Neil Druckmann has shut down rumors that Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet’s story has leaked.
Earlier this week, word spread on the entire storyline for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet had leaked, opening it up to immediate scrutiny days after it was just announced. But in a post on Bluesky, Druckmann said this:
“You think you know… but you have no idea. Naughty Dog’s 5th franchise is our wildest adventure. We cannot wait to show you more!”
The statement is short and sweet, because that’s all we needed to know about the issue. We never bothered to cover the rumor because of its suspect sourcing, and we had been covering Nintendo Switch 2 rumors for weeks.
We already covered what was revealed about Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet in that initial announcement last week, but we will point out here that Druckmann has been dropping small hints and teases about this project for months now.
Just last month, he said that he had never been more excited about a Naughty Dog IP than with this one. Last May, he said that their next title could “redefine mainstream perceptions of gaming.” But Neil only let the word out that he was working on their next original IP last August 2023.
We don’t think that means that Naughty Dog is still starting work on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. On the contrary, he may not have felt comfortable about revealing they had a new IP until he was certain that they were going to take it through the finish line and not have to cancel it midway.
And if that sounds like Druckmann was being too overly cautious to you, we would remind you here that Naughty Dog literally cancelled what many PlayStation gamers would have considered manna from heaven in The Last of Us Online.
From what Naughty Dog and Druckmann have also said in previous months and years, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet may not be the only new and original game project they have in development. We would have to assume that Naughty Dog is also being overly cautious about announcing those games until they’re sure that they will be finishing and releasing them as well.
We speculated that Druckmann’s vague statements about Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet could allude to this being a media mix. With a Hollywood star cast, and heavy product placement, it doesn’t seem likely that Sony greenlit this to only be a video game franchise. So we think it’s highly possible that PlayStation worked with Sony’s entertainment division to make this game alongside a film or series.
Of course, Druckmann could have an actual surprise for us and our hypothesis could be completely off. Either way, this doesn’t seem like a project that Naughty Dog will allow to slip under fan speculation. So we’ll just have to wait for their official communications to discover the real score.
