Pragmata review – soulful sad dad saga in stunning outer space
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When Pragmata was announced alongside the PlayStation 5 in 2020, its shiny trailer promised slick sci-fi action in outer space. While it certainly delivers those futuristic thrills in spades, what I didn’t expect was a tender tale of paternal love. This is Capcom’s belated, surprisingly soulful first entry into gaming’s sad dad genre.
In this near-future fiction, a corporation named Delphi has established a research station on the moon’s surface to experiment with advanced 3D printing tech, using “Lunafilament” to easily recreate everything from tools to entire buildings. Predictably, things soon go very wrong. As the station suddenly goes dark, engineer Hugh is sent from Earth to investigate.
Right from the off, there’s an engrossingly mournful melancholy to Pragmata. Glistening corridors lead to eerily abandoned laboratories. Half-printed creations stand static, threads of filament protruding uselessly from their unfinished frames, and holograms show recorded conversations from increasingly concerned researchers. Hugh soon discovers that the human workers have met a grisly end, but luckily he doesn’t have to tough it out alone. Attacked by malfunctioning security droids, Hugh is saved by a Pragmata – a 3D-printed android companion who has been designed to look like a six-year-old girl. That might just become important later.
Hugh’s new pintsized pal – whom he names Diana – can fend off murderous mechs by hacking directly into them. With Diana nestled on your shoulders, a tap of the left trigger has her breaching advancing enemies’ code in real time, exposing their weak spots. As you navigate a hacking mini-game in one corner of the screen while frantically blasting at robotic enemies, there’s more than a hint of the under-appreciated Nintendo DS multi-tasking RPG The World Ends With You. While a limited array of weaponry and hacking options initially make combat simple, as you discover new hacking mods, unlock weapons and improve your suit’s Iron Man-esque thrusters, fighting evolves into a layered test of reflex and strategy.
There’s a welcome warmth beneath Pragmata’s metallic sci-fi sheen. As you explore danger-filled corridors, Hugh and Diana’s pseudo father-daughter relationship slowly blossoms. What could have easily come across as forced sentimentalism instead grows organically around characters that you can’t help but care about. Every new line of dialogue elicits a smile.
You soon discover exactly what horrors befell this eerily abandoned lunar colony. Mercifully, you can take a break from combat – and the underlying mystery – by descending into an underground shelter. This upgradeable hideout has a touch of Death Stranding about it, seeing you unlock suit and weapon upgrades, undergo training simulations and deepen your bond with Diana. After each conversation, Diana is inspired to pick up crayons and draw tender pictures of the two of you. With little knowledge of humankind, Diana learns about Earth through Hugh’s stories, thrilling at each new discovery about human nature. You can even play hide and seek with her, and install a 3D-printed playground in the shelter.
Thanks to the base’s print-happy scientists, Pragmata is pleasingly visually varied, quickly moving you on from white corridors to tropical jungles, beaches and even the lunar surface, where you float around unshackled by gravity. The world’s lore is equally well-realised. Wandering through an eerily half-printed re-creation of New York City, I discover emails from Delphi employees expressing their intense boredom because robots can now do every aspect of their jobs for them.
While a mid-game lull briefly sees the action descend into a directionless shooting gallery, a slew of late game upgrades and some eyebrow-raising story revelations ensure that Pragmata ends on a giddy high. It’s held together by stunning art direction from Cho Yonghee – the artist behind the hauntingly brilliant Nier Automata. I was expecting it to look good on a beefy PS5 Pro, but I was impressed to see Pragmata run surprisingly well on Nintendo’s tablet-sized Switch 2 console.
Despite its sparkling near-future setting, Pragmata succeeds because it feels like a throwback to gaming’s recent past. It’s a beautifully made, heartfelt single player adventure with a novel combat idea, and it prioritises storytelling and atmosphere. Where attempts at heartwarming games often come across as off-puttingly saccharine, Pragmata pulls off its father-daughter relationship with surprising deftness.
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