Intergalactic PS5 Star ‘Bootcamp-ing’ with Neil Druckmann to Ignore the Haters

Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is the upcoming sci-fi action game from Naughty Dog, starring Tati Gabrielle as a bounty hunter who winds up on a cursed planet.

While the reveal trailer had plenty of positive reactions, it attracted more than its fair share of backlash, with many online users making hateful remarks about lead character, Jordan A. Mun.

In a broader interview with Entertainment Weekly, Gabrielle has commented on the mixed reception to the game’s announcement.

“I got a lot of love, but there was a lot of hate over me being a woman, me being a woman of colour, me having my head shaved, all these things that I didn’t even actually initially see,” she says, adding that she’s “out of the social media zeitgeist for that reason”.

Gabrielle says Druckmann has been “bootcamp-ing” her, and is familiar with similarly toxic feedback received by Laura Bailey for her portrayal of Abby in The Last of Us Part II.

Once she saw the negative feedback, Druckmann apparently told her, “Ignore it. No matter what, me and you, we’re going to make something beautiful. We’re going to make something that we’re proud of.”

Gabrielle also talks about Intergalactic’s overarching theme of faith; a focal point of the game’s narrative includes a fictional religion, though there will be other explorations of faith throughout the story.

“The question of faith is not black and white,” she says. “When you initially think of faith, you think of religion, which is a part of it, but there’s also faith in oneself. There’s faith in your environment or your community. All that faith means is, What are your beliefs? What are the things that you hope for? Faith sounds flowery, but we all experience it day in and day out. What is your reason for waking up?”

Intergalactic doesn’t have a release date, but will release exclusively for PS5.