The eighth chapter of The Last of Us on HBO and HBO Max was shocking and resonated with the long-awaited appearance of Troy Baker. His participation in the episode as James, the main side of the sadistic David, was limited and had an unhappy ending. But his acting work has been crucial to the success of the franchise, and in these lines we will explain why.
If you played the Naughty Dog video games, What we will discuss next will seem obvious to you. However, many people who follow the series today never had contact with the title that came to the PS3 in 2013, nor with the subsequent remasters and remakes for PS4 and PS5. So it cannot be taken for granted that everyone knows the ins and outs of The Last of Us.
That being said, who is Troy Baker and why has his work been crucial to the success of The Last of Us? It was, no less, who played Joel in the games. And he not only voiced the character, but also lent his body to the motion capture process for the cinematics.
Both his work and that of Ashley Johnson, Ellie in video games, have been acclaimed by critics and gamers. After all, they were in charge of creating and capturing the chemistry that Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey have now managed to transfer to the small screen.
So, the appearance of Troy Baker in the eighth episode of The Last of Us can be considered a tribute to the “original” Joel and his interpreter. The recognition of a key piece so that today the Naughty Dog games have their adaptation on HBO and HBO Max, with great success worldwide.
Troy Baker and his enormous contribution to The Last of Us
In a recent interview with Entertainment TonightTroy Baker reviewed the path traveled since the first audition to be Joel in The Last of Us, until his appearance in the HBO and HBO Max series in a completely different role. There he left some interesting reflections on the experience.
“When we were shooting my episode, I was on set in this beautiful, very cold place, about to shoot the first scene, and I started laughing. The person next to me asked me what I was laughing at, because it was such a serious scene, and I said, ‘If you could go back 12 years in time and tell that version of me that I was about to get into that audition that this It would be the biggest thing I would do in my life, and that I would appear in one of the best TV series in history, I would not have believed you,'” he said.
He also recalled how Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley, the creators of The Last of UsThey explained to him and Ashley Johnson what the story was about and how they planned to execute it. «At one point we left the meeting with Ashley to get some air and we both stared off into nothing. I told: ‘Do you realize that if this fails it will be our fault? Clearly, we are the weakest link’. We had been overwhelmed because no one was telling stories like this,” Troy Baker said.
Looking at the results with today’s newspaper, it’s clear that things turned out better than anyone involved could have hoped. Although Baker himself revealed a detail that could have changed the fate of The Last of Us: He nearly walked out on the audition to be Joelbecause he thought he was not the right one for the character.
The process to choose the actors who would give life to the characters began in 2008. But at that time the actor considered that not even his appearance was appropriate to assume the leading role:
“By then I had a long haircut. final fantasy and my clothes were written everywhere. He was a fan of Naughty Dog and Uncharted, but I hated my agent because I told him he wasn’t the one for the part. When I got to the audition I saw that in each chair in the waiting room there was someone who, in some way, represented the subject of the script. I thought, ‘I can’t do it,’ and immediately felt fear and doubt, and saw that I could leave without anyone noticing. But when I put my hand on the doorknob, the director of casting He called me and said it was my turn.”
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An experienced video game industry
Yes ok The Last of Us represented a before and after in his career, Troy Baker has become a recurring figure in the video game industry. In fact, his collaborations with Naughty Dog have extended to other titles. In 2016 and 2017 he voiced himself to Sam Drake in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacyrespectively.
But he has also worked in franchises such as final fantasy, bioshock, mass effect, Devil, call of duty, god of war and Death Stranding. Although it is more than clear that no role has marked him as much as that of Joel Miller in The Last of Us, The Last of Us Part II and the DLC left behind.