As is the case with any high-profile game with little to no available footage, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet has had its reveal trailer relentlessly picked apart for clues. The high-adventure science-fiction epic is shaping up to be a significant departure for Naughty Dog, hopefully allowing the award-winning studio to spread its wings a bit and experiment with different narrative and gameplay ideas.
Among the most heavily dissected elements of the Intergalactic trailer is the protagonist’s high-tech sword. Glimpsed only briefly near the end of the cinematic, the flashy armament exudes a sort of incomprehensible futuristic power, suggesting that it will somehow be more powerful and versatile than a traditional sword. The trailer’s focus on this weapon and its unique appearance suggests that it will be among the player’s most valuable tools, maybe even being their primary option for dispatching enemies. This would mark something of a shift for Naughty Dog since, while The Last of Us does include melee options, ranged combat has always been the backbone of its modern games. It’s interesting to speculate about how a gameplay loop designed around close-quarters combat will look, and Intergalactic‘s trailer may offer a less-discussed hint about this framework.
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Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet May Have Mobile, Acrobatic Gameplay
The Intergalactic Trailer Indicates a Nimble Protagonist
Near the end of the trailer, protagonist Jordan A. Mun brandishes her high-tech sword and charges at a hostile automaton, leaping off a small boulder to initiate a strong overhead strike. This may seem like a small detail, but it’s an intentional choice on the part of the trailer’s animators and directors: the footage could have depicted Mun parrying a strike, sliding into a low attack, or performing any number of other maneuvers, thereby hinting at what the game’s actual combat would look like. The decision to incorporate this environmental traversal in the trailer could very well be sending a message about Intergalactic‘s interactive elements.
The fact that Mun leaps off a stone as part of her attack animation in this scene may speak volumes, if one assumes that Naughty Dog was as intentional as possible when developing this trailer. It could suggest an emphasis on mobility and acrobatic movement in the gameplay itself, with the player perhaps wall-running, mantling, or climbing as part of their traversal and combat moveset. But one doesn’t have to simply go off the content of the trailer to make such assumptions; there’s evidence of this design philosophy in Naughty Dog’s previous work as well.
Naughty Dog and Sony were almost certainly aware that anything and everything in the Intergalactic trailer would be picked apart by fans and analyzed for their potential gameplay or story implications. This lends credence to the idea that even small details, like the aforementioned rock-jumping, were incorporated with methodical intention.
Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us Part 2 Feature Highly Mobile Combat
It would make quite a bit of sense for Naughty Dog to build off the combat systems of its two most recent games, which would likely involve some amount of heightened mobility. In The Last of Us Part 2, both Abby and Ellie could mantle over obstacles, squeeze through cracks, and, perhaps most satisfyingly, leap off ledges to assault enemies from above. The realistic, weighty movement of these characters made this approach to combat considerably dynamic and hard-hitting.
Uncharted 4 was even more mobile thanks to the inclusion of a grapple hook, which turned Nathan Drake into something of a deadly cross between Indiana Jones and Spider-Man raining death from above. When Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet rolls around, it could very well adapt these mechanics into an even more fleshed-out, melee-centric sandbox.
Intergalactic: The Heretic Propher follows 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. 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.
- Publisher(s)
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Sony Interactive Entertainment