The Last of Us
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Nearly four years after its original release, Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment remastered The Last of Us, Part II for the PlayStation 5.
Out now with a retail price of $49.94 at Walmart, The Last of Us, Part II: Remastered has enhanced 4K graphics and audio for PS5, while keeping the same gameplay, story and combat from the sequel game, which was first released in June 2020 for PS4.
However, there are some new goodies that come with this 4K remastered edition, including new character and weapon skins, a speed run mode and a new âNo Return, A Roguelike Survival Mode,â which deepens combat and the adventure with new options and routes for a different experience.
And since itâs from Walmart, youâll get it shipped to you for free if youâre a Walmart+ member. Otherwise, your cart has to be more than $35 to get free shipping.
Not a member? You can sign up for a 30-day free trial to take advantage of everything the retailerâs rewards program has to offer, including free delivery; fuel savings at Exxon, Mobil, Walmart or Murphy gas stations; streaming access to Paramount+ to watch hit originals such as Halo, Fatal Attraction, Star Trek: Lower Decks; early deals access and much more. Learn more about Walmart+ here.
The Last of Us, Part II: Remastered for PS5 is also available at Amazon, Best Buy and Target.
Sony
âThe Last of Us, Part II: Remasteredâ
Meanwhile, if youâd like to experience a new remaster of the first game for PS5, Walmart also has The Last of Us, Part I available. Itâs on sale for $39.97, or nearly 45% off its list price, from the retailer.
Priced at $49.94 at Walmart, Amazon, Best Buy and Target, The Last of Us, Part II: Remastered is out now for PS5. In the meantime, you can watch the launch trailer from Sony, below.
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âNew Homeâ is a pensive, wordless piano ballad â not the type of song thatâs typically thought of as viral trend material on TikTok. But last month, Austin Farwell, who wrote and performed the track, noticed it appearing in a wave of videos. Many of these featured the actor Pedro Pascal munching peacefully on a sandwich â a snippet from the YouTube series Snack Wars â next to a block of text, something along the lines of âwhen you catch up with your friends and theyâre all complaining about their trash men but you canât relate cos your man is perfect and treats you like a princess every day.â
âI didnât understand,â Farwell says. âI donât know Pedro Pascal; I didnât know why he was eating a sandwich. But if thatâs the trend that people want to promote my music with, great.â
The Pascal videos were created using the program CapCut, which is owned by TikTokâs parent company, ByteDance. CapCut, which marketers joke is the new version of Appleâs Final Cut Pro, makes more advanced video editing techniques accessible to the masses, allowing clips like those with Pascal to be easily replicated and adjusted effectively with the click of a button. Chopping his calm chewing footage out of one video and into another is beyond many usersâ technical ability. With CapCut, âyouâre really not even editing, youâre choosing a template, adding something of your own, and the program is just generating this video for you,â says Abbey Fickley, a TikTok creator.
âThey give you these slow motion effects, or make it go from blurry to super clear, or these glitchy cuts, which make the videos more dramatic,â Fickley continues. âThat in turn makes the viewer more inclined to stay and watch it. It spices up your content â those editing features really do attract the viewer, instead of them just scrolling past it.â
Songs can be hitched to CapCut templates, so as they have proliferated on TikTok, they have become an important new area of focus for music marketers. âIf you can match one of those [templates] to a sound that amplifies the video, or makes it more dynamic, then you suddenly have something that can act as a vessel for the sound to go viral,â explains Sanu Hariharan, co-head of music partnerships at Creed Media, a marketing company focused on Gen Z. âItâs been a really strong facilitator of user-generated content,â which is typically the metric that artist teams use to evaluate the success of marketing campaigns, especially on Tiktok but also on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.Â
A major label executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity went further: âIf you want to break a song on TikTok right nowâ â and everybody with commercial aspirations does â âyou have to attach it to something from CapCut.â In recent months, these trends have helped drive listeners to âNew Home,â Luke Combsâ cover of Tracy Chapmanâs âFast Carâ (currently No. 32 on the Billboard Hot 100), a mash-up of Ice Spiceâs âIn Ha Moodâ (peaked at No. 58 on the chart dated March 22), Deftonesâ âChange (In the House of Flies),â Hollywood Undeadâs âEverywhere I Go,â and more.
