Naughty Dog’s next game, Intergalactic, is still seeing changes even as it is being developed, according to studio head and creative director Neil Druckmann. Speaking about the game on a recent episode of Sony’s Creator to Creator series, Druckmann spoke about how things aren’t quite set in stone for how Intergalactic will play out.
Druckmann spoke about how, while he has a general idea of how he hopes Intergalactic pans out, since the game is still under development, it is “still evolving and changing” throughout the process.
“Again, these things are so complex and big and there’s so many people involved,” said Druckmann. “It’s like, I still don’t know exactly what this thing is going to look like at the end. I have a theory, I have an idea, but it’s still evolving and changing as we’re making it.”
Druckmann has previously spoken about Intergalactic, describing it as having “the deepest gameplay in Naughty Dog’s history.” While he didn’t reveal too many details about the upcoming title, he did talk about about how the game will use everything Naughty Dog has learned so far about making games.
“What we can tell you is that this game lives up to the Naughty Dog tradition of creating an emotional, character-driven epic journey,” wrote Druckmann about Intergalactic. “Our narrative goals are rivaled only by our gameplay ambitions. This will be the deepest gameplay in Naughty Dog’s history, taking our learnings from our previous franchises and pushing them beyond anything we’ve ever done before.”
Intergalactic was unveiled back in December 2024 during The Game Awards with a trailer. While we didn’t get to see much in the way of gameplay, the trailer did showcase the general themes of the game, as well as letting us know that it will be in the sci-fi genre. The game is currently in development for PS5, and doesn’t yet have a release date.
In Intergalactic, players will be put in the shoes of protagonist Jordan A. Mun, who ends up stranded on a remote planet named Sempiria. This planet had “gone dark” hundreds of years ago, with little in the way of investigations into its nature having panned out since then. Mun has to figure out how to escape from not only the planet, but its orbit as well.
More recently, former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida revealed that the studio’s work on The Last of Us Online was cancelled so that it could focus its efforts on Intergalactic. He also revealed that he had played an early build of The Last of Us Online, describing it as being “great”.
“The idea for The Last of Us Online came from Naughty Dog and they really wanted to make it,” said Yoshida. “But Bungie explained [to them] what it takes to make live service games, and Naughty Dog realised, ‘Oops, we can’t do that! If we do it, we can’t make Intergalactic.’ So that was a lack of foresight.”
While Naughty Dog and Sony have been quiet about Intergalactic, here are 10 details we’ve learned about the upcoming game.
