Hey, does anyone remember the name of Neil Druckmann and Naughty Dog’s upcoming new space game? You know, the one that was at The Game Awards a few years ago?
This came up yesterday in Slack, when we were musing on what upcoming PlayStation games would be digital-only thanks to Sony discontinuing physical game discs starting in 2028. We started by listing stuff like The Elder Scrolls 6, The Witcher 4, and maybe Kingdom Hearts 4.
Then, while thinking of internal Sony studios, I remembered Naughty Dog. Haven’t heard from them in a bit. What are they working on again?
As you can see, my illustrious colleague Zack Zwiezen didn’t know either.
God, what was it? It was something: something something something, I remember that…
Oh, there it is. Thank God. It did take me another minute to remember the subtitle was “The Heretic Prophet,” though.
Look, I’m human. Everyone sometimes has a little brain fart and can’t remember the name of something they should know the name of. But going through this little dance reminded me that I think “Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet” is not an excellent name for a game. It does not roll off the tongue. It is not memorable, certainly not in the way The Last Of Us is. The subtitle sounds sort of silly. At best, everyone will shorten it to “Intergalactic” which is neither an easy word to say nor an easy one to Google.
I’m making fun, but Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is miles off of the worst video game name I’ve ever heard. It’s tough to name a game! You don’t want it to be so simple, like Control, where it’s impossible to look up any information about the game because it’s such a common word. But you also don’t want to name your game Kingdom Hearts 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue Birth By Sleep 0.2 A Fragmentary Passage. Who would do something like that?
I apologize to everyone at Naughty Dog, who are surely working hard on *pauses to think for a moment* Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. It looks nice! I will genuinely try to do better at remembering the title in the future, both out of respect and also so that Zack doesn’t make any more memes to roast me like this one:
Have a nice long weekend, everyone!