After months of delays, fans will finally be able to get their hands on The Last of Us Part II this month. In a State of Play last week, Naughty Dog offered a closer look at this highly anticipated game that included eight minutes of fresh gameplay. Set several years after the events of the first game, Ellie will traverse never before seen sprawling, overgrown landscapes assisted by new methods of travel, from horseback to boating.
The Last of Us Part II is clearly Naughty Dog's most ambitious world-building endeavor by far. But what would world-building and exploration be without a few Easter eggs scattered about? The newly released gameplay featured not one but two surprising cameos: a surviving PlayStation Vita and a copy of Hotline Miami.
During the eight minutes of Ellie stealthily dispatching and evading enemy survivors in the ruins of Seattle, she happens upon an unwitting NPC getting some good old-fashioned gaming done in the apocalypse. After threatening the girl for information, the girl pulls out a knife of her own, prompting Ellie to stab her. As Ellie explores the room afterwards, the Vita is seen lying on the ground, still displaying a colorful game. The PS Vita's cult following mourned the beloved handheld when Sony officially announced the end of its production in March 2019, so it is comforting to know the device is still hanging on even in the fungal-covered hellscape of post-apocalyptic 2038.
Fans with well-trained ears may recognize the digitized music coming from the Vita. It’s a track entitled “Hydrogen” from none other than the blood-soaked, pixelated indie darling Hotline Miami by Dennation Games and Devolver Digital. The top-down shooter was initially released in October 2012 and released for the PS Vita in June 2013. Fans of the game were enthralled by its 16-bit game violence and its pseudo-1980s vaporwave aesthetic.
Although Hotline and The Last of Us are visually two very different games, both share contain visceral gore and task players with taking down enemies in claustrophobic spaces by creatively employing stealth and a menagerie of makeshift weapons at their disposal.
Naughty Dog is no stranger to inserting other self-referential and Sony-inspired Easter eggs into its games. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is brimming with Easter eggs, from the not-so-subtle Crash Bandicoot mini-game to a poster for an in-universe comic book series called The Last of Us: American Daughters. The studio has inserted a plethora of nods to non-Sony properties as well, such in Chapter 11 and 14 of Uncharted 4, where players can stumble upon portraits of Guybrush Threepwood from The Secret of Monkey Island. It's very likely that there will be more references like these that players will be able to find while exploring the perilous world of The Last of Us Part II.
Developed by Naughty Dog, The Last of Us Part II will be released for PlayStation 4 on June 19.