Hands on with Pragmata at New York Comic Con

Capcom, Pragmata

Despite it’s name, New York Comic Con has become quite a bit of a general pop culture convention. That means that yes, there even is gaming at the convention. So while GSC wasn’t there in any official capacity, seeing the rather large Capcom booth caught my eye. It also meant the opportunity to get hands on with upcoming release Pragmata.

In case you haven’t heard, Pragmata is Capcom’s upcoming IP where you play as Hugh and Diana to make their way through a research station. Pragmata is described as a shooter, puzzle, adventure game. It is in fact all of those things and more in the 20 minute exhibitor demo featured this weekend at NYCC.

The demo begins with Hugh having his suit repaired by Diana, an android that appears as a small girl. For whatever reason, the system controlling this station also sees them as a threat. Is this another story of AI taking over? If it is, we’re seeing AI on both sides with Diana trying to assist us when our gun just isn’t enough. Hugh tries to protect Diana, but she’s adamant that she can help. She would also be correct. It’s the first time we get the sense of Diana’s hacking ability to make our weapons a bit more potent. This is where the puzzle aspect comes in. This was PS5 controller, so while I’m not certain how this would play on PC, it was extremely smooth in the demo.

While aiming with your trigger button, use the triangle, square, circle, and X to navigate your cursor through the puzzle. Get your cursor through the blue boxes to power up your attacks as she hacks your enemies. There will also be opportunities later to add more powerful yellow nodes to your attacks as the enemies become more powerful. One fear that I had momentarily was that the screen would become so busy the puzzle would be difficult to focus on. Despite the additions to the puzzle and the balance of aiming and shooting, this didn’t happen. As an aging gamer this is actually such a relief. Even later in game with missiles coming it never felt unmanageable.

Pragmata Diana — Diana is adorable, especially at the end when you teach her what a high five is. (Image Credit: Steam)

After taking out the first enemy, we begin to try and find our way to repower the station. There are five locks for Diana to hack and you’ll need to explore to do this. Thankfully, there are elevators to help you get around. That doesn’t mean you don’t get to use your super suit. Hugh’s suit allows you to hover on the air to bypass security lasers and flying enemies that stand in your way. However, you can’t hover forever and the suit does take time to recover, so you’ll need to be mindful of your usage. This travel mechanic was intuitive and smooth. When they say hover, it truly is more hovering than flying, as you do have a limit. Be sure to make the most of it.

Once you locate a lock, it is Diana’s time to shine. Hacking the locks will also require triangle, square, circle, and X button pushes in order from outer ring to inner ring. Again, these movements are so smooth it feels natural and not distracted by everything else on the screen. There are also checkpoints along the way in case you need them. Just be sure that Diana hacks these too or you can’t use them to repair yourself. Fortunately or unfortunately, I never died to use one of these checkpoints but did find two throughout the demo to hack.

Thankfully, your exploration in the demo is also as you like. While the locks do have numbers, I definitely did not do them in numerical order. One of the booth workers tried to tell me where the second lock was only to say “oh one was behind you but you can go back.” So while there may be a “recommended” path, feel free go as you’d like. Just be ready to attack all the enemies in your path and collect the new guns.

You can view the weapons in action on the Pragmata website.

Each gun works a bit differently. You have your base gun that you begin with which is fine. However, the close range attack unit gun was without a doubt my favorite. In the tactical slot was a gun that would keep hitting enemies while having them enclosed in a small area. These two guns break when they run out of ammo while Hugh’s main gun will reload itself. Thankfully, you can find a few in the demo to reload.

My one critique of the demo experience, as someone who doesn’t do many shooters, was it felt a bit easy. Now, of course this is only a demo without choosing a difficulty setting and they want you to enjoy your time. I imagine the game will continue to grow in difficulty as you play further. I expected to die at least once and didn’t even against the boss fight. This isn’t a problem, especially if you’re a casual gamer. There are small bits of story hidden in the demo as well, as Hugh remarks that some former employees were bored due to the bots doing all the work. With only about 20 minutes to dive in, there wasn’t enough time to explore the entire station. I do hope we see a publicly available demo soon to see what other story may be hiding in plain sight.

Pragmata Hugh — Hugh is ready to attack but he won’t go it alone. (Image Credit: Steam).

Even if it takes time before you can play at home, rest assured, the demo is as beautiful as the trailers and perhaps even more so. If there’s any loading as you move its not noticeable as this game ran as smooth as butter. While initially I was not overly excited about Pragmata, I find myself now looking forward to it for next year.

If you’re attending NYCC, be sure to try and get in line early to get your opportunity to play. I ran there first thing when the expo hall opened and walked right in. Later in the day the line may be capped or you’ll need to wait quite a while.

Pragmata is set to release in 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and Steam. If you can’t make it to NYCC hopefully a demo will be available soon. We here at GSC will be sure to let you know when/if that happens. If you’ve had the opportunity to play the demo, let us know your thoughts below as well!