The story of The Last of Us 2 proved to be absolutely polarizing, with some players loving it, others hating it, and some subset of the latter group engaging in an ugly harassment campaign against the developers at Naughty Dog. The studio is now at work on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, a sci-fi game about religion that director Neil Druckmann jokes will surely get less hate than The Last of Us 2 did.
Druckmann spoke about Intergalactic's fictional timeline with 28 Days Later writer and Civil War director Alex Garland as part of Sony's Creator to Creator podcast series. "I joke about this with the team," Druckmann said. "With The Last of Us 2, we made certain creative decisions that got us a lot of hate. A lot of people love it, but a lot of people hate that game."
"Who gives a shit," Garland quipped.
"Exactly. But the joke is like, you know what, let's do something that people won't care as much about. Let's make a game about faith and religion," Druckmann concluded.
While the statute of limitations for spoilers from a 2020 video game might be up, I'll still refrain from speaking too directly about the "creative decisions" Druckmann is alluding to, since a lot of new Last of Us fans are presumably about to experience them as part of season 2 of the TV show.
But when it comes to spoilers, Naughty Dog took some extreme measures to keep the story of The Last of Us 2 from getting ruined the first time around, too. "I've gotten in trouble, actually, because of trying to protect the story," Druckmann told Garland. "We released a trailer for The Last of Us 2 where we faked a shot, and we showed Joel somewhere where he would never make it to because of things that happened in that story as a deliberate way to throw off the scent. People that didn't like the game accused that of being false advertisement."
"Again, who gives a shit," Garland responded.
