Diana, Pragmata’s child (and robot) companion, observes the world around her with especially wide eyes. She is so amazed at a hologram of a cat that she nearly flings herself off of a walkway in pursuit of it. She has never seen New York, let alone Times Square, explaining her awe at its recreation on the abandoned moon base she calls home. There’s a lot she’s unfamiliar with, and as she and Hugh—the player character in the bulky exosuit—press on in their journey, you have the chance to introduce her to earthen artifacts and touchstones, such as playground slides and old-fashioned television sets. A reminder of a time, place, and feeling that these sights might elicit.
Some part of me feels that Pragmata could just as easily be one of those mementos of Earth. That’s because playing Pragmata feels like stepping through time, which is neither a comment on the quality of its gameplay or its fidelity, both places in which it is no slouch. Rather, it’s a comment on its spirit. In Kotaku‘s first impressions of Capcom’s long-delayed puzzler-shooter hybrid, we called it “an Xbox 360 game in the best ways,” a sentiment I’m happy to echo. But in an hours-long preview of the game’s opening hours, I learned those vintage qualities are more than just a throwback aesthetic which the game dons.
Much has been made of Pragmata‘s old-school sensibilities; It wears its deference to classic design principles on its sleeve. But I think Pragmata’s essence can be boiled down to a simpler notion: it feels untainted by the cynicism of post-2010s AAA games development. It skirts closer to fantasy than reality. It doesn’t feel embarrassed to take a huge creative swing with its mechanics, one that takes up a lot of real estate on the screen with a sizable and stylish UI. Pragmata is a game that embellishes rather than reduces, which doesn’t make it maximalist, but does make it earnest. It is unafraid to color-code weapon pick-ups and power-ups, and situate them on an old-school weapon wheel. And by god, you will be shooting a lot of glowing weak points on enemies as opposed to just shooting everything within sight in the head. In letting go of contemporary notions of what a game of this scale might look, sound, and play like, Pragmata rediscovers an almost child-like joy that once felt pervasive in the industry’s output and creative efforts. It is shaping up to be another belter from Capcom’s renaissance.
As my preview kicked off, I was greeted by a familiar sight: a version of Times Square–one filled with billboards and signs housing easter eggs gesturing at other Capcom properties like Resident Evil–that had been built by Lunafilaments, a powerful resource that fuels the future which Pragmata depicts. As Hugh, who has seen the actual thing, points out to Diana, however, creative liberties have been taken with the familiar landmark. Ones that not only contort and distort the world, like an Inception dream gone awry or a glitch in The Matrix, but that cut obstacles into the familiar urban infrastructure. Collectibles and optional challenges lie off of beaten paths arranged into environmental puzzles and patrolled by towering robots with oversized doll-like heads, ones that must be hacked in Pragmata’s transfixing grid-based hacking minigame to make them vulnerable to damage.
I love how unvarnished it all is. When you first describe Pragmata’s whole deal to someone, you sound a little mad. A man in a spacesuit with a child strapped to his back is not, in and of itself, a stretch in the world of video games, but when that child is capable of hacking the world around them, and when that is presented as a Bioshock-style hacking minigame you have to tackle while gunning down robots and jetting across arenas, it begins to sound a bit more outlandish and overwhelming. And it is! I found myself stunlocked trying to navigate Pragamata‘s puzzle grids, in which players are able to trigger abilities that can spread the hack to multiple opponents or toggle a damage multiplier, and accidentally eating a swing or swipe from a deadly foe. I died more than once in my demo simply growing used to its pace.
I was challenged to (pardon the cliche) get good at Pragamata‘s unique synthesis of genre staples, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Over the course of about two hours, I ran into a handful of enemy types that each begged for a different approach, whether that was a combination of a group hack and stasis bubble that paralyzed anything caught in its aura, or a modifier that extended my damage window long enough to pelt a menacing giant with numerous shots from a grenade launcher. One enemy even launched a slow-moving missile, allowing me to hack it midair and redirect it, and my demo closed with a raucous fight against a boss whose glowing weak points were actually signal jammers impeding my ability to hack. With every one knocked out, I incrementally gained back a quarter of the massive hacking grid and could ramp up the damage opportunities. I appreciated the varied approaches available to cut my way through a room, which is both a compliment to Pragmata‘s encounter design and all the tools which it affords the player to make time and space for themself amid the cacophony of noise. All of this isn’t to say that Pragmata is difficult, but that it marches to a different beat, and at a time where big bets are uncommon from major publishers and developers, it’s a welcome sound.
I also welcomed the sound of Hugh’s conversations with Diana. Our very own Kenneth Shepard jokingly dubbed Pragmata “The Space of Us” for its similar father-daughter dynamic. As with The Last of Us’ Joel and Ellie, there’s no literal familial bond between Pragmata’s two leads, which makes it all the sweeter that Hugh both cares enough for Diana to act as her gun-toting protector, and also respects her enough to not trample her agency, perspective, or ability. All the while, he sates her curiosity about his world with stories and artifacts, and she in turn helps him get to the bottom of the mysteries surrounding the abandoned moon base.
While it’s too early to say how well their dynamic will hold up across the entirety of the game, Hugh’s whole attitude is easier on the ears than the gruff machismo and order-barking of typical protagonists in Hugh’s shoes. And it did tug on my heartstrings when, after a number of optional conversations and gifts given at Pragmata‘s central hub–a base where you can dole out upgrades, form loadouts, listen to some serene music, and carry out optional interactions–Diana gifted Hugh a drawing of the two of them that I wanted to rip out of the TV and hang on my own fridge. At one point, Hugh tells Diana, “Humans got a certain warmth to ’em.” Yes they do, Hugh, and so do you two.
Pragmata handily proved that it has a lot going for it in a relatively short window of time. Whether it was the RE engine working its ass off on its dense picturesque environments, its odd and inspired mish-mash of mechanics, or Hugh and Diana’s very heartwarming pairing, I found a lot to cling to here. A lot of reminders of what games once aspired to, and still can, if Pragmata has anything to say about it.
