I was just as surprised as anyone when I saw the trailer for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet at The Game Awards last year, but rather than getting another linear third-person shooter, Naughty Dog may be switching things up for its upcoming sci-fi game.
Ben Hanson, formerly of Game Informer, shares a tidbit in a new MinnMax video (shared to Reddit and spotted by TheGamer) about Intergalactic. He says, "At some point on the podcast a while ago, before the reveal trailer happened, I teased that idea of, like, 'I've heard Naughty Dog's next game is very inspired by a game with a lot of player freedom.'"
When Hanson said this last October, a lot of people assumed he was referring to Elden Ring or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It turns out, some of you were right. "I think it's fine to say he now," Hanson continues. "Elden Ring is what it was compared to back then. But if I would have said, 'Naughty Dog's next game is like Elden Ring,' and then that reveal trailer comes out, we would have been lit on fire."
The trailer for Intergalactic certainly doesn't look anything like Elden Ring, but he doesn't mean the game will be a soulslike and have devilishly difficult bosses; Hanson originally highlighted the "player freedom" as the main point of comparison.
Journalist Gene Park shares a clip of an interview they did with Naughty Dog co-president and creative director Neil Druckmann in 2023 that lends credence to this theory. "I'm more recently intrigued by stuff like Elden Ring that doesn't rely as much on traditional narrative to tell its story," Druckmann says. "Some of the best storytelling is in gameplay and moving around the space and understanding a history of the space by just looking at it and examining it. To me, that's some of the best joy I get out of games that trust their audience to figure things out. That's the stuff I'm really intrigued by going forward."
That interview was conducted in 2023 when work on The Heretic Prophet would have been well underway, so it's quite likely we'll be getting a more hands-off story from Naughty Dog. I'm interested to see how the studio handles it if it's true.
Naughty Dog has done open worlds before, in the Jak series, and it also experimented with bigger levels in The Last of Us Part 2, but the story of all its games has always been very straightforward. I love FromSoftware's games and I also adore Naughty Dog's more direct methods of storytelling, but I'm always open to developers trying new things.
We won't know more about the direction of Intergalactic until we get another trailer, and who knows when that will be? Until then, check out all the upcoming video game release dates so you know what to look forward to.
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