Druckmann shared the news during a press conference for the second season, explaining: "In the game, you play as Abby, so you immediately form an empathic connection with her, because you’re surviving as her, you’re running through the snow, you’re fighting infected.
"And we can withhold certain things and make it a mystery that will be revealed later in the story. We couldn’t do that in the show because you’re not playing as her."
Speaking about Abby's ties with Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), Druckmann said: "Where that revelation happens in the game, if we were to stick to a very similar timeline, viewers would have to wait a very, very long time to get that context.
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"It would probably get spoiled to them between seasons, and we didn’t want that, so it felt appropriate for those reasons to move that up and give the viewer that context right off the bat."
Druckmann also recently explained how Abby will be different in the show physically compared to the game, explaining why they cast Dever in spite of her not looking as much like the character in the game as some fans would like.
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"We value performance over anything else," he said. "We need someone to really capture the essence of those characters... We don't value as much, 'Do they look exactly like the character with their eyebrows or their nose or their body?' Whatever it is.
"It's not nowhere on the priority list, but it's below a bunch of other things that we consider."
The Last of Us season 1 is available on Sky Atlantic and NOW with an Entertainment Membership. Season 2 will be released on 13th April 2025.
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