The Last of Us fans will soon be able to read the complete story in script format thanks to a new book from Dark Horse. Surprisingly, we aren’t talking about the HBO adaptation here. The Last of Us: Part I and Part II Scripts is a hardbound omnibus containing the scripts for the Naughty Dog video games. Publication is slated for December 16, making it a well-timed gift idea for fans of The Last of Us.
The Last of Us: Part I and Part II Scripts is available to preorder for $66.63 (was $70) at Amazon. You won’t be charged for your order until it ships, and Amazon will automatically apply any additional discounts it offers before launch to your preorder.
$66.63 (was $70) | Releases December 16
The 616-page hardcover book contains the complete scripts for The Last of Us (2013), The Last of Us: Left Behind (2014), and The Last of Us Part II (2020).
The first game and the Left Behind DLC were written by Neil Druckmann, Naughty Dog’s current creative lead and president. The sequel was co-written by Druckmann and Halley Gross. The duo, alongside Craig Mazin, most recently penned the scripts for the final two episodes of The Last of Us Season 2 for HBO.
This will probably be a fascinating book to pore over and have by your side during your next playthrough. But it might be of even greater interest to aspiring game writers. Scripts, like many areas of game development, aren’t talked about by developers or publishers. Unless you work in the industry, chances are you’ve never had access to a script for a AAA game until now.
The fact that this book exists at all is honestly pretty remarkable–unprecedented, even. We couldn’t find a single other full video game script in book format. The closest published example we thought of was The Skyrim Library, a three-volume series compiling all of the written lore found in The Elder Scrolls V.
The reality is that many AAA games simply wouldn’t make sense to release in book format from a financial perspective. Games with choice-based dialogue trees, branching paths, open worlds, and hundreds of NPCs, and enormous lists of side content would simply require far too many pages across multiple books.
The Last of Us, on the other hand, sets up particularly well for this format. No other game has been described as cinematic or referred to as an “interactive movie” as frequently as The Last of Us. Heck, many of the scenes in HBO’s adaptation are pulled straight from the game, no interpretation required.
The Last of Us doesn’t have choice-based dialogue, branching paths, or a sprawling open world to explore. The gameplay experience in the first game is essentially scripted. The sequel is more dynamic, granting players more freedom to approach combat encounters and puzzles in different ways. But much like Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 4, the “open” set pieces are still fundamentally linear.
This doesn’t mean that the scripts will read just like a screenplay or teleplay. There are still lots of interactive components to the worlds of each game that will naturally be found amidst conversations between Joel and Ellie. All of the text that fills the space between lines of dialogue should be illuminating. Chances are fans will glean new insights from the text.
Screenplays, which are typically 90-120 pages, aren’t published nearly as often as they once were, but occasionally we see teleplay collections for popular TV shows. HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation isn’t one of them–at least not yet–but HBO has recent experience publishing scriptbooks for its shows. The scripts for all four seasons of Succession were published in 2023, and the scripts for Seasons 1-4 of Stranger Things will be published in the coming months.
Preorder The Last of Us Season 2
The Last of Us Season 2 releases on 4K Blu-ray September 23, and Amazon has a fantastic deal on the Limited Edition Steelbook. Normally $47, the collectible 4K edition is available to preorder for only $35. If you don’t own Season 1, the standard edition 4K Blu-ray is just $18.58.
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