As the final trailer of the night, The Game Awards 2024 revealed the new Naughty Dog title Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. With games like Crash Bandicoot, Uncharted, and The Last of Us to its name, Naughty Dog has attracted a loyal following as one of the most storied developers in the industry. The studio's last new game was The Last of Us Part 2 in 2020, with remasters filling out the releases for the following years.
Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet's reveal trailer, available on the official Naughty Dog YouTube channel, shows off a space-faring setting with an interesting mix of retro and future tech. The trailer opens on a red spaceship in flight before cutting to a scene inside the craft, with the pilot getting ready to take the ship into the planet's orbit.
The trailer ends with a brief glimpse at footage on the planet, with the protagonist activating some kind of laser sword to leap into combat against a robotic enemy. The description on the YouTube upload and an official Naughty Dog blog post establish a setting of "thousands of years in the future," with the story following a bounty hunter named Jordan A. Mun. She ends up on the planet Sempiria, where the prospect of surviving and leaving the planet behind her would require her to succeed where no one else has in the past 600 years.
Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet Is A Big Shift For Naughty Dog
This Doesn't Look Like The Last Of Us
With the Uncharted series set largely in the modern era and The Last of Us in a not-so-distant future, the leap to a far-flung future marks a major change from Naughty Dog's recent works. A smattering of retro aesthetics, like a Sony CD-changer and outfits with 1980s flair, also establish a different brand of pulp. Intergalactic is Naughty Dog's fifth franchise overall, as highlighted in an Instagram post by studio head Neil Druckmann.
Most details on the game are still forthcoming, and although the blog post reveals that the game's been in development since 2020, there's no word on a potential release date or details of what the gameplay could look like. The Game Awards did reveal that the score for the game will be provided by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the duo behind Nine Inch Nails and an impressive array of film scores.
Our Take - Intergalactic Is A Welcome Sci-Fi Surprise
It's Nice To See Naughty Dog Again
The Last of Us games have proven Naughty Dog's chops when it comes to a storytelling focus, but the studio also has an impressive pedigree when it comes to pure fun. Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet might reclaim more of the sheer excitement that games like Crash Bandicoot brought to the table. The recent remasters of The Last of Us games felt somewhat redundant, so it's nice to finally have concrete proof that those haven't been the studio's main focus.
Although it's too early to form any particularly strong opinions, I was at least a little sold from the moment that The Game Awards trailer dropped the needle on "It's a Sin" by the Pet Shop Boys. Hopefully, the four years of development behind the title mean that the wait for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet to release won't be too terribly long.
