While Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is wholly different from the studio’s past works, no one would have expected the cause for its existence to be related to the TLOU franchise. 

The Last of Us creator and Naughty Dog boss Neil Druckmann claims developers are making Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet to compensate for The Last of Us 2 fumbles. He thinks the game’s story is something gamers won’t care about as much.

Why it matters: Neil Druckmann thinks that the Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet story’s different approach will not earn them as much criticism from fans as in The Last of Us 2.

While speaking to Sony’s YouTube channel, Neil Druckmann joked that after the backlash against The Last of Us 2, the studio chose a faith and religion theme for its next game, hoping it would be less controversial.

We made a game with 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 the game.

Neil also points out that Intergalactic started development 5 years ago and will continue to evolve until launch. Fans suspect a late 2025 release, but nothing has been officially confirmed yet.

 I still don’t know exactly what this thing is going to look like at the end. I have a theory, I have an idea, but it’s still evolving and changing as we’re making it.

Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is set 2,000 years in the future, with the timeline diverging from ours in the late 1980s. It introduces a new religion on planet Sempiria that went silent 600 years ago. Many gamers have criticized the game for its female protagonist in Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
The bounty-hunter protagonist crashes on the planet while chasing a target and must uncover what went wrong. Intergalactic will focus on loneliness and discovery to make players feel lost and abandoned.