Ever since the reveal of Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, the next big game from The Last of Us studio Naughty Dog, I have been mumbling “Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet” to myself. So many words! It didn’t help that the trailer for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet was light on story or gameplay details, but mood-forward, teasing a retrofuture space odyssey full of bounty hunters and ’80s pop-rock. All I had was repeating “Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet” to anyone who would listen. But now, in a new conversation with filmmaker Alex Garland (Civil War, Ex Machina), Naughty Dog lead Neil Druckmann has pulled back the curtain on what to expect from Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
Druckmann says he’s been at work on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet for four years. He caveats most of what he divulges with a note that, while it took years and years to formulate the mythology that acts as a basis for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, as in all things game development, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is subject to change. But for now, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is set 2,000 years in the future, in an alternate timeline that split from our current reality in the 1980s.
Whatever incident caused that fracture in time in Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet also spawned a new religion. To create this reality within Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, Druckmann and his Naughty Dog team mapped out the full 2,000 years of the religion’s expansion throughout society, from its “original prophet” to how it inevitably “was changed and was bastardized and evolved” over two millennia. Garland is quick to note that the “2,000 years in the future” setting doesn’t seem like a coincidence based on other prominent prophets from around 2,000 years ago. One assumes players will eventually meet the Heretic Prophet of the game, which is called Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
“With The Last of Us 2, we made a lot of creative decisions that got us a lot of hate,” Druckmann admits. “So the joke is that, hey, let’s do something people won’t care as much about: faith and religion!”
Throughout the hour of gushing over art and congratulating one another, Druckmann expresses a love for everything from Half-Life 2 to the Monkey Island games (“Monkey Island 2 has my favorite ending of any video game — of any medium”). He doesn’t quite connect those dots to Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, but the gameplay sounds closer to a lonely exploration adventure than The Last of Us or Part 2.
In Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, players assume the role of a bounty hunter who crashes on a desolate planet — the current home to of the established religious order from 2,000 years ago. “This whole religion takes place on this one planet and at one point all communication stops from this planet,” Druckmann says. When the bounty hunter crash lands, she’ll have to understand what happened on this strange planet in order to escape. “I really want you to be lost in a place, really confused by the place, who are the people, what is their history.”
There’s something about space that brings out the religion in nerds — the team behind Starfield had it on the brain, too — and it sounds like Druckmann fully intends to get heady about the possibilities (while also luxuriating in a future where people still use CDs). We’ll know more when Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet arrives… well, definitely before The Last of Us Part 3.
[mumbles to self] Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
Source：https://www.polygon.com/news/537544/neil-druckmann-naughty-dog-intergalactic-heretic-prophet-religion
