We finally know what Naughty Dog's new game is, and it's...well, it's pretty different to The Last of Us, by the looks of things. Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is a sci-fi action game that's "currently in development for the PlayStation 5 console".
Naughty Dog announced Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet during yesterday's Game Awards ceremony, which is also where we learned that Hideki Kamiya will be returning to direct a sequel to 2006 Zelda-esque action-adventure game Okami.
As studio head Neil Druckmann says in a followup PlayStation Blog post, Naughty Dog has been working on this game since it released The Last of Us Part 2 in 2020, and it'll be the studio's "wildest, most creative story yet", according to Druckmann.
Naughty Dog's new game revolves around Jordan A. Mun, a "dangerous bounty hunter" who finds herself stranded on a distant planet known as Sempiria.
The planet's communication with the rest of the universe "went dark" hundreds of years in the past, and Mun will have to find out why if she wants "to be the first person in over 600 years to leave its orbit".
Although the debut trailer does look rather different tonally from The Last of Us (including an appearance by the excellent Pet Shop Boys album Actually, of all things), Druckmann says it'll still offer "an emotional, character-driven epic journey".
He also promises "the deepest gameplay in Naughty Dog's history", with the studio "taking our learnings from our previous franchises and pushing them beyond anything we've ever done before".
Mun will be played by Tati Gabrielle, who you may know as The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina's Prudence or the Uncharted movie's Jo Braddock. Coincidentally, she'll also be appearing as Nora in the upcoming second season of the TV adaptation of The Last of Us.
It's not clear whether or not this is the project on which Naughty Dog's new art director Raf Grassetti is working, but we do know that soundtrack duties will be handled by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, also known as Nine Inch Nails.
That wasn't all Naughty Dog revealed during yesterday's show, either. The Last of Us Part 2's long-awaited PC port was also finally unveiled, and it's hitting Steam on April 3rd.
We likely won't hear much from Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet for a while; Naughty Dog says its staff will "put our heads back down" to work on the game "for now", so stay tuned for more on this.
