Highlights

  • The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered adds a significant amount of content to the original game, including improved visuals and new gameplay modes.
  • The remastered version is filled with fan service, featuring in-game collectibles that reference past Naughty Dog titles and other video game IPs.
  • The cosmetic items in the game have deeper meanings, such as referencing Hotline Miami and Mortal Kombat.

Though its mere existence has proven to be fairly controversial, The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered does add a sizable amount of content to the original PS4 experience. Along with some shinier visuals and more consistent framerates, The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered adds insightful developer commentary, a few prototype Lost Levels to explore, a Guitar Free Play mode to mess around in, and a fully-fledged roguelike mode that's packed with hours of evolving content.

With all of this content packed in, The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered feels like more of a celebration for the four-year-old game than a greedy cash grab, and that's definitely evident in the remaster's wealth of fan service. Much like last year's Last of Us Part 1 remake, The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered is filled with in-game collectibles, many of which change the appearance of its playable characters. These cosmetics contain some major references to both past Naughty Dog titles, and fellow video game IP, with some having a little deeper meaning than the others.

The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered x Last of Us Multiplayer
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Some of The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered's Shirts Have Special Meaning

Hotline Miami Makes a Cameo In The Last of Us Part 2's Story

One of the best unlockable cosmetics for Ellie in The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered is a shirt that references Hotline Miami. An ultra-violent top-down shooter from 2012, Hotline Miami was clearly a source of inspiration for Naughty Dog when working on The Last of Us franchise, and when there was a chance to reference it in The Last of Us Part 2, Naughty Dog took that opportunity and ran with it.

During a chapter that sees Ellie sneak into WLF territory, players will sneak up behind an unsuspecting WLF soldier who's preoccupied with playing a classic model PlayStation Vita. After Ellie kills the WLF soldier—later revealed to be called Whitney—players can spot that she was in the middle of playing Hotline Miami, with the iconic synthwave soundtrack still blaring from the discarded earphones. It's one of the best, and most morbid references in The Last of Us Part 2, and it's great to see Hotline Miami get another little nod via the remaster's cosmetics.

Mortal Kombat Has Strong Ties to The Left Behind

Another great cosmetic with a whole lot of meaning behind it is The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered's Mortal Kombat shirt. In the original Left Behind DLC for the first Last of Us game, Ellie and Riley stumble upon an arcade in the dilapidated mall. With the machines themselves being broken, Riley gets Ellie to close her eyes and instead narrates a whole fighting game match while Ellie takes the sticks. Though the arcade game is called "The Turning," Riley throws in some tongue-in-cheek Mortal Kombat references, and in the HBO adaptation, they just decided to go all-out and make it Mortal Kombat 2.

Ellie Would Have Loved Sci-Fi Games Like Destiny

Though The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered's Destiny shirt reference doesn't really have any deep ties with The Last of Us franchise, Sci-Fi as a whole has a strong connection with the character of Ellie Williams. While the first Last of Us briefly hints at Ellie's love for space, the sequel explores it in quite a bit of depth, with its museum sequence still being a major highlight of the game. It seems pretty likely, then, that if Bungie's Destiny was around in The Last of Us universe, Ellie would have probably loved it.