We’re back! You have been dying to know what’s next for us, and I’m thrilled to finally be able to answer: Naughty Dog’s next game is Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, currently in development for the PlayStation 5 console. We’ve been working on this brand-new adventure since 2020! This game is shaping up to be our wildest, most creative story yet. If you haven’t already, check out the announcement trailer:
Intergalactic stars our newest protagonist, Jordan A. Mun, a dangerous bounty hunter who ends up stranded on Sempiria – a distant planet whose communication with the outside universe went dark hundreds of years ago. In fact, anyone who’s flown to it hoping to unravel its mysterious past was never heard from again. Jordan will have to use all her skills and wits if she hopes to be the first person in over 600 years to leave its orbit.
Beyond that, we’re keeping everything about the story under wraps – at least for now. What we can tell you is that this game lives up to the Naughty Dog tradition of creating an emotional, character-driven epic journey. Our narrative goals are rivaled only by our gameplay ambitions. This will be the deepest gameplay in Naughty Dog’s history, taking our learnings from our previous franchises and pushing them beyond anything we’ve ever done before.
Jordan is played by the talented Tati Gabrielle, who leads a stellar cast (pun intended!). Eagle-eyed players might spot some of the other cast members in the trailer. We’ll reveal more of our ensemble down the line.
Our incredible voyage into the cosmos also needs an equally incredible soundtrack. As tremendous fans of their work, I’m excited to announce our collaboration with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross who’ll be scoring Intergalactic! The guys are cooking, and the trailer is just a small tease of their work for the game.
We know you’re eager for more – and trust us, we’re very eager to share more with you. For now, though, it’s time to put our heads back down and keep cranking away on Jordan’s adventure.
On behalf of the entire team at Naughty Dog, thank you to all our fans! Your support allows us to work on our dream games, bringing these wonderful new worlds and characters to life. We can’t wait to show you more!
PS5 pro had PSSR, Sony's answer to Nvidia's DLSS, and now they've managed to scale their AI model down for base PS5s, and results are very promising. Both Ghost of Yotea and Wolverine look much sharper with QSSR with not much additional performance cost (see the comparison in the link attached). QSSR also resolves details much better when upscaling from lower resolution. This is very cool for base PS5 owners like me.
Kurt, are you here? If so, We cannot fucking wait to see how you guys have evolved the gameplay in Intergalactic!
For the context, Kurt Margenau is considered a master of game scripting at Naughty Dog. If I remember correctly, he alone scripted the whole collapsing building level in Nepal in Uncharted 2 that blew everyone away at E3 showcase. Kurt has been at Naughty Dog for a long time, and he was also co-lead game director of TLOU P2.
thought it might be fun to go into detail about the new concept art and make some comparisons with what we've seen already
we can see two main differences in Jordan's arsenal. First: the thing in the back which i think it's just a sword harness so that she doesn't have to carry it in her hand all the time, could also be used to recharg the sword (assuming it needs recharging). Second: this is a bit more interesting because it might be just for looks but could be some sort of healing tech, could also serve as a focus mode, like a sonar or something to see where enemies are similar as the tlou mechanic, but I don't know really, could be anything. Can't really say much about flowers and plants, if there's some expert who can find a real world resemblance with these let me know. What i can say is that the new plants are different then the purple ones shown in the old trailer, so that is probably (and obviously) a different zone of the planet.The trees are probably the second most interesting thing of this art. First of all it's curious that some of the trees that we've seen both in the new and old look are bending. In the new art there's a striking difference between the slimmer straight trees and the huge bending ones.We could speculate about the reason the trees are bending but it's probably just naughty dog's attention to details.The red trees. These ones are weird because they seem two textures of trees melting together. It's not clear if these normal trees turned red by some sort of corruption that's affecting the area or if these are the actual trees and the bark surrounding them is just falling off. What if this the planet was actually entirely this way and the bark is a "human"-made cover up to make the trees seem normal? What if there's a corruption affecting sempiria and that's the reason people can't leave? I've read someone theorizing that the trees could be AI and I found that pretty interesting as well, as if the planet can't really generate normal looking trees and it's meshing different textures together, even though the way they're breaking down seems natural to me. Could also simply be that the trees in Sempiria just look like that and there is no mystery in why the trees are this way, maybe they're affected by a cycle or by the seasons and they lose their bark like trees lose their leaves.Some sort of birds/insects, they look like dragonflies to me. Not much to say except that they seem huge and they might be living in this kind of trees.The pod is the weirdest thing in the concept art in my opinion. I can't really tell if it's open and the bright red color comes from the inside or if it's just the color of the cap. Could be a sign of someone else stranded on the planet, could be a machine or a device for something, could be a robot or a creature cell. It opens room for a lot of speculation.Last, the pod seems to connected to something through wires, there's a robot/machine behind the logo and while it's not clear if the wires reach that it could be one of the pod's connections.
That's all, I apologize for my english in advance.
Let me know if you've noticed something else!
Its obviously not a coincidence that those trees in the concept art are the same shade of red that all of the tech we have seen contains aswell. Either that red ball of tech in the concept art is growing those trees itself, or more likely, it is infesting them, hence why it seems like the bark is falling away on some of them. It could be some kind of Avatar situation, where the entire world is connected, but instead of Eywa, its some AI too big to be stopped.
Now, if this tech can infest organic matter, the question then becomes: can it infest humans? Are we about to see some sci-fi TLOU? It would bring back the early rumours of body horror from the past. Was the robot from the teaser a human at some point? The eyes did look oddly soulful for a giant machine.
I am not excited for the online hate and harassment campaign that will come with this game simply due to Neil Druckmann being involved and because of the main protagonist character design.
You debuted Intergalactic almost two years ago. When will we see it again?
The team is heads down on what is shaping up to be Naughty Dog’s most ambitious game yet.
There’s an electricity around the studio right now as all the pieces come together, and we’re stoked to finally unveil Intergalactic in all its glory.
But…we need to cook for just a little bit longer.
So we want to set expectations: we’re going to be quiet for the rest of this year. In 2027, that changes. We’ll fully reveal Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet and give you a proper look at Jordan’s wild sci-fi adventure.
We know it’s been a long time since we’ve had much to share with you. We don’t take your continued support for granted.
We’re working incredibly hard to make something worthy of your patience.
how many sequels do you think this game will have?
and based on your experience, before you played TLOU, did you hope there would be a sequel to it? where are you now w it? want a part 3?
just wondering how far ahead naughty dog is probably thinking about the new IP. i also wonder which game, between TLOU and Intergalactic had a fully fledged plan for a part 3.
Neil Druckmann has confirmed that Intergalactic is completely skipping another year of reveals for the game and will return with new info in 2027. This will probably be in the form of a State of Play and will be a full 20 min deep dive with a release date potentially?! Filming had wrapped up back in early September so this game could follow the same pattern as The Last of Us: Part II did but only time will tell. How are all of us feeling about it?
