Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet Reportedly Won’t Make 2026, Neil Druckmann Tells IGN ‘We Are Playing It at the Office and It’s Incredible’

With the wait for The Witcher 4 set to head into 2027, it’s a similar story for Naughty Dog’s recently announced Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier took to ResetEra to say neither The Witcher 4 nor Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet will be out next year.

That means like The Witcher 4, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet will be released in 2027 at the earliest. And, like The Witcher 4, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet will face questions around whether or not it’s targeting the PlayStation 5 or the inevitable PlayStation 6, or, perhaps most likely, is a cross-gen game.

If Intergalactic heads straight to PS6, Naughty Dog faces the prospect of having skipped the PS5 generation in terms of brand new games. So far, the studio has released ports, remasters, and remakes on Sony’s current-gen console, including The Last of Us Part II, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, The Last of Us Part I, and The Last of Us Part II Remastered.

Naughty Dog revealed Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet at The Game Awards 2024. It features a star-studded cast that includes Tati Gabrielle from the Uncharted movie as protagonist Jordan A. Mun, and Kumail Nanjiani of Marvel’s Eternals as a man called Colin Graves.

But fans have analysed the trailer, below, to piece together the rest of the cast, and though it focuses on just a couple of characters, a photo of what appears to be a crew revealed even more.

Earlier this month, The Last of Us director Neil Druckmann shared more details about Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

In an interview with Alex Garland, the writer of zombie movie 28 Days Later, Druckmann talked candidly about the development process, confirming Intergalactic had been in the works for four years already.

“I joke about this with the team. We made a game, 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 that game,” Druckmann said, to which Garland joked: “Who gives a shit?”

“Exactly,” Druckmann added. “But the joke is like, you know what, let’s do something that people won’t care as much about — let’s make a game about faith and religion.”

Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet takes place in an alternate historical timeline and features a “pretty prominent religion,” too, which has “changed and bastardized and evolved” over the years.

“This whole religion takes place on this one planet, and then at one point, all communication stops,” Druckmann teased. “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 said. “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.”

Assuming Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet releases in 2027, and taking into account Druckmann’s comment about it being in development for four years so far, by the time the game comes out it will have been in the works for six years.

It’s a pretty long wait, but speaking to IGN on the red carpet ahead of The Last of Us Season 2 premiere, Druckmann said that Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is not only playable right now, but “really good.”

“I will say we are playing it at the office and it’s incredible,” Druckmann teased. “It’s really good. I’m so excited to finally put gameplay out into the world and show people about it, because we just showed you the very, very, very tip on the iceberg. The game goes pretty deep beyond that.”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.