Thank God Naughty Dog Is Doing Something Other Than The Last Of Us

I love The Last of Us and Uncharted, but I would also be content to never see another game in those series again. After all, for nearly 20 years now, Naughty Dog has been exclusively developing games in these same two franchises. Wild to think about, right? The first Uncharted game’s development began in 2005, and since then, the studio has been making either an Indiana Jones-esque romp or an entry in its prestige not-zombie soap opera. The studio that created Crash Bandicoot isn’t a stranger to spending a lot of time with one franchise, having spent full console generations on Crash and Jak & Daxter before pivoting into Uncharted during the PS3 era. But seeing the first trailer for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet at The Game Awards felt like watching the studio break free of the franchising shackles PlayStation has put it in for so long. Still, it sounds like there might be a catch.

We may have reached peak The Last of Us fatigue in the four years since Part II launched in 2020. Between remakes, remasters, and an HBO series, co-protagonists Joel and Ellie have been just about inescapable. Even as the series won awards and drew in millions of viewers, there was an overarching sense that people are tired of The Last of Us. It doesn’t help that for the last few years, the series has been prominently sticking around without giving us anything new to talk about, as every new project has been a remake or recreation of what’s already come before. So even as a third game is apparently lurking in some office drawer at Naughty Dog, we haven’t anything truly new to talk about in years. Part II is an all-time top-five game for me, and even I’m tired of retreading it, though I’ll have to do it again when the second season of the show arrives next year. So yeah, let’s finally get Naughty Dog into a fresh new universe, and not one that it’s been taking us back to for the past two or three generations.

Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is a new science fiction game in which space travel had advanced significantly by the mid-‘80s. Director Neil Druckmann has cited sci-fi anime like Akira and Cowboy Bebop as inspirations, and you can see that in just the brief glimpse we’ve gotten into the game thus far. There’s a retrofuturistic aesthetic to the first trailer, seen in details such as bounty hunter protagonist Jordan listening to compact discs and using CRT TVs in her spaceship. The game’s tone and subject matter look to be a far cry from the swashbuckling treasure-hunting and grim zombie-killing the studio has been focused on for so many years. Druckmann says it’s a “return” to the studio’s action-adventure roots which date back to the Crash Bandicoot series, though Intergalactic is clearly maintaining some of the cinematic prestige television aspirations of Naughty Dog’s recent projects. It’s exciting to see a studio of talented people getting to flex on something wholly original for the first time in so long.

Druckmann told The New York Times that the studio had “earned” the space to make something new after the success of Uncharted and The Last of Us, both of which have gone on to become multimedia franchises Sony has pushed into other mediums. I’m not thrilled to hear that Naughty Dog is seemingly attaching the same aspirations to Intergalactic, as Druckmann says that the studio is now primed to be “an I.P. powerhouse.” I could see it becoming tethered to this game just as it has been to Uncharted and The Last of Us. After the end of Uncharted 4, that series could (and should) go away, but if it’s just going to be replaced by another decades-long franchise that Naughty Dog returns to every other game, I hope it doesn’t also mean the studio won’t be free to explore its next big idea for another console generation or two. It seems safe returns to profitable franchises that are harvested again and again for every drop of profit that can be extracted is all big companies want right now, though

Astro Bot launched this year, and despite being a tribute to PlayStation history, was notably lacking in PS5 games to celebrate. As Sony’s current platform reaches the second half of its lifetime, it’s heartening to see the company’s big marquee studio get the chance to make something new, and hopefully leave an impression on the console’s legacy. I just hope that we don’t have to wait another decade to see Naughty Dog make something new once more.