CapCut launched globally in 2020, and it topped the app charts as early as 2021. Much in the same way that new music production tools like BandLabâs SongStarter have made it simple for those with minimal experience to create credible-sounding tracks, CapCut âmakes it a lot easier for your everyday user to be able to create more polished videos,â says Jen Darmafall, director of marketing at ATG Group. âYou donât have to have a particular skill set when it comes to editing â there are templates on the platform for you to go and plug in what you want, whether itâs photos or videos or text overlays or transitions. Thatâs helped it skyrocket.âÂ
In October, ByteDance made it even easier to jump between TikTok and CapCut: When users encountered a video on the former made with the latter, a new button allowed them to quickly start playing with the template on their own. Partly as a result of that change, âover the last six months or so,â clips made with CapCut are âin your face every day, non-stop, no matter what side of TikTok youâre on,â Darmafall says. CapCut clips are also peppering Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, further amplifying ByteDanceâs influence in the social media market at a time when the company is facing intense scrutiny from the U.S. government.Â
Jess Keifer, director of digital strategy for Sony Music Nashville, noticed a CapCut trend set to âFast Carâ â a blurry scene, often accompanied by heart-warming text, that snaps into focus just as the singer up-shifts into the chorus â gain traction during the last week of March, leading to an âexplosionâ of similar TikTok clips. âItâs an easy source of inspiration for fans,â she says. Fickley hopped on the Combs trend and amassed a million views within two hours. âIâve never had a video go viral that fast,â she says.Â
Much of TikTokâs appeal from the start has been that anyone can go viral, no matter how many followers you have or how long youâve been using the platform. But to replicate the dance trends that were popular in the appâs early days, for example, a user either had to be good at dancing or comfortable with embarrassment. Neither are required to adjust a CapCut video template that riffs on Stranger Thingsâ Finn Wolfhard or the cartoon Tom and Jerry.Â
âAs you hop on the trending templates, youâre gonna get more views and visibility, which is what we all want,â explains Tim Gerst, CEO of digital marketing agency Thinkswell. âAnd so it becomes about, how can you find ways to take your own music or the things that youâre working on and implement it into templates that are trending?â
CapCut templates are especially useful for music marketers because they often come with songs attached to them. âSome people are having these templates created specifically for their sound or for the artistâs song that they are promoting,â Darmafall says. âAnd some of them are scouring TikTok for CapCuts every single day, finding the most popular templates, and putting their song to itâ â seeing if they can sway a trend in their direction. âItâs so easy to unlink a sound and link a new sound to it,â Darmafall notes.Â
A common critique of TikTok is that it elevates songs but not artists: Millions of users might get obsessed with a snippet of a track but not bother to even figure out what the singer looks like. One advantage of CapCut templates is that artists can quickly jump on a trend that might otherwise take off without them. âItâs great for artists because it saves them time,â says Cassie Petrey, founder of the digital marketing company Crowd Surf. âWe try to encourage our artists to use them as it makes sense for their brand,â Keifer adds.Â
Hariharan points to a recent video from RagânâBone Man, where the gravel-voiced balladeer posted his own version of a CapCut template that was both set to his track âHumanâ and also included footage of the singer spinning in place. The RagânâBone Man video earned more than 12 million views, easily outstripping any of his other recent clips. âThis is a way that artists themselves can get in on the action,â Hariharan says. âIt allows them to kind of unlock another layer, feed themselves in, increase their overall recognizability.â
âThis is just going to become more and more important for us to pay attention to,â Keifer adds.
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Source: HBO / The Last of Us
HBOâs The Last of Us exceptional first season is in the books but, as expected, left many with questions and wondering if we are getting a season two and if one of the first seasonâs stars is returning.
Right off the bat, we are happy to report that, yes, there is a second season coming. In a no-brainer decision, HBO renewed its new hit series based on the PlayStation video game franchise in January.
The one question lingering was if Bella Ramsey would return as Ellie. Speaking with Deadline, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckman (who wrote the video game) talked about Ramseyâs return and her backstory, plus the infected or lack thereof in the show.
One burning question many had about the show was why didnât Joel and Ellie encounter waves of infected or clickers as the season went along. For those who played the game, there are numerous encounters with raiders, cannibals, and the infected.
In the show, we saw people infected by the cordyceps in the first episode when things first popped off, and sparingly in episodes. We saw a new idea that everyone infected is connected, and if you step on a live vine, you can trigger a swarm. We also saw how real sh*t gets when waves of hordes arrive and how bad that can be.
So itâs not like we didnât see any infected in the show, but according to Mazin, itâs much more complicated than that.
