Naughty Dog fans may not be getting the next Last of Us game yet, but director Neil Druckmann has announced his next project called Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, which stars Tati Gabrielle as the new protagonist Jordan.
With the announcement of Intergalactic this year, fans thought it would be released later in 2025 or in early 2026, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
The Heretic Prophet
According to game journalist Jason Schreier (via @CultureCrave), Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet won’t be releasing ‘until after 2026’—which means fans will have to wait over a year and a half before this game is released.
Admittedly, it’s kind of perplexing that ND would make the announcement so far away from the release date, but it has been a while since the release of The Last of Us Part II, and it’s possible that PlayStation wanted to showcase something to make fans feel like Naughty Dog isn’t just sitting on their hands and doing nothing.
It was even said that Intergalactic is the reason the Last of Us multiplayer game never happened because ND was forced to choose between working on their live service game or developing this new IP.
What’s Intergalactic Going to be about?
For now, Naughty Dog is keeping a tight lid on the exact story of Intergalactic, but Druckmann himself has said that he wants the game to focus on themes of faith, religion, and loneliness. In a recent interview, Druckmann said:
“I really wanted to make a game about faith and religion, but also about being lonely… 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.”
As far as plot points go, it’s been confirmed that this story takes place in an altered timeline where space travel is invented around the 80s; the protagonist Jordan is a bounty hunter looking for someone played by Kumail Nanjiani; and she finds herself stuck on a planet that housed a weird cult.
Intergalactic and The Last of Us
With Uncharted and The Last of Us covering two genres, Intergalactic will be Naughty Dog’s first foray into sci-fi. Admittedly, their old-gen titles like Crash Bandicoot, Jak, and Daxter had some sci-fi elements but leaned to the cartoon-y side.
Hopefully, Intergalactic would be worth the wait. With Neil Druckmann saying that The Last of Us Part III may not happen, he better have some real faith in this project to abandon Ellie for the next few years.
At least there’s still the TV series on Max.
No release date has been set for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, but if rumors are to be believed, it could come out sometime in 2027 for the PlayStation.