Neil Druckmann reveals new details about Naughty Dog's Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, says it's 'a game about faith and religion' and wants players to be 'lost' and 'confused'

The main character from Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet performing a jump attack on a robot enemy.
(Image credit: Naughty Dog/Sony)

  • The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann has revealed that Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet will be about "faith and religion"
  • The team spent years developing "this new religion" that takes place on one planet
  • Druckmann said the player will crash land on this planet and need to figure out how to escape, saying, "I want you to be lost in a place that you're really confused about what happened here"

Naughty Dog co-president Neil Druckmann has revealed new details about the studio's new game Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

In an almost one-hour-long Sony 'Creator to Creator' discussion, Druckmann, alongside 28 Years Later director Alex Garland, sat down to discuss their mutual inspirations and their respective process in how they each tackle their creative process.

On the topic of Naughty Dog's next major title Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, Druckmann revealed that it will take place "2000 years in an alternate future that deviates in the late 80s". The game director then joked that the game will receive less hate than the divisive The Last of Us: Part 2, since it's about "faith and religion".

"I joke about this with the team," Druckmann said, "With The Last of Us 2, 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," to which Garland said, "Who gives a sh*t."

"Exactly. But 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 said.

Creator to Creator: Neil Druckmann (The Last of Us) & Alex Garland (28 Years Later) | Sony - YouTube Creator to Creator: Neil Druckmann (The Last of Us) & Alex Garland (28 Years Later) | Sony - YouTube
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Speaking more on the game's narrative, Druckmann added, "So there is not only in this alternate history timeline, we've made this - where the where the timeline deviates - this new religion becomes pretty prominent and then we spend years just building out this religion like from the original prophet all the way [to] how it gets like changed and sometimes bastardised and evolves over all these years."

Druckmann continued, revealing that this religion takes place on one planet until, one day, all communication suddenly stops. The playable character and bounty hunter, Jordan A Mun, who is chasing her bounty, eventually crash lands on this planet alone and is left to figure out how to escape.

On top of tackling faith and religion, Druckmann said that he wanted to also focus on isolation.

"So many of the previous games we've done there's always like an ally with you," he said. "I really want you to be lost in a place that you're really confused about what happened here, [about] 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 have hoped to have a chance to get off you have to figure out what happened here."

Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet doesn't have a release date just yet, but we can expect the game to get a PS5 launch.

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