‘Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet’ Likely Won’t Be Seen Until After 2026

Big, fat surprise, everyone! Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, Naughty Dog’s new IP, won’t be seeing a release in 2026. That news comes from Jason Schreier via his post on Resetera. I’m not sure who’s actually surprised by that or not, but I can tell you I wasn’t. We’re still working our way through the era of teams showing us games we won’t see for a while. I’m long past my Kevin Garnett in Uncut Gems responses; they all get a pretty flat “duh” from me now.

‘Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet’ is another game that continues to raise a great question

It’s becoming a more and more common refrain now that people are looking up and asking, “Do we really need to see a game if it’s more than a year away?” And it’s almost always a valid point. I get drumming up excitement (and shareholders) and all that, but let’s be real, you could announce Intergalactic a week before it drops, and we’re going to go crazy. How much does anticipation really matter to how good a game is?

Hell, you could make the argument that building up all that hype early is counter-productive. Word travels fast nowadays. And as much as it annoys me, a decent number of people’s gaming opinions are based on — you guessed it — other people’s gaming opinions. Yes, I recognize the irony of me saying that. I love using this platform to inform people, but I also hope that people are entertained by it. Gaming is art, and like any art, it’s subjective. So, what should matter at the end of the day is what you believe it is. If you build up that hype and the game falls flat, it won’t take long to tank that.

Of course, I have no doubts about what Naughty Dog will do with Intergalactic. The track record speaks for itself. I just wonder at the end of the day: who does this help from the gamer perspective? I mean, I predicted that Naughty Dog would show up at The Game Awards mostly as a joke — I didn’t expect a thing. And yet, here we are. The initial look was incredible, and I genuinely can’t wait to see it. But, I guess that right there is the problem.