The 'controversy' surrounding this game is as tiresome as it is predictable. I'm more interested in discussing the game on its own merits, though. Some thoughts:

- With the seemingly curated and forward facing licensed soundtrack, prominent actors providing their likenesses in starring roles, and the deliberate yet nostalgic bits of product placement, this game has much more of a Kojima feel than past ND titles.

- The 80's retrofuture aesthetic is cool. I'm not sold on the lead character yet but the more I watch the trailer the more she grows on me, cue ball and all. Even Nathan Drake was initially received by some as a generic dudebro before eventually becoming one of gaming's favorite protagonists. Time will tell.

- The graphics don't honestly seem much better than TLOU2 on PS4 in many regards, but that could also mean they're keeping performance in mind and we could see a 60fps option on even base PS5. In any case, I did notice some good ray tracing and other lighting effects you won't find on their previous titles (perhaps some cloth physics, too).

- I wonder just how central audio will be to the game. They're sparing no expense on the original score and presumably not the licensed soundtrack, either. The biggest reason I'm curious though is the laser sword you see at the end that seems to resemble the dynamic audio levels on a sound system. Presumably this weapon's form could sync to whatever music is playing at the time. Will this just be cosmetic or is music integral to gameplay sort of like in Hifi Rush?

Eager to see more.

I'd say I'm cautiously optimistic because we haven't seen any proper gameplay yet. Naughty Dog has yet to disappoint me, but this trailer just doesn't show enough of the actual game to make any proper judgements yet. As for the mixed reaction, the moment they showed a female protagonist who wasn't conventionally attractive the reaction from a certain subset of "fans" was pretty much guaranteed. At this point all it takes is to have a woman in a leading role in a video game and the usual crowd of very sad people will start crying "woke" and "DEI". They pretty much instantly jump to conclusions without seeing or knowing anything else about the game, the main character, or the story, which is exactly what happened here.

I thought it looked good.
I don't care that the main character is female or buff.... a bounty hunter would be, or that she shaved her head.

A Naughty Dog space-bounty hunter game? sounds good to me.

The content of the trailer did not contain anything exciting. The only thing that was exciting was seeing a logo. In this case I would argue it was better to announce this Metroid Prime 4 style. Anyways we haven't really seen anything yet, except being very much influenced by other sci-fi shows/games. And that they are blatantly ripping off Guardians, with old audio tech and old pop music.

How bout from now on we refer to this game as "IHP"

Does that acronym work for you?

Do any of you even remember the reveal for The Last of Us?

It was a bland, gameplay less, cut scene shown while Gustavo played the guitar live in person.

What has happened to that franchise since?

---------------------------------------------------

You Xbox gamers have your space game, it's called Starfield, while us PS gamers are getting ours, IHP.....in a few years.

Not much to go on.

Also I've become kind of weary about Naughty Dog since I thought The Last of Us was terrible. Also, and I get it's just an aesthetic they're going for, but it's kind of weird that people in the distant future have screens with low resolution and bad connections, have these thick keyboards (or keyboards at all), listen to the Pet Shop Boys and still smoke.

I'd say the name is fine though. Assuming 'Intergalactic' is the franchise name and sequels would be called 'Intergalactic: The somethingsomething'

I've haven't seen enough of what matters to make any sort of assessment. The gameplay is what's make or break this game and the ratio of gameplay to narrative and cutscenes. I'm sure they'll have all that figured out. I'm optimistic but I have no faith that the character will ever be interesting, they made it a point to start with her shaving her head to show that this is the character they want and the player will have to put up with it wheter they like it or not, I expect to cool customization or cosmetics which is a bummer but games like modern Ninja Gaiden come to mind which had a bland character and were excellent games. All relies on the gameplay, level design and how fluid it is to progres, though and all I can say so far is that the weapon looks cool, functional and well designed. I hope this is the standard weapon with no new weapons you can swap out, after Stellar Blade this type of one weapon throughout the entire game works incredibly well.

It's an alternate universe and takes place in 1986. 

The article on the front page says this; "Set thousands of years in the future, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet (..) [the protagonist] hopes to be the first person in over 600 years to leave its orbit."

But sure, I (we) don't actually know much about the story anyways and I haven't looked into it anymore than this either.

I could have sworn it said that space technology had progressed really far by 1986. Well I guess then they mean to say all technology and culture stagnated in those thousands of years. I'm instantly less enthusiastic now. The character is a hipster in a severely outdated ship set up for media tevhnology from thusands of years ago. .... yeah, that's trash.