After working on The Last of Us Part II and the HBO adaptation, Neil Druckmann and Naughty Dog are gearing up to release a new IP called Intergalactic: Heretic Prophet.
Fans can only piece together some of the story details from the announcement, but Druckmann has revealed the game's core themes and how The Last of Us Part II influenced his decision.
“Let’s Do Something People Won’t Care as Much About”
In a recent interview with director Alex Garland on Creator to Creator, Druckmann talks a bit about his upcoming game and revealed that the vitriol that came out with The Last of Us Part II inspired him to make a game about an even more divisive topic.
Druckmann explains:
“It’s funny, it’s like I joke about this with a team like, ‘Oh, we made a game—with The Last of Us 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.’
“The joke is like, ‘You know what, let’s do something that people won’t care as much about. Let’s make a game about faith and religion.”
Druckmann doesn’t give any details about this new religion that will be central to the plot, but it does have something to do with the planet where the protagonist, Jordan (Tati Gabrielle), will find herself stuck. Druckmann continues:
“This new religion becomes pretty prominent. And then we spend years just building out this religion like from the original Prophet, all the way how it gets like changed and sometimes bastardized and evolves over all these years, and then like all these people… and this whole religion takes place on this one planet and then at one point, all communication stops from this planet. And you’re playing a bounty hunter that’s chasing her bounty and she crash lands on this planet.”
The Game is also about Loneliness
With The Last of Us and Uncharted having stories that emphasize connection, Druckmann does say that he wants to change that with Intergalactic in that the game will deal with the themes of loneliness. Druckmann wants to make sure that he can make the players feel isolated when they play the game.
“I really wanted to make a game about faith and religion, but also about being lonely,” said Druckmann, “So many of the previous games we’ve done, there’s always like an ally with you, and 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—again, no one has heard from this planet for 600 years—so if you ever have hoped to have a chance to get off, you have to figure out what happened here.”
With The Last of Us Part II pushing boundaries regarding how games can connect with player empathy, it will be interesting to see how Druckmann plans to do the same with loneliness.
If anything, some say that Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding also has themes of loneliness—hence the mission to connect humanity again—but Druckmann may want to do that with a different approach this time. With Death Stranding 2 set to come out, fans expect another AAA sci-fi walking simulator.
Hopefully, Druckmann has something else up his sleeve besides the retro-futuristic vibes inspired by Cowboy Bebop.
No release date has been set for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, but fans hope it will be released sometime in 2025.