After four years of silence, Naughty Dog finally unveiled its next big game at The Game Awards last week. It’s called Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, and as rumors suggested, it is indeed a sci-fi game. As a fan of speculative fiction, ’80s aesthetics, and Naughty Dog, I’m extremely excited to get my hands on the studio’s first original game since 2013. But after an evocative trailer that showed off gorgeous cosmic vistas, I worry the final game may end up being a little too down to earth.
Sempiria Looks Familiar
That’s because, at the end of the trailer, we see our bounty hunter hero setting off to fight a robotic monster on the surface of a planet that looks a lot like our own. And it seems like that planet is where we’ll be spending the bulk of the game.
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“Intergalactic stars our newest protagonist, Jordan A. Mun, a dangerous bounty hunter who ends up stranded on Sempiria – a distant planet whose communication with the outside universe went dark hundreds of years ago,” Naughty Dog studio head Neil Druckmann says on the PlayStation Blog. “In fact, anyone who’s flown to it hoping to unravel its mysterious past was never heard from again. Jordan will have to use all her skills and wits if she hopes to be the first person in over 600 years to leave its orbit.”
That sure makes it sound like most of Intergalactic is going to be spent on Sempiria. The planet doesn’t look particularly different from something you would see in the dreary post-apocalypse of The Last of Us series. The ground is covered in muddy water, with terrestrial grass and plants. The arena is surrounded by what look like pine trees. The sky is gray and the air is filled with fog. There is a red celestial body in the distance, but otherwise, it looks like… the woods.
Is This Glimpse Of Sempiria Too Simple?
This conclusion ended the trailer on an unexpectedly down note, given how much I was vibing with it until then. I go to sci-fi (and space operas like Intergalactic in particular) for strange new worlds, bustling metropolises, weird species, bold ideas, and the sense that the universe is full of adventure and mystery. What’s the point of making a sci-fi game if it’s going to be set on a planet that looks like our own?
That being, my initial response has me suspecting that Naughty Dog is faking us out. The trailers for The Last of Us Part 2 made it seem like Dina was the one who Ellie would be avenging, not Joel. The first CG trailer, revealed in 2016, showed Joel speaking to Ellie in the aftermath of the tragedy that would set her on the path to revenge, despite the fact that, in the final game, Joel would be the one Ellie would be seeking revenge for. Naughty Dog even straight-up lied with one of its trailers, subbing Joel into a scene in Seattle with a line that, in the final game, would be spoken by Jesse.
So, the brief glimpse we get of Sempiria is not the whole story. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the actual planet in the game begins with these murky brown and gray tones before giving way to a vibrant, colorful planet that hews closer to the bright reds and blues of the rest of the trailer. Maybe we’ll find that Sempiria is full of biodiversity and interesting cultures. Maybe we’ll get off the planet way sooner than Naughty Dog is making it seem and set off to explore the galaxy. Or maybe this is just cope. Time will tell.
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