"In case it wasn't clear, The Last of Us made it obvious: at their very best, big-budget video games should be comparable to prestige television, so much so that adapting one for HBO is a relatively straightforward affair. This bar-setting exercise is further exemplified by other PlayStation franchises marching toward adaptation: Ghost of Tsushima is set to be a film and anime,"
"Japanese developer Nihon Falcom, an early trailblazer in the RPG space, has steadily built out one of the grandest stories in video games with its Trails series. Thirteen games deep, the Trails games span the continent of Zemuria and the nations within it, juggling personal relationships with a wider interest in the march of history and how cultures and governments respond to the destabilizing advance of modernity."
The Last of Us set a precedent equating big-budget video games with prestige television and spurred multiple PlayStation franchises toward screen adaptations. Games at that scale carry high financial risk and often pursue cinematic production values. Nihon Falcom pursued an opposite strategy by steadily crafting a sprawling, thirteen-game narrative across the continent of Zemuria. The Trails series balances intimate personal relationships with broad historical themes about modernity and governance. Falcom operates with roughly 68 employees and has sold about 8.8 million copies. The series sacrifices visual spectacle but rewards players with dense narrative complexity and long, emotionally resonant character arcs.
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