Intergalactic skips Summer Game Fest: ex-Naughty Dog artist says it’s no red flag

Former Naughty Dog artist Del Walker weighed in after Summer Game Fest, saying people shouldn’t treat Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet being absent from the show as some kind of warning sign. His point was pretty straightforward: putting together a showcase trailer can pull developers away from the actual game for months.

That can mean artists, animators, engineers, cinematic teams, motion-capture staff, and production support all getting diverted just to build something for a presentation. Seen that way, the choice not to show Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet may have been the better call for development, not evidence that something’s gone wrong or, as some posts online framed it, “the dog’s fault.”

Fair enough.

Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet was announced at The Game Awards in December 2024 with a cinematic trailer, and it didn’t take long to become one of Sony’s most anticipated exclusives. It’s also Naughty Dog’s first new IP since The Last of Us in 2013: a PlayStation 5 action-adventure set thousands of years in the future, starring bounty hunter Jordan A. Mun, played by Tati Gabrielle.

If you’re waiting on Naughty Dog’s next big single-player game, this quiet stretch reads more like a deliberate decision than a reason to panic. Especially after The Last of Us Online was canceled and resources were moved over to Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

Still, the reaction hasn’t been unanimous, and plenty of fans are still saying, “let them cook.”

Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is currently in development for PlayStation 5. There’s still no release date, though unconfirmed industry chatter says it could show up sometime around mid-2027.