It’s been almost a year since Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet was teased at The Game Awards 2024. Naughty Dog’s upcoming sci-fi adventure doesn’t have a release window yet, much less a trailer showing what players will spend most of the blockbuster doing. But director Neil Druckmann did confirm it will probably be the studio’s most expensive game to date and reflect its growing ambition when it comes to delivering more expansive gameplay. Maybe that’s why had to ditch working on The Last of Us season 3 for HBO alongside his duties at PlayStation.
“What can I say and not say?” the veteran developer said, tip-toeing around spoilers and PR guidelines in a new interview with Variety. “I can tell you we’re in the thick of it. We’re making it, we’re playing it. We’re firing on all cylinders.” Set in a far-flung, alternate future, Heretic Prophet follows bounty hunter Jordan A. Mun (Tati Gabrielle) who begins unraveling the secrets of a remote planet after becoming stranded there during a mission.
“I’ve said this before, but I really mean it, I’m really feeling it right now: It’s the most ambitious game we’ve ever made. It’s the most expansive game we’ve ever made, maybe the most expensive, by the time we finish it. Troy [Baker] is in the game, and it’s been five years since I’ve worked with Troy, and I’ve got to do it again, and it was a lot of fun to be on the stage with him again.”
While he hedged on the upcoming PS5 exclusive’s budget, it doesn’t seem like a shocker that it will end up costing more than the last new game Naughty Dog shipped, 2019’s The Last of Us Part II. In addition to the rising costs of development on current-gen platforms, a new IP like Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet will come with a hefty marketing price-tag as Sony tries to sell fans on the next big thing from the studio behind Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter, and Uncharted.
Druckmann did give a slight tease in the interview of what we can expect from Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet in terms of scope. “With The Last of Us, we added some RPG elements, we started playing with wide linear layouts,” he said. “Continue that trajectory forward, add sci-fi and you start to get the sense of what we’re doing, and then we’ve gotten even more ambitious than that. So really looking forward to see how it all comes together. I think you’re all going to be pleasantly surprised by it.”
While pressing up against the ceiling of vagueness, the comment seems to reaffirm that Heretic Prophet will showcase even more player freedom and agency within its world. Druckmann also confirmed actor Tony Dalton, who appears in the Last of Us TV show (he played Joel’s dad in a season two flashback), will appear in the game too, potentially alongside others from the HBO series (the show is up for three Emmys at this year’s awards ceremony on Sunday).
As for what comes after Heretic Prophet, Druckmann is still being cryptic about Naughty Dog’s future and what other projects it has in the works. There was talk of doing The Last of Us Part III after the last game but the team wanted to try something sci-fi instead. “I’m sure if Intergalactic is successful, you will see it again,” he told Variety. “Whether that will be our next game right after that, I can’t say, and I leave that door open. Not to be coy for this particular question, we want to see how we feel once we’re done with it and look at the options in front of us, because we have some other ideas that we’d like to explore as well.”
