So turning to “Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.” That was a huge announcement for you all out of the Game Awards last December. You’ve said Naughty Dog has been working on it since 2020 — where you are in the process right now, and will we see or hear more about it at one of PlayStation’s upcoming State of Play presentations?
What can I say and not say? I can tell you we’re in the thick of it. We’re making it, we’re playing it. We’re firing on all cylinders. I’ve said this before, but I really mean it, I’m really feeling it right now: It’s the most ambitious game we’ve ever made. It’s the most expansive game we’ve ever made, maybe the most expensive, by the time we finish it. Troy [Baker] is in the game, and it’s been five years since I’ve worked with Troy, and I’ve got to do it again, and it was a lot of fun to be on the stage with him again.
As far as when we’re going to show stuff, I’m so antsy to show it and talk about it because the trailer that we showed doesn’t even scratch the surface of what this game actually is. But announcing a game like this, especially when it’s new IP, especially when it’s coming out of Naughty Dog, you’ve got to coordinate with marketing, with PR, with a bunch of people. So it’d be foolish for me to say when we’re gonna show something right now.
You’ve described “Intergalactic” multiple times now as having “the deepest gameplay” in Naughty Dog’s history. Can you tease that out a little bit more?
I’m not sure that I can. You could look at our previous titles and see the evolution of going from “Uncharted,” where we’re really cutting our teeth on realistic character-action game, third-person shooter, combined with emotional storytelling. With “The Last of Us,” we added some RPG elements, we started playing with wide linear layouts. Continue that trajectory forward, add sci-fi and you start to get the sense of what we’re doing, and then we’ve gotten even more ambitious than that. So really looking forward to see how it all comes together. I think you’re all going to be pleasantly surprised by it.
I was really excited to see Tati Gabrielle’s casting reveal as the lead for “Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.” How did that casting come about?
We were already writing for a long time. It’s very hard to make a sci-fi game, especially from a writing standpoint and compared to “Uncharted” or “The Last of Us,” because those are — despite the infected and the supernatural elements of “Uncharted” — they’re very grounded. Here, we have to not only come up with the universe and what are the rules of the universe? What’s this history? Because we’re jumping 2,000 years in an alternate future. We also have to figure out the lore of this planet, Sempiria, that Jordan, our hero, ends up on and has to work to escape from.
So I had some idea of who the character was. But the way we write in games, a little bit different from the show, is that we outline for a really long time and make all these documents and backstories, but try to save writing scripts for as long as possible, because the big unknown is gameplay. Gameplay is often very theoretical, and then you try to implement it, and you have to run experiments and prototypes and then see what works, what doesn’t work, and sometimes the things that don’t work or do work will dictate the kind of story you can tell. So you don’t want to get attached to a bunch of details that then you have to throw away and try to stay very high level.
We were kind of at that stage when we started talking to Tati. That came about because we had just cast her in Season 2 [of “The Last of Us”], and just got the idea that she might be perfect for this role. Then when she showed up, she came by Naughty Dog, I pitched her the story as it was at the time, and we kind of walked through it beginning, middle, end and explained what her role would be. I asked her if she’d be willing to audition, and she was. We had her on stage, and I asked Troy to come in and read with her, so she read against Troy Baker. We were just very confident that is our Jordan A. Mun.
Ever since then, I’ve been writing with her. Just like when I worked with Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker on “The Last of Us,” and how much they influence the characters, she has been just as influential in the writing and the thinking of this character her arc, and I believe she’s gonna be very iconic and complex and interesting in the Naughty Dog tradition.
Are you looking at any other “The Last of Us” Season 1 or Season 2 stars to bring into the “Intergalactic” cast?
Well, I worked with Tony Dalton on Episode 206, he played Joel’s dad, and immediately when I finished shooting we had this role for “Intergalactic.” I DM’d him on Instagram, like “Hey, man, I don’t know if you’ve done video games before or performance capture, but I think you’d be perfect for this. Do you mind jumping on a Zoom call? I just want to show you something.” We jumped on a Zoom call, and I showed him parts of the game, and I talked to him about it. He’s like, “Yeah, I’m in. I’d love to do it.” So Tony Dalton is there, and maybe there’s a few more.
“Uncharted” has been adapted, obviously, “The Last of Us” has been adapted. Are you in talks for adapting “Intergalactic” for TV or film now — because this would be the first time that you’re in a position to try and plan for both the game and the adaptation from the beginning?
There’s just ongoing conversations around “Uncharted,” “The Last of Us” and now “Intergalactic,” as far as different adaptations or expansions. With “The Last of Us,” we did a graphic novel, for a while we were working on movie that didn’t work out and it became a TV show. And there’s more stuff happening in “The Last of Us” world that has not been announced. But we have already had studios approach us with about “Intergalactic” — just having seen the trailer, they don’t know much about the game.
I want to make sure we don’t put the cart in front of the horse. This needs to be a fantastic video game first, and then if that happens and we have the right partnership, those opportunities would be great. But that’s not why we do what we do. So there’s a lot of ideas of what we could do with “Intergalactic,” and in some ways it’s easier to expand that because it’s just how that story is structured in that universe. So there’s some interesting conversations happening about potential projects that could come down in the future, but our priority right now is to make “Intergalactic” the next big, fantastic Naughty Dog game.
“Intergalactic” was announced as a new franchise. So does that mean Naughty Dog’s focus moving forward is on additional “Intergalactic” games after “Heretic Profit,” or is there a chance you do “The Last of Us 3,” or a new “Uncharted” game next?
We don’t tend to plan too much in the future, because we find — and this is something I inherited, it’s just the Naughty Dog culture — that we do our best work when it’s something we’re really excited about, really passionate about. Just to give you an example, when we finished “The Last of Us Part II,” and that was highly successful for us, we were debating whether we should just go straight into “The Last of Us 3,” and we had a really long period where we looked at ideas for maybe what could be in that game. We looked at — we have “Uncharted” as an IP, we have “Jak and Daxter” as an IP. But the team was really excited to do this sci-fi thing that we’ve been talking about for a while, and that’s where our passions lie, so that’s where we’re moving forward. I’m sure if “Intergalactic” is successful, you will see it again. Whether that will be our next game right after that, I can’t say, and I leave that door open. Not to be coy for this particular question, we want to see how we feel once we’re done with it and look at the options in front of us, because we have some other ideas that we’d like to explore as well.
