Neil Druckmann, renowned for his work on The Last of Us, has unveiled significant details about Naughty Dog’s upcoming game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. Announced at The Game Awards in December 2024, the game is set in a retrofuturistic universe where advanced space travel existed by 1986. Players will follow Jordan A. Mun, a bounty hunter portrayed by Tati Gabrielle, who becomes stranded on the isolated planet Sempiria while pursuing the Five Aces crime syndicate. For over 600 years, Sempiria has been cut off from external contact, and Jordan’s quest to escape involves battling hostile, blade-wielding robots.

The narrative delves into themes of faith and religion, exploring what happens when individuals place their trust in various institutions. Druckmann and his team have spent years developing a fictional religion within the game’s universe, tracing its evolution from its inception to its transformation over millennia. This deep world-building aims to provide players with a rich and immersive experience.

Gameplay-wise, Intergalactic draws inspiration from titles like Half-Life 2 and Monkey Island, promising a unique experience distinct from Naughty Dog’s previous works. Druckmann emphasizes a desire for players to feel lost and confused, mirroring the protagonist’s isolation on the alien planet. This approach marks a departure from the more relationship-focused narratives of earlier games from the studio.

The development, initiated in 2020, involves over 250 Naughty Dog employees. The game’s score is composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. While Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is currently slated as a PlayStation 5 exclusive, there are plans for a subsequent PC release.

So to recap

• Set 2000 years in the future.
• Alternate universe where the timeline deviates from ours in the 1980s.
• A mysterious new religion forms around this time and starts to take hold.
• Naughty Dog spent “years” working on the timeline and how the religion changed throughout the years.
• Naughty Dog’s previous games have always had an ally/companion, so they wanted you to feel lost and alone in a mysterious universe this time.
• “I really wanted to make a game about faith and religion – but also about being lonely.”
• No one has been heard from on this planet for 600 years.
• Neil Druckmann specifically calls out Half-Life 2 and the Monkey Island games as some of his favorite examples of storytelling. Mentions the fact that HL2 has less handholding and trusts the player to put together the pieces themselves.
• Neil jokes: “With TLOU2, we made certain creative decisions that got us a lot of hate. A lot of people love it, a lot of people hated it […] The joke is, you know what let’s do something that people won’t care as much about. Let’s make a game about faith and religion.”
• “We still have a ways to go.”

As of now, no specific release date has been announced. But very excited to find out now be sure to let us know what you think of all this.