Pragmata

Publisher: CAPCOM

Developer: CAPCOM

Platforms: Playstation 5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch 2

Price: $59.99

In any other discourse cycle, I might've centered this introduction around saying I had a "hot take" regarding Pragmata...but the internet kinda has me beat there, so my takes are merely lukewarm at best. 

With that in mind, I'll go ahead and get my ultimate feelings out of the way from the get-go. 

I liked Pragmata. I can't say I felt anything approaching "love" for it, though. And...well...I feel the exact same way about a particular piece of this game...but we'll get there.

For those who don't know, Pragmata is the brand-new IP from Capcom, the publisher/developer of powerhouse franchises such as Resident Evil and Monster Hunter. It had one hell of a marketing machine in the year or so leading up to its release, and while I can't say I was ever captivated by that marketing, I did enjoy the demo quite a bit. Plus, it's a new IP from a AAA publisher! That should always be celebrated! Plus plus, it was going to be sold for the standard price tag, not the marked-up $70 publishers are trying to get us used to! Naturally I was going to play this even though I wasn't enthralled by Pragmata as a concept.

Now that the credits have rolled, I'd say it was worth it. But, like, in a slightly-smiling and shrugging tone.

Pragmata takes place in a future where a near-magical 3D-printing material called "lunafilament" was discovered on the moon. Use of this material allows for production of just about anything you can imagine in a fraction of the time it would take for humans to do it. The material is harvested in a lunar base called "The Cradle," which is overseen by a sentient AI named "IDUS"...so you can likely see where this premise is going. 

The game puts us in the shoes of Hugh Williams, a protagonist only held back from being a generic everyman by way of an unusually positive attitude. Hugh and a team of engineers arrive at The Cradle for some kind of repair mission only to find the base in a bad, bad way...and crawling with hostile robots. After his team is swiftly dispatched by the elements, Hugh ends up being nursed back to health by a robotic little girl he soon names "Diana." Diana is a "Pragmata," an ultra-lifelike robot with advanced hacking abilities and an uncanny grasp of logic. And because Hugh's guns don't seem to harm the base's robots too much, those advanced hacking abilities are necessary for survival.

So, Hugh and Diana travel through The Cradle trying to find a way to get a message back to Earth, and of course, all sorts of unknowable dangers lie along the way...

Well, somewhat unknowable. There are legitimately plot developments you won't see coming, but they're few and far between, making most of this story about as cookie-cutter as stories get. 

As for characters, Hugh is a stand-up guy. A generic one, but a stand-up guy nonetheless. The major problem with Hugh isn't the guy himself, it's the script. Pragmata's writing is amateur-hour, baby's first story fare, and poor Hugh gets the short end of the stick. The guy starts waxing philosophical right from the get-go in a way that just doesn't feel believable. He's less a character with ideas and dreams and more of a vehicle for whatever "inspiring" quote the writer wanted him to say in a given moment.

But he's only half the character equation...

And, well...

Remember how I said I had a "hot take" about Pragmata?

Remember how I said there was something else about this game that I "liked" but didn't "love?"

I was talking about Diana, the emotional focal point of this story. 

It isn't that I didn't want to protect her at all costs or that she wasn't cute or anything like that...it's just that of all the little kid characters I've ever had to protect in one of these games, she was handily the weakest. 

She didn't start out that way, though. At first, Diana's writing is uncannily strong. She's introduced with this uber-realistic mix of cute and utter cringe the likes of which you'd see in literally any kid, and I found myself thinking, "ohhh this game is gonna break my heart, isn't it?"

But much like a few other things in Pragmata, my opinion soured as time went on. Diana ultimately went from believably-written little kid to the pitcher in the baseball game that is Hugh's quote-farming. Her role ultimately shifts from a kid who needs protecting to a little monkey on Hugh's back asking "but why would you celebrate getting older?" so that Hugh can respond with "well, life is always worth celebrating!"

In the end, I think it comes down to this: Diana isn't really a character. She doesn't have any moments of quiet rebellion like Clementine hiding the walking talkies in The Walking Dead, for instance. She doesn't have Ellie's wildcard element. And she definitely doesn't have any kind of self-betterment arc like Atreus in God of War. She's flawless. She neither introduces nor experiences any conflict until the very end. And the lump sum of her journey in this game is that she decides she wants to do something she'd already decided she wanted to do within one or two levels. 

Except when I wrote "neither introduces nor experiences any conflict" a second ago, I realized that wasn't true. There's exactly one point of conflict before the end that's treated like this earth-shattering thing. We're clearly supposed to be on the ends of our seats with worry about this story moment...but I didn't feel that way. 

Instead, I called CapCom's bluff. Given certain literal last-minute plot turns in Resident Evil: Requiem earlier this year, I knew for a fact that they didn't have the balls to actually do anything. 

It isn't that I wanted them to do anything, it's just that I never once believed it was an option. 

Yet, in spite of everything, the ending of Pragmata did make me tear up. Why is that? I'm not sure I quite understand myself, and the only conclusions I can draw would warrant major spoiler warnings. I don't know. 

