And so from the intimately familiar trailers to those where I quiet literally have no idea what I'm looking at, that's how the situation was when I first saw this trailer for a game known only as Pragmata. Now as someone who likes to be courted by a little bit of mystery now and then, I don't mind a little bit of vagueness, even I had to look at the trailer for Pragmata and go "Okay, what was that? And why does it look so vaguely familiar." This is a game that's been almost impossible to research, deduce or even make vaguely educated guesses about; the thing is just a total enigma. I can't even take a balanced look at the developer to see what sort of games they usually front because apparently this is being developed by Capcom. Just Capcom. No 'team USA' or 'Vancouver branch'; just Capcom. (Why do you guys make these blogs so hard to write?)
So the trailer, I guess, let's start with that. We have an armoured Tenno-looking man in a spacesuit standing in the middle of an abandoned Times Square. (Take out your autograph books, Pitbull might be around with a camera!) I'm not kidding when I say that straight away, from this initial shot alone, I could see the parallels between this game and 'Death Stranding'. (A comparison which I think will haunt this game for years to come seeing as how the release date isn't until 2022.) Perhaps that comes from the desolation, bleak palette, or the fact that the player character literally looks like he could be Sam in another suit. It's honestly wild to see how similar this all looks to what Kojima was doing and I can't help wonder if this is Capcom's direct response to his work, like "Well if he can do it then so can we." (If so I can only imagine he's happy with the outcome. He did say he wanted to start a new genre.) And, of course, the observation I make it by no means an original one. Just about everyone who has every laid eyes on this title has parroted something similar so even if the similarities are truly coincidental (Which they absolutely aren't) Pragmata has already been roped into the genre of 'high budget art-house games'. (Guess that means the pressure to perform is on!)
Our spaceman does some important-looking space stuff and we see that he's tracking some sort of little girl through these abandoned streets, clearly an indication that this character is going to be our 'baby in a bottle' throughout the story. (See, the Death Stranding parallels literally write themselves!) We see this girl and her holo-robotic kitten looking up towards the moon and once more I'm struck with information overload. I said that I was a fan of mystery, and I am, but if there comes a point where if I can't even form a basis of context one must ask the question of what exactly the purpose of your trailer was. Death Stranding's initial trailer has a lot of symbolism and foreshadowing to work as a sort of "Ah-hah" vehicle for folk later down the line once they understood things a little more, Capcom are clearly trying to emulate that approach but it feels a little synthetic and forced. I know, I'm being a total "Kojima did it first!" brat about this but there is something to be said about attempting, and failing, to copy the indefinable process of an auteur. That being said I think it's impossible and silly to call 'Pragmata' a crappy clone just yet (You could even call it- 'unpragmatic'! I'll see myself out.) But I won't lie and say that this trailer didn't leave me feeling a little condescended, regardless.
It's after this that the trailer really picks up, however, as we get a glimpse of something truly wild and unique distorting the landscape. There appears to be this black web-like substance that has the effect of seriously twisting and distorting a building to the point that it looks like the aftermath of someone going nuts with the 'swirl' tool on photoshop. It's such an arresting and unique looking sight that draws some questions about the legitimacy of the world you're operating in; I say this as, obviously, physics would never allow such a building to be twisted in that way and, the slightly bigger smoking gun, we're hit with this 'glitch screen' effect throughout the trailer. In fact, I'd say that this little effect that they use can probably go to describe all the supernatural oddities from the trailer; the empty streets, the floating cars, the sudden shift of the earth's polarity; I think it's pretty apparent that Pragmata proposes to offer us a completely digital world, like the Matrix. Of course, such a plotpoint would mean that the sky's-the-limit in terms of mindbending visuals and set-piece moments, so there's already a precursory glimmer of interest from little old me.
As I already mentioned, the tranquillity of the trailer is broken up once the polarity of the Earth shifts and our astronaut and his little companion are shoved haphazardly into the air. Que some stuff that I still didn't follow even on repeat viewings, and he summons a space shuttle in order to guide them both- sigh- to the moon. Yeah, this trailer really flirts between interesting obtuse concepts and moments of "Okay, now you're just being strange for the sake of it!" Trying to decode this trailer is like trying to construct a coherent dream diary after a week on the Hunter S Thompson diet. (Which essentially means swapping all solid foods and potential sleep time with cocaine.) All this needs in order to cap things off is for the little girl to stand on the moon look up at the planet and remark "Wait, it's all a Kojima clone?", with a nice "Always has been" to round things out. (Also, side note, when the girl speaks in this trailer she sounds exceptionally weird. I'm not just talking about an odd accent, though she has one of those too; she literally sounds like a malfunctioning TTS. I found it really haunting for some reason.)
If this was all that we had to go on regarding the ins and outs of Pragmata then we'd have precious little to talk about, wouldn't we? But luckily Capcom, in their infinite grace, saw fit to deign us mere mortals with an official press release. Great, then what exactly can we learn about this title I wonder? Well it's "set in a dystopian near-future on Earth's Moon". (Which does have a name, by the way Capcom. We call her 'Luna', or 'Earth 1' if you're feeling nerdy.) Pragmata is said to be able to take us on an "unforgettable adventure powered by next gen-" blah blah. So essentially Capcom have nothing to share at all. All we've learnt is that this apparently a post-apocalypse (No duh, Time Square doesn't get that empty on accident) and that this is a "Sci-fi setting like never before", and forgive me, Capcom, if I don't drink the coolaid quite so readily. So you put together a headscratcher of a trailer with one interesting effect, I'll going to need a little more citation before you crown yourselves the new kings of Sci-fi innovation, thank you very much.
Which leaves us with The Question, that I ask whenever I see these games and am still curious as to it's purpose. Should this have been at the PS5 reveal event, to which my answer is honestly no. Now sure, the game looks lovely and take advantage of it's next gen systems to look that way, (Though one could argue that Death Stranding looks equally as good on current gen hardware, but let's not split hairs just yet.) but there's still a couple more practical reasons why I feel like this trailer should have waited for it's own reveal. Firstly; the developers had literally nothing to show accept pretty visuals. At an event that is billed to showcase the power of Playstation it's important to showcase what the console is capable of, and rendering someone's high-concept high-fidelity animation project is temporarily arresting, but not exactly symbiotic with the PS5. And secondly; for an event which was billed to showcase the sheer weight of PlayStation's upcoming launch-lineup, why in the heck did they slot in game that's due in 2022? Even by non-console-reveal standards that's a mite early to start spending marketing dollars, especially for something so intentionally vague. Playstation owners and Capcom fans alike are going to forget about this game in a matter of months and absolutely no momentum will have been built for it's popularity. (I can't see what game Capcom and Sony are playing but it's leaving me in the dust right now.)
Ultimately, I find Pragmata to be the kind of title that is just lacking in enough substance to be intriguing mysterious- for a time. But I wager that it's just too similar to Death Stranding to earn a unique audience just yet, (especially with DS coming to Steam, thus overshadowing it, just recently.) and that's a shame for a project that Capcom are so sure is conceptually distinct. Do I find Pragmata interesting and worthy of mental investment? Passingly. But so many other vague and interesting games have given us much more to go on regarding what to expect whilst Capcom have played a little too hard to get so far. Perhaps in a year's time we'll get a Pragmata reveal that really stands out and demands attention from Sci-fi heads (Of which I am a proud member), but until that day I'm just going to blink and forget this game's name as most of you already had.
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