Mazin Explains The Process of Turning A Game Into A TV Show
âPart of the adaptation process is trying to figure out how to take source material that was built around gameplay and port it over to a medium that is passive,â Mazin said. âAnd a lot of the gameplay centered on non-playable characters that you have to get around by either avoiding them or stealth killing them or just confronting them head-on. Thatâs sort of your choices when youâre playing. And the NPCs were either raiders or cannibals, or they were the infected.â
âSo thereâs a lot of fighting. I donât know what your ultimate kill count is on a typical run of The Last of Us, but itâs in the triple digits for sure. So we did at times have choices to make about how we wanted to present the infected. I will say that even though we were green-lit for a season of television, Neil and I felt like we couldnât just make a season of television without considering what would come after. â
Mazin Says More Infected Is Coming In Season 2
He continues, âThere is more The Last of Us to come. I think the balance is not always just about within an episode or even episode to episode, but season to season. Itâs quite possible that there will be a lot more infected later. And perhaps different kinds. But within the episodes that we were concentrating on, I think ultimately, we generally stressed the power of relationships and trying to find significance within moments of action. So there may be less action than some people wanted because we couldnât necessarily find significance for quite a bit of it, or [they had a] concern that it would be repetitive. After all, youâre not playing it, youâre watching it. And although a lot of people do like to watch gameplay, it needs to be a little bit more focused and purposeful when weâre putting it on TV.â
The Last of Us HBO also gave us a lot more information than the game did. In the season finale, we finally saw Ellieâs backstory and met her mother, played by Ashley Johnson (the voice actor of Ellie in the video game).
Neil Druckman Explains The Last of Us HBO Resurrected A Storyline Originally Set To Be Its Own Game
âSo trying to come up with a story, I wrote this short script about Ellieâs mom and how she gave birth to Ellie, how she was bitten at the same time, and wasnât sure if she was infected during that birth,â Neil Druckman said. âAnd it just became this little character drama that spoke to the same themes of parental love and how much youâre willing to do even at when youâre on deathâs door. That deal fell apart. Then we were talking to another game company to potentially do it as a whole other game. That deal fell apart. Then I became interested in live-action, and I was talking to Ashley Johnson about her starring in it, and then we both got busy, so that fell apart.â
The Ellieâs Backstory Helped Build An Important Storyline In The Show
Druckman continues, âI just kind of forgot about it until Mr. Mazin and I started meeting to talk about the show. Craig was like, âWhat do you have that we havenât seen? What is Ellieâs backstory?â And I was just telling him all this stuff. Iâm like, oh, right, thereâs this other story about Ellieâs mom and blah, blah, blah. I just kind of told him about it. Heâs like, âOh my God, we, that has to go in the show.â And then we talked about how would it fit.â
âDoes it make sense to put it in now? It does gives some theories about why Ellieâs immune, even though we donât answer that conclusively. But I think, more importantly, it builds the relationship between Marlene and [Ellieâs mom] Anna, so that when you get to the ending, and we pit Marlene against Joel, they have their own opposite philosophical terms over how to approach of the end justify the means. Annaâs dying wish was, take care of my kid. I think it gives it more weight and maybe shows more of the tragedy behind Marleneâs sacrifice, that she was trying to make for the betterment of mankind, âDruckman continued.
Bella Ramsey Will Be Back As Ellie
Speaking of Ellie, there was also a question if Bella Ramsey would return for season two. Mazin put all of that to rest, confirming the young actress will be picking up things right where season one left off.
âWhen she joined us, she was 17. Sheâs only, sheâs 19 now. Which by the way is the age of Ellie in The Last of Us, part 2. People were like, âShe doesnât look like [Ellie]. Iâm like, it doesnât matter. Just watch what happens,â says Mazin.
He continues, âIt will be the show that Neil and I wanna make. But we are making it with Bella.â
Well, there you have it.
â
Photo: HBO / The Last of Us
Did you know that Depeche Modeâs 1987 Music for the Masses single âNever Let Me Down Againâ was a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit? Neither did we â in fact, our records show that the song actually peaked at No. 63 in Feb. â88 â but according to HBOâs new post-apocalyptic drama series The Last of Us, itâs one of the songs featured in Fred Bronsonâs essential The Billboard Book of Number One Hits compendium, which characters on the video game adaptation play over the radio in order to send coded messages to fellow survivors.
Regardless of its chart peak, the use of Depeche Modeâs dark synth-rock classic in the pilot episodeâs chilling final scene â an â80s song is meant in the showâs universe as a message of trouble â inspired many of the new video game adaptationâs millions of viewers to go play it themselves. âNever Let Me Down Againâ more than tripled in official on-demand U.S. streams overnight, from 26,000 on the day of the premiere (Jan. 15) to 83,000 the next day â a gain of 220.5%, according to Luminate. (Depeche Mode even helped welcome the newly interested by adding a âHeard on Episode 1 of The Last of Usâ parenthetical to the title of the songâs official YouTube video.)
Of course, when you start talking about minor crossover hits from the â80s alt-pop underground being revived by blockbuster TV shows in 2023, all minds naturally go to Kate Bush and Stranger Things. The song has a long way to go still before showing that kind of renewed impact just yet â but itâs certainly a message that when it comes to catalog hits being given new life by dramatic TV syncs, a lot of artists are going to want to be taking a ride with The Last of Us.
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