Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is Naughty Dog’s latest game, but aside from a few teasers, we haven’t really seen much of the game at all. Despite the clandestine approach, the game is actually “at the last stage of production,” according to Naughty Dog’s chief Neil Druckmann.
Speaking on Revenge Of’s Comic Creators Block Party podcast, Druckmann said Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is “at the last stage of production,” where “we can play it, and we’re refining and polishing it,” but did not reveal too many details about the game’s plot or setting outside of saying it’s Naughty Dog’s venture into science fiction.
The choice of sci-fi as the setting came from a desire to build something less grounded and more epic in scale, which, as Druckmann explains, wasn’t really possible with The Last of Us and Uncharted. However, the director said some TLOU and Uncharted DNA definitely went into the creation of Intergalactic, with that game being “a combination” of Jack & Dexter and these two mentioned IPs. Specifically, Druckmann says the studio took Uncharted‘s pulp action, TLOU‘s drama, and Jack & Dexter‘s science-fantasy and smashed them together to form this new and exciting adventure.
“We really wanted to expand our deep gameplay systems. Like, can we sustain the kind of cinematic storytelling we’re used to telling and go even deeper with gameplay,”
“We really wanted to expand our deep gameplay systems. Like, can we sustain the kind of cinematic storytelling we’re used to telling and go even deeper with gameplay?” Druckmann said.
Anime played a crucial role as inspiration for Intergalactic, the director said, naming Evangelion and Akira as key examples, and not just because of their futuristic style. Both of these anime have intricate and complex philosophical ideas which are approached in a very strange, disconnected, and weird way, or, as Druckmann puts it, they take you on a “wild ride,” and that is exactly what Naughty Dog aims to do in Intergalactic.
Druckmann added that the studio plans to reveal more of the story and the gameplay for Intergalactic next year, and that players will be surprised to see what the game is actually about.
