In an interesting one-to-one creator chat with film director Alex Garland (Civil War, Dredd, Ex Machina, Annihilation, 28 Days Later), Naughty Dog game director and designer Neil Druckmann discussed the studio's next sci-fi project, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, announced at The Game Awards 2024.
Druckmann said that faith and religion are heavy themes that Naughty Dog spent a lot of time outlining, with a fully-fledged timeline that the writers took years to fine-tune. Moreover, unlike previous Naughty Dog games like Jak and Daxter, Uncharted, and The Last of Us, protagonist Jordan A. Mun (played by Tati Gabrielle) and, by extension, the player, will be lonely.
It takes place 2,000 years in an alternate future that deviates in the late 80s. We spent years just coming up with that timeline. It's funny. I joked about this with the team. With The Last of Us Part II, we made certain creative decisions that got us a lot of hate. A lot of people love it, but a lot of people hate that game. So, you know what, let's do something that people won't care as much about; let's make a game about faith and religion.
In this alternate history timeline, where the timeline deviates, this new religion becomes pretty prominent and then we spent years just building out this religion, from the original prophet all the way to how it gets changed and sometimes bastardized and evolves over all these years. This whole religion takes place on this one planet and then at one point, all communication stops from this planet. In Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, you're playing a bounty hunter that's chasing her bounty and she crash lands on this planet. I really wanted to make a game about faith and religion but also about just being lonely.
So many of the previous games we've done, there's always an ally with you, and you're talking to them. I really want you to be lost in a place that you're really confused about what happened here, who are the people here, what was their history. And in order to get off this planet, like, again, no one has been heard from this planet for 600 years, so if you ever hope to have a chance to get off, you have to figure out what happened here.
Druckmann also admitted that the developers still have 'a ways to go', suggesting that it might be a while before gamers actually get to play it. He even added he doesn't know exactly what Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is going to look like in its final incarnation, because it's still evolving and changing during development.
It certainly sounds like the studio is all-in, though, which makes a lot of sense after Druckmann's recent comment that there may be no more The Last of Us games.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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