Capcom's Pragmata is Intriguing

Five years ago, CAPCOM released the announcement trailer for Pragmata, a new sci-fi IP. It was only a cinematic trailer, but it piqued my interest as it showed an astronaut interacting with a small girl. All of a sudden, their surroundings completely warped in zero gravity, with both of them sent flying and a giant telescope was on its way to crash into them.

Neither of them said a word, but the chaos made for quite an entrance. It was slated for a 2022 release, but then it was delayed to 2023, and then delayed once again indefinitely. During Sony's June State of Presentation, CAPCOM finally announced that it was going to release in 2026.

I went hands-on with Pragmata at Summer Game Fest, and it wasn't anything like I'd expected. Its combination of hacking and shooter mechanics made for a fun and engaging gameplay loop.

In the demo, I was finally given names for the two characters. Hugh is the astronaut while the small girl is Diane. It began with Hugh suffering a leg injury, and Diane using some futuristic technology to patch him. Afterwards, I was thrust into a tutorial as a robot attacked us.

In Pragmata, you're controlling both Diane and Hugh simultaneously in third-person. When aiming down with the left trigger, Hugh points his gun, and Diane holds out her arm. A small screen pops up that makes you solve a movement puzzle mini-game, where Diane must solve in order to “hack” the robots. Successfully completing these mini-games stuns the robots and leaves them vulnerable to Hugh's shots.

While you're maneuvering around the robots as Hugh using the control stick on the left side of your controller, you also have to use the face buttons on the right side to solve the puzzle. During the puzzles, you have to move from the start point through a few required nodes and to the exit, reminiscent of the old Snake game found on Nokia phones.

I found that the puzzles were simple enough to navigate through, but due to the heightened tension of the surrounding robots, I sometimes screwed up. This effectively creates a lot of suspense during the combat that keeps me on my toes by splitting my attention.

The puzzle mini-game also got a tiny bit more complicated, as it introduced different kinds of optional nodes, including a Defense drop. While you only need to navigate through the required nodes, you can take a detour to acquire these optional ones before completing the mini-game. The Defense drop node would increase Hugh's damage against robots, but the precious extra few seconds needed to collect those nodes leaves Hugh more susceptible to attacks. It's an engaging trade-off that players will need to make during the heat of combat.

While details about Pragmata's story are still sparse even after playing the demo, the gameplay itself was some of the most intriguing I've experienced so far. I hope that the hacking puzzles can further increase in complexity over the rest of the game. The demo was only about 25 minutes, so if the relative difficulty of the puzzles stays the same throughout however many hours Pragmata ends up being, I could see the gameplay becoming stale.

I'm also starting to get invested in Hugh and Diane's father-daughter like relationship. Their origins are still shrouded in mystery, but if Pragmata can land a good story with its solid gameplay, I can see the game at least becoming a hit for CAPCOM.

Either way, I was excited about Pragmata back in 2020, and I'm even more so now. It launches next year for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.