Undoubtedly a trend for AAA blockbusters in the last decade, The Last of Us Part 2 is quite a long game by action-adventure genre standards, clocking in at roughly 25–30 hours on a New Game playthrough with a decent amount of exploration involved. In comparison, The Last of Us Part 1 is a fairly tight narrative despite how much protagonists Joel and Ellie endure on a nearly year-long expedition from Massachusetts to Utah and back to Wyoming. The Last of Us Part 2 is a much longer game, even if its story takes place over a mere several months between Joel’s death and when Ellie returns to her and Dina’s farmhouse from Santa Barbara (flashbacks not included).
Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet’s length won’t be divulged for quite some time, but Neil Druckmann’s Creator to Creator interview with Alex Garland was illuminating in that it shed a few key timeline details. Intergalactic reportedly “takes place 2,000 years in an alternate future that deviates in the late-80s,” giving Naughty Dog just about every creative liberty it could want as it lingers around the real-life present day of the same century. Whether Intergalactic is short or long, though, may depend on if its narrative is more like Part 1 or Part 2 in its storytelling structure.
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The Last of Us Part 1 is the Epitome of ‘Long Story Short’
Part 1 is what the first entry in The Last of Us is now retroactively known as and as such it had the unenviable responsibility of delivering on prerequisite exposition and worldbuilding. This contributes a lot toward how gradual the opening of Part 1 can be, and The Last of Us’ training wheels arguably aren’t removed until players reach Lincoln and meet Bill before Joel and Ellie are thrust at Pittsburgh’s hunters on their lonesome.
Massachusetts is where players obtain an understanding of how quarantine zones operate under oppressive FEDRA law, and it’s tremendously important to have the context of how perilous it is to sneak out from a QZ, even if it’s Joel and Tess’ job as smugglers to do so regularly. Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet could look to The Last of Us Part 1 for how to initially express its lore via environmental storytelling and an inescapably dogged introduction, especially with how rich and subversive Intergalactic’s brand of science fiction may be.
Exposition for protagonist Jordan A. Mun’s role as a bounty hunter would be neat, as well as a history of where her home planet is or the state of civilization during the events of Intergalactic’s story. However, there may be no backstory necessary for Sempiria if Jordan is as unfamiliar with the planet as players will be when they crash-land there.
The Last of Us Part 2 Tells the Same Story Twice
Druckmann’s comments about Intergalactic seem to paint a rough sketch of Intergalactic and how it could be aiming to differentiate itself from the likes of Naughty Dog’s Uncharted and The Last of Us. In endeavoring to make a game “about just being lonely,” Druckmann implies there won’t be an ally with Jordan. Likewise, the goal is apparently for players “to be lost in a place that [they’re] really confused about what happened here—who are the people here? What was their history?”
Another reason why Intergalactic may not take many storytelling cues from The Last of Us’ sequel is that the latter essentially tells the same story through two characters’ perspectives, which consequently doubles its length. Unless there is another playable character that Naughty Dog hasn’t revealed yet, The Heretic Prophet might not necessitate an adventure of Part 2’s length. That said, with Naughty Dog games progressively getting bigger, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Intergalactic meet or exceed Part 2’s length depending on how much of Sempiria players explore.
The Last Of Us Part II Remastered
- Released
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January 19, 2024
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs
- Publisher(s)
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Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Engine
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Proprietary Engine
