Alleged QA tester claims Intergalactic is The Last of Us 2 meets Dark Souls in exciting details but dubious release window

Naughty Dog is one of PlayStation’s biggest first-party developers, and the next game they are planning to release is Intergalactic The Heretic Prophet. We haven’t seen anything of this project since its reveal at The Game Awards 2024, but its trailer looked very promising with Naughty Dog setting up a bounty hunter experience set in a sci-fi landscape. Although very little about the game is officially known, an alleged QA tester claims Intergalactic is The Last of Us 2 meets Dark Souls in exciting details that also contain a dubious release window.

Intergalactic is The Last of Us 2 meets Dark Souls, claims alleged QA tester

On the GamingLeaksAndRumors subreddit, a thread on 4Chan was shared from someone claiming they “worked QA on builds from Feb-May” for Intergalactic. The track-record for 4Chan is very hit-and-miss, and there’s no way of verifying the user’s status as a QA tester, so take everything with a huge grain of salt.

In the thread, the anonymous poster claims, “think The Last of Us 2 meets Dark Souls,” and that the game is “NOT open world in the Ubisoft sense,” but it is similar to a sandbox, containing “big areas with layers of traversal”. Means of traversal include a “mix of glider, parkour, and ‘faith anchors’ you can link to unlock fast travel checkpoint”.

They also claim, “combat is very good,” and that it is satisfying with several combos possible through “stringing jumps and dashes into attacks”. It’s also claimed, “you can break limbs to handicap enemies and use special tools to inflict unique status”. A point of comparison is “God of War 2018, but with less focus on combos juggling enemies”.  

Sticking to combat, weapons include “the pistol seen in the trailer,” and you can use it to “target weakpoints, some of which can be seen while the enemy attacks”.

As for the protagonist, we already know players will step into the shoes of a bounty hunter named Jordan A. Mun. Performed by actress Tati Gabrielle, there will supposedly be a “dialogue wheel” that is “very sparse” due to the player being “mostly alone”. There are several optional encounters, and these can be completed through either stealth, hacking enemies, or even negotiating sometimes.

It’s also said “The planet is a tomb of failed civilizations, think Elden Ring lore but in space”. The anonymous poster reports “Druckmann’s script is HEAVY. Like religious apocalypse fanfic meets hard sci-fi”.

While the above is exciting and certainly sounds plausible, the most dubious aspect of the leak is the claim of Naughty Dog planning a late 2026 launch window internally, with a full cinematic trailer prepared for Game Awards 2025. A late-2026 launch is hard to believe as Jason Schrier, via Gamespot, said neither The Witcher 4 or Intergalactic “will be out next year,” alluding to 2026.

Assuming any of this is true, it is very exciting. Previous reports have claimed Intergalactic has player freedom heavily inspired by Elden Ring, so comparisons to FromSoftware are not too surprising. Again, all of this is only an alleged leak rather than anything official, so don’t take anything reported as gospel. Hopefully we will see Intergalactic at the Game Awards this year, but nothing is official right now.

In other gaming news, a GTA 6 Easter Egg seemingly teases Travis Scott’s involvement.