In confirming that the childish attitude of ‘We’re only doing this to OWN our opponents’ is unlikely to disappear from the video game industry any time soon, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet lead actor Tati Gabrielle has responded to those players who have found themselves uninterested in playing Naughty Dog’s next title by sharing a peace of fan-art depicting her character drinking “incel tears”.
The next game from The Last of Us series creator Neil Druckmann, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet was first announced via a brief teaser trailer, as shown on December 12th during the 2024 edition of Geoff Keighly’s The Game Awards, wherein alongside superficial references to such media as Akira or Cowboy Bebop, players were met with both the game’s outer space setting and its main protagonist, the shaved-head-sporting Jordan A. Mun.
“Intergalactic stars our newest protagonist, Jordan A. Mun, a dangerous bounty hunter who ends up stranded on Sempiria – a distant planet whose communication with the outside universe went dark hundreds of years ago,” reads an official blog post published by Naughty Dog following the game’s reveal. “In fact, anyone who’s flown to it hoping to unravel its mysterious past was never heard from again. Jordan will have to use all her skills and wits if she hopes to be the first person in over 600 years to leave its orbit.”
Given the exhaustion most players feel towards not only Naughty Dog’s (and specifically Druckmann’s) self-aggrandizing style of video game development but also the general concept and discourse surrounding the idea of corporate-styled ‘strong female characters’, upon its public debut, Intergalactic drew a wave of criticism from across the internet.
As players of all stripes took to social media to share (or more accurately battle over) their opinions on the game, a French artist by the Twitter handle of @Luarya_ leapt into the fray by sharing an original piece depicting Jordan and The Witcher 4 lead Ciri, the latter having been the center of her own round of discourse related to her apparent promotion to a proper witcher, exclaiming “Sooo DEI-licious!” while drinking “Fragile Masulini-Tea”, as made from “100% Incel Tears”.
And though this piece truly only served to fan the flames of the Intergalactic discourse, the fact that it was created and shared by a fan rather than a member of Naughty Dog led the illustration to fading rather quickly from memory shortly after it was shared.
However, its memory would be revived in force roughly a week later when it was once again used to swing at the game’s critics by none other than the aforementioned Gabrielle herself.
On December 22nd, as seen in a screenshot shared to social media, (and thereafter personally provided to BIC by That Park Place Editor-in-Chief Marvin Montanaro) the actress shared Luarya_’s piece to her personal Instagram story, in doing so adding the caption “You mad bro?”
Twenty-four hours on, as is standard for the Instagram story feature, Gabrielle’s sharing of the illustration has now been auto-deleted and no longer appears on her profile.
Regardless, the damage is done, and as it stands, it seems Intergalactic is on track to go down as yet another entry in the long-list of games that attempted to sell itself, at least in part, via ‘intentional fan agitation’.
As the old saying goes, “It’s a bold strategy, Cotton, let’s see if it pays off for them.”
