Naughty Dog shocked the world at The Game Awards last December when dropping the reveal trailer for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. The studio's next major franchise for PlayStation has been described as Naughty Dog's "wildest, most created story yet."
It could also be their most elaborate game in terms of offering player freedom. While Naughty Dog has dabbled with open-world play areas, most of their games are fairly straight-forward linear adventures. Their latest games like Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us Part 2 did offer open world-like zones for players to explore, but it sounds like they dive deeper into this idea of "player freedom" with Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
In a recent episode of MinnMax, founder Ben Hanson talks a bit about a rumor he heard about the game that he's sort of hinted at in the past but never elaborated on. As he explains in the video, it's claimed that Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet will take inspiration from FromSoftware's Elden Ring when it comes to exploration and giving players freedom to choose their own path.
"I've heard Naughty Dog's next game is very inspired by a game with a lot of player freedom," Hanson said, before revealing that game to be Elden Ring.
He continued: "Elden Ring is what it ws compared too... It's taking place on one planet, uncovering the history of this world, you can kinda see a little bit where they might be going with that."
Intergalactic's first trailer, while impressive, offered little in terms of actual gameplay detail. We know the game is set in a retro-futuristic sci-fi universe -- an alternate historical timeline that's heavily influenced by the 1980s. The game stars Jordan A. Mun (portrayed by actress Tati Gabrielle), a dangerous bounty hunter who is tracking a man named Colin Graves (portrayed by Kumail Nanjiani). While hunting Graves, she crashes on a mysterious planet that has remained cut off from communication for centuries.
In a recent interview with Alex Garland, the writer of zombie movie 28 Days Later, Intergalactic writer/director Neil Druckmann shared a bit more details about the game, revealing it's about "faith and religion." He teased that the game features a "pretty prominent religion" which has "changed and bastardzied and evolved" over the years.
"This whole religion takes place on this one planet, and then at one point, all communication stops," Druckmann said. "And you're playing a bounty hunter that's chasing her bounty, and she crash lands on this planet."
"So many of the previous games we've done, there's always, like, an ally with you," he continued. "I really want you to be lost in a place that you're really confused about what happened here, who are the people here, what was their history. And in order to get off this planet — again, no one has been heard from this planet for 600 years or so — if you ever have hoped to have a chance to get off, you have to figure out what happened here."
When you hear that description, it's becomes a bit more easier to understand the possible inspiration from Elden Ring, which drops you into The Lands Between -- a vast, open-world fantasy realm -- and gives you the freedom to explore at your own pace. Druckmann's description of Intergalactic, especially the idea of being lost and alone on an alien planet and confused about what happened here, very much aligns with the feeling of being dropped into The Lands Between in Elden Ring.
There's no launch window for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. Developed by Naughty Dog, it will be a PlayStation exclusive, though by the time it's released it could be for PlayStation 6.