After becoming known for cinematic storytelling and heartbreaking realism through franchises such as The Last of Us and Uncharted, Neil Druckmann said his next video game would take place in the fantastical reaches of space, where a tattooed bounty hunter watches anime and drives a Porsche-branded rocket ship.
“The story is quite ambitious,” centering on a fictitious religion and “what happens when you put your faith in different institutions,” said Druckmann, studio head of Naughty Dog, a development company owned by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Druckmann has also written and directed episodes of HBO’s “The Last of Us,” which tells a story of grief and grudges in postapocalyptic America.
The new game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, was announced on Thursday in a cryptic trailer at the Game Awards that showed a few seconds of gameplay in which the protagonist battles a hulking cyborg with swordlike weapons. The story is set in an alternative universe where space travel has significantly advanced by 1986.
Druckmann declined to share many details about Intergalactic, which is the first original story he and his team have created in almost 15 years and does not have a release date. But he said it was a return to Naughty Dog’s roots in the action-adventure genre that helped build the studio’s reputation with franchises like Crash Bandicoot. It takes inspiration, he said, from classic anime like the 1988 movie “Akira” and the 1990s series “Cowboy Bebop.”
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who have composed film scores for “Challengers” and “The Social Network,” wrote the soundtrack for Intergalactic. Tati Gabrielle (“Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) will star as the bounty hunter, Jordan Mun, and Kumail Nanjiani (“Silicon Valley”) will play Colin Graves, one of her wanted men.
Gabrielle was a standout during the casting process, said Druckmann, who has worked with her several times. She was the villain in the “Uncharted” movie and will play Nora in the second season of “The Last of Us.”
“She has this intimidating presence to her,” he said. “We brought her in for an audition, and she blew us away. It was one of those moments — like when I first saw Ashley Johnson as Ellie,” one of the main characters from The Last of Us.
More than 250 Naughty Dog employees have worked on Intergalactic over the past four years, in addition to outside artists in Druckmann’s network.
Druckmann, 46, said that the chance to make something new was earned after a string of successful games — The Last of Us franchise has sold more than 37 million copies, Naughty Dog said early last year — and that he did not feel like he had something to prove at this point in his career.
Developing new intellectual property can be nerve-racking because of the financial investment; Naughty Dog has had a series of layoffs over the past two years and underwent a restructuring that Druckmann said would ensure the company could operate as “an I.P. powerhouse.”
“It is about striking a balance of business and art,” he said. “It is not just jumping on any opportunity to increase our bottom line.”
Druckmann said he was keenly aware that some gamers have eagerly awaited news about Intergalactic.
“It’s really hard to work on these things in secret and silence for so many years,” he said, “and then to see our fans go on social media and say, ‘Enough with the remasters and remakes! Where are your new games and new I.P.s?’”
He added, “We are finally starting to lift the curtain on this thing.”
Zachary Small is a Times reporter writing about the art world’s relationship to money, politics and technology. More about Zachary Small
-1730081953-q80.webp "WATCH: 49ers and Cowboys Come to Blows on Sunday Night Football")
