualify as a true transmedia project? And how would you approach expanding a story across platforms while maintaining emotional continuity?
Would love to hear what this community thinks. If you’re building a storyworld that spans games, shows, comics, or more, this is your space to unpack what’s working, what’s not, and how we keep innovating across mediums.
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I watched the full gameplay for both Last of Us games, and I watched The Last of Us Season 1, Ashley Renee Smith. I'm looking forward to seeing Season 2!
I think The Last of Us qualifies as a true transmedia project. It's telling the same story in different mediums. I like when a company adds new things to the different mediums so it's not just copy and paste!
I would expand a story across platforms while maintaining emotional continuity by making a movie, show, etc. about each major character/their situations or the major events of the story.
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Generally, IMO, there is no difference. Transmedia as a term, in most cases, really doesn't describe a thing separate from adaptation. It is, after all, adaptation by definition. For me, the only meaningful use of transmedia as a label would refer to a situation where the SAME audience actually follows into the other media. With few exceptions, that doesn't happen any more than it did before the term was a thing. For example, I did a show Vampire PI and a graphic novel adaptation - while the two supported the brand, the natural audiences did not cross over. Because graphic novel audience and movie audience are different in many ways.