Remember what it was like to come back from school, no worries, no responsibilities, and just get on your Xbox 360 or PS4 and play the night away with friends, good times. Well Pragamata isn’t even fully out yet and players are already saying it has some of that same magic of old.
“We have seen a lot of those types of comments saying that, you know, in a good way, it feels like an old school game,” director Cho Yonghee tells me. “That’s something that we’re actually really pleased with.”
Players have cottoned onto Pragmata having this old school vibe mainly thanks to its shtick of being a shooter with something extra added on, in this case hacking. Before Hugh can properly damage enemies with his weapons, you need to utilise your companion Diana’s skills to hack enemies. Depending on what you have in your arsenal, you can inflict various debuffs against said enemies which makes them easier to kill.
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“Personally, I’m someone who’s got a lot of happy experiences and memories from that generation,” Yonghee continues. “There were a lot of really unique and interesting games that came out back in the Xbox 360 or PS4 generation. And I think if people are feeling that we have something of that magic in the game, that’s definitely a positive thing. So it’s very good feedback to hear.”
Pragmata’s premise isn’t exactly groundbreaking. You’re trapped on a moon base alongside an android child and the both of you have to work together to defeat the evil AI which has taken control of the base to get a message out and reach freedom. But even so, the addition of hacking makes the combat avoid feeling like your bog standard third person shooter loop that you could find in any other game.
I also have a weakness for sci-fi dystopia, so exploring the abandoned (and slightly topsy-turvy) moon base was great fun. Because many areas have been destroyed or strangely altered by the AI, there’s a lot of interesting traversal and platforming to be had while getting from one area to the next. Whether that be jumping onto bridges that emerge from thin air or dashing through lasers to get to a hidden item box mid-fight.
“Ultimately, as producer and as a team, we want to have a satisfying gameplay experience at the end of all this design process,” producer Naoto Oyama adds. “So, we will start off with things like say that the core concept and the visuals, and we’ll develop the characters from there, but then we obviously look back and we will think, Okay, well, how does the characters we created