By Ronald Gordon

There’s something strange about Pragmata that I can’t quite put my finger on. After first, finding out about it through a TikTok trailer, I was hooked almost immediately by Diana, the game’s deuteragonist. She’s a small, adorable android whose jacket is too big and brain is too full of hacking knowledge for anything else. But the best part about Diana isn’t her quirky personality, it’s the fact that her demeanor is too soft for this to be yet another “grumpy dad simulator.” 

Pragmata is a new-ish sci-fi action game developed and published by Capcom. You play as Hugh, a technician who comes to investigate the radio silence of the monumental Cradle colony, a massive scientific complex made on the moon’s surface. Almost as soon as you enter with your team of four others, Hugh is left by himself thanks to the station’s AI IDUS (Intelligent Direction Unification System) having gone rogue, now aiming to kill every organic life it comes in contact with.

After falling into a collapsing pit and sustaining damage to his suit, Hugh is awoken by Diana, who patches him up and gives his helmet a cat-like slap. Now, paired against a rogue AI controlling a colony dedicated to hyper advanced 3D printing, Hugh and Diana have to fight their way through whatever IDUS can throw at them just to get off this accursed station. 

I stated earlier that this is not another “grumpy dad simulator,” and it truly couldn’t be any further from this niche because this is character-strong action game that’s quite innovative. While Hugh may have been a skeptic when it came to children, bantering with his colleagues about the burden that they may pose, he warms up to Diana almost instantly. Not only is this exemplified in cutscenes, but also in the simple collect-a-thon aspect of the Real Earth Memories that you can give to Diana as you complete levels. From a sandbox full of molds to crayons and paper, Hugh can show Diana a glimpse of what Earth life is like for someone young like her.

The deepest part of their connection comes from the parallel between Hugh adopting Diana and his own upbringing as an orphan adopted into a loving family. Sometimes in the quiet moments of the game’s levels, Hugh will gush about how caring his family was even though he wasn’t born with them, and mimics this care through simple acts of talking, protecting, and engaging with Diana as if she were a real-life girl. 

While the moments between Hugh and Diana made my heart ache, the rest of the game’s action-filled escapades gave me a different type of feeling in my chest: excitement! The combat is thrilling in the best moments, and nerve-wracking in the worst, mainly due to the overall balance between shooting and hacking. 

You start with a six-bullet pistol that prints its own ammo, but Hugh alone can’t do significant damage against IDUS’s drones. That’s where Diana comes in. With her help, you can crack open IDUS’ bots so Hugh’s gun can pack a real punch. The only caveat is completing a puzzle in the middle of the fight. The face buttons control how the hack cursor moves and everything else controls Hugh, but time does not slow or stop while you hack. So, while half of your screen becomes covered in an assortment of shapes and squares, you also have to be aware of five bots ready to rip you to shreds if you’re not careful. 

There were plenty of moments where I wound up taking a hit I could’ve avoided, and taking damage resets whatever progress you made without a particular upgrade. This didn’t stop me from continuing further, unlocking new weapons like a shotgun, a grenade launcher, or a drone swarm, solely because it was a ton of fun! It felt amazing whenever I managed to complete a hack just in time to perfectly dodge an attack, or decimate a bot before it could even process the fact that I had blown it to smithereens. The smooth movement felt tremendous in these moments of high-octane combat, which surprised me considering Hugh is built like an NFL quarterback that’s been stuffed into a space suit. This big man can run, jump, climb obstacles, float, dodge, and dash as if he weighed nothing, thanks to his suit’s built in thrusters. When all three aspects combine: hacking, shooting, and movement, I ended up with a formula that pushed me to pursue harder fights just because I felt capable. 

This game is beautiful, and it’s not just because of the bright flashing lights present in every combat scenario. The hallways of the Cradle give off this hauntingly beautiful aura, a site meant to house hundreds of researchers is now empty, only the machines they’ve built left to populate it. On top of that, there are plenty of replicated areas that feel eerily close to the real thing: A beach with water that looks so clear it may as well be hollow, a copy of New York City where taxis melt into the floor, a shopping district where items litter every wall and ceiling. 

It’s all so eye-catching, but mainly because it’s all so unfamiliar and wrong. I couldn’t stop myself from opening up every art book I could unlock to see how exactly these ideas may have started. 

The music makes everything so serene I could almost fall asleep to it. Then in combat it shifts to dramatic techno. But as soon as the gunfire finishes, we’re right back to the unnerving stillness. Pragmata isn’t a horror game, but it can feel like one if you remain still for too long, if your eyes look too deeply into the environment and you allow yourself to be lulled into a submission. That’s exactly what IDUS wants, all the easier to eradicate an organism when they’re guard is down. 

By the time of writing this, I haven’t finished Pragmata. Despite enjoying the game, I dread the thought of completing this amazing experience. I’ve grown to love the pairing that is Hugh and Diana too much and I know the pain it will cause me in the end. I can already guess what’s meant to happen. Even still, I wholly suggest you play because the experience one can find within will be extraordinarily wholesome. I highly doubt anybody can look at Diana for more than five seconds without a warm, caring smile. I can’t, for sure. 

Ronald Gordon is a New York Videogame Critics Circle Member and Mentor. He was the first of our writers – or any intern anywhere – to complete an internship at Rockstar Games.

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