Oh, and there comes a point where Hugh is about to make a huge jump with Diana on his back, and he says "hold on to your hiney." I've quite literally never felt my every limb curl so far into my body from cringe. There's also a little news article you read towards the end that contains the line: "while unconfirmed, it's probably true." Amateur-hour news articles in game writing are a particular pet peeve of mine, and that line is about as eye-rolling as the "x and y were brutally murdered" that you see in every dime-a-dozen baby's first horror game on Steam.

That's the kind of script we're dealing with here. Maybe I wouldn't mind so much if Capcom weren't clearly trying to get us to care...but they are, so the weak writing unfortunately matters.

How about something a little more positive? Gameplay in Pragmata doesn't sound appealing at all on paper, but it works shockingly well. Imagine the slow-paced over-the-shoulder combat loop of a post-4 Resident Evil game with a realtime hacking element. 

While aiming your gun at a robot, a little hacking matrix is displayed next to them. You then use the face buttons to carve a path through the matrix to a little green cell that "opens" the enemy. "Opening" in this case means exposing their weak points and making them more susceptible to damage no matter where you shoot them. So, quick success in combat is handled with slow, strategically-placed weapon shots after opening. Like Resident Evil without the horror element.

Well, there's one horror element present in this game, and that's a general lack of ammunition. You have four weapon types you can carry: a primary weapon, up to 2 attack weapons, up to 2 defense weapons, and a support weapon. 

The primary weapon is either a surprisingly strong pistol or the single worst assault rifle to exist in any game ever. Either way, this weapon comes with a limited supply of rechargeable ammo. So you never technically "run out," but you do need to take breaks to allow your shots to recharge.

The attack weapons are entirely there to deal damage, and they feature the second-smallest amount of ammo. You've got a shotgun, a sort of de-facto energy sniper rifle, and more. 

The defense weapons deal lesser damage and are used mostly for their secondary effects. There's an energy net that holds enemies in place while dealing decent damage-per-second, for one example. There's also a shotput that knocks enemies down, to give another.

Finally, the support weapons are mainly functional, with only one dealing any damage. These are the weapons with the least amount of ammo because of how overpowered they can be. The decoy generator, for one, will capture the attention of literally every enemy in an arena with no exceptions. So, pair that with some of those defense weapons and you've got a recipe for decisive success!

Also aiding in combat are special hacking nodes that can be equipped. These nodes will appear in the little matrix, and if you pass through one or more of them before you finish the hack, they'll take effect. One of these special nodes can spread the effects of a hack to other enemies, opening them without having to manually hack them. Another can confuse an enemy and cause them to attack their allies. Another can cause extra staggering. Another can even help heal Hugh. There are more nodes than this, but I think you get the point. Imagine using the decoy generator to gather all the enemies in one place, then opening all enemies at once with a special node, then using the defense weapon that creates an energy net. Ridiculous amounts of DPS in that combo! 

So, gameplay works far better than one might expect if it were pitched to them. It's easily the high point of Pragmata, and it almost atones for the writing and story. Almost.

Sadly, the gameplay is let down by lackluster level design. 

Don't get me wrong, the first couple of levels are absolutely fantastic...it's just that after these levels, it's nonstop science lab after science lab after science lab, and they're all indistinguishable from each other. It boggles the mind how wide the gap in level quality between the two halves of Pragmata is. I mean, Doom 2016 was also pretty reliant on science labs, but it had the privilege of arenas custom built for their respective battles. 

In Pragmata, it doesn't quite feel that way. In fact, these late-game levels are so boring that I eventually couldn't wait for the game to be over...and I definitely didn't feel that way at first.

At the very least, the game is flawless from a technical perspective. The RE engine is used to great effect, as it always is. And while Diana's character model is more than a little uncanny, I get the sense that this was a purposeful design, not a technical failing. Animation quality is perhaps a little too top-notch given how clunkily Hugh controls at times, and the framerate never dropped even once. The soundtrack is also a standout, and it makes this story seem a lot more emotionally charged than it actually is. Finally, I never experienced any hard or soft crashes, and the same can be said for glitches in texture, audio, animation, or any other of the usual technical facets. 

Even if you haven't yet played Pragmata, I'd bet you've at least heard of it thanks to the ridiculous online discourse and weirdness. You've got the usual slew of weirdos publicly wringing their hands hoping for nude mods for Diana. Then you've got the people who think that feeling some kind of paternal instinct towards Diana is akin to pedophilia (go to therapy, please, you're self-reporting). Then you have the very rare people who think that the whole paternal instinct thing is bad because...*checks notes*...the idea of a paternal instinct is fake and a radical left feminist talking point? I hate the internet sometimes. 

But I digress. Whatever you've heard about Pragmata from a quality standpoint is, in my humble opinion, a tad bit overblown. Not majorly overblown, but enough to count. The story is about as bog-standard as it gets, the kid who serves as the entire emotional focal point doesn't even really count as a character, and the level design is so boring towards the end that I'd end up getting distracted by my phone instead of playing. That's a problem. 

The gameplay loop is much better than you might expect, and the early levels pretty much save Pragmata from being a wholehearted "meh" for me.

At the end of the day, I liked Pragmata...but I didn't love it. And maybe that's enough to say it's a success? Jury is still out on that. Ask me in a couple months, I suppose. 

Let us review:

Bland story - 1.0

Boring characters - 1.0

Awful level design towards the end - 1.0

Couldn't wait for it to be over towards the end - 1.0

The final score for Pragmata is...

6.0/10 - Above Average