Neil Druckmann wants players to feel ‘Lost and Confused’ in Naughty Dog’s Next Game Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet

It seems acclaimed developer Naughty Dog’s next videogame Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet will take a vastly different approach to what players have experienced from their previous titles, as Neil Druckmann said in a recent interview with Alex Garland, the writer of 28 days later. Druckmann also confirmed in the interview that Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet has been in development for over four years, which does make the upcoming game one of the most ambitious titles from Naughty Dog.

“I joke about this with the team. We made a game, 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,” Druckmann stated.

“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”, he added.

As far as it’s currently known, Naughty Dog’s next game Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet takes place in an alternate historical timeline with a “pretty prominent religion” that has existed and evolved throughout many years. The game stars Jordan A. Mun as Tati Gabrielle, a bounty hunter who has to use all her skills and wits in order to leave the orbit of the planet she will find herself in at one point in the game.

“This whole religion takes place on this one planet, and then at one point, all communication stops,” Druckmann hinted. “And you’re playing a bounty hunter that’s chasing her bounty, and she crash lands on this planet.”

“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, who are the people here, what was their history. And in order to get off this planet — again, no one has been heard from this planet for 600 years or so — if you ever have hoped to have a chance to get off, you have to figure out what happened here.”

While it all sounds refreshingly new, we’ll have to see how the game turns out as it approaches release.