They probably should have spent a few minutes showing many bridge crossing out or hopelessly blocked.
But Joel did seem to make a lot of mistakes in this one and it felt out of character. Not great, but the show is still quite good.
Looking at a map of their route, I’d agree. I’d also like to add that there’s been twenty years of uncontrolled rivers- I imagine quite a few of the bridges have been washed away over the years. The direct route may just not exist anymore.
You’d think there are a lot of options on what vehicles to drive. Granted it has been 20+ years so most are probably not in working order but still…some obviously work and I would think a good off-road vehicle would be a natural choice for those times when the usual roads are impassable.
I watched the short “making of episode” after the credits, and they said the game has Joel and Ellie going to Pittsburgh, but the area they are filming in looks much more like a western city, so they picked Kansas City.
Of course, the real reasons they make choices are because of the practical realities of making a game, or a TV show. In the game, they went through a city, because it’s a game, and fighting zombies or humans is more fun than just avoiding them. For a TV show, they have to at least consider where they’ll actually be filming things.
In fact, while watching this episode, I had brief moment when I wanted a game that was just, “Trying to cross the country in a post-apocalypse world, where you just want to avoid any bullshit.” You’d have to scrounge for gas and other supplies, but the main quest would be figuring out how to avoid all the trouble areas. Picture “Desert Bus With Zombies.”
I mean…that’s basically DayZ. You basically just wander a massive map of fictional post-Soviet state scrounging for weapons, food, clothing, and other supplies (including car parts and gasoline if you want to spend the time) during a zombie apocalypse. There are other players who will predictably kill you on site (sometimes not), but the map is so large, you mostly just spend time wandering around the countryside.
I’m surprised gasoline that’s been sitting for that many years works at all.
Early in the episode when Ellie is reading the map and tells Joel to take I-70, I said “Why would they take 70? That doesn’t take you to Wyoming.” And my wife said “Because it takes you to Kansas City.” So she must have read something ahead of time and knew what was coming. But as others have said, go around! 435 is a big loop around the city. That should have been obvious looking at the map.
Having said that, the shot where the road is blocked heading into downtown and the underpass on the other side, looked a lot like downtown KC, so good job there.
A simple fanwank here: We know Tommy already went from Boston and Wyoming. And we also know that some of the roads were cleared by big bulldozers and tanks ramming cars off the road. So it could just be as simple case of Joel knowing which route was cleared off from Tommy.
The problem with that is, everyone else trying to escape the cities will also be looking at maps. Major routes like this will almost certainly be blocked, or home to groups of raiders who have set up shop wherever they finally ran out of gas, or their vehicles finally broke down.
Joel kinda hung a lantern on that when he said that the scavenged gasoline doesn’t run as well as it used to… but yeah, realistically, 20 year old gasoline would be completely useless.
I didn’t see that this was posted before, so for anyone who doesn’t already know, Episode 5 will have a different broadcast schedule due to the Super Bowl:
Episode 5 will have a change in its release schedule due to the Super Bowl. The episode will be released on HBO Max and HBO on Demand starting at 9 p.m. ET on Friday, February 10. Fans who still want to watch it on HBO’s cable channel can do so in its regular Sunday night time slot.
I thought it was kinda weird when he said that the old gas only gets them about an hour’s drive time because it’s got water in it. Like, gas doesn’t really loose potency when diluted like that as far as I know. Dilution also wouldn’t be the concern with old gas. All in all, odd choice of pseudoscience.
I don’t think he said it had water in it. He said that after 20 years, it’s practically water.
Could be, might have taken that too literally.
FYI Because of the Super Bow,l this week’s episode will be available at 9 pm Friday (tonight!) Instead of Sunday.
That’s what he said. Of course, that’s also nonsense, but hey.
Can you be more specific? Google seems to say you’d start to have problems using gas that’s 6+ months old, but isn’t terribly specific. I imagine if it’s going bad at 6 months, at 20 years it wouldn’t work at all in reality.
Gas starts to go after 6 months. Ethanol after 3 months.
I’m fuzzy on Diesel, but longer, a year before starting to turn and 2 years is a reasonable expectation for not damaging.
Generally stabilized Gasoline stored in a gas can lasts about 2-3 years for small motor use. Link is to what I use.
After gas is older, if not contaminated it can still be use with good gas. Just ensure something like at least a 2 to 1 ratio of good to bad.
Unsure about this part. My understanding is gas goes bad quicker in cold weather than warm. Gas would hold up longer in the Alabama than Boston as an example.
After 5 years, gas and diesel really shouldn’t be expected to work at all. But tough on the TV show if they followed chemistry.
At my old board the arguments and jokes about how long gas stayed usable went on for pages and pages in The Walking Dead thread of yore. Message boards, amirite?
I’m ok with this show so far and I’ll keep watching but I’m not really seeing any creative new ground being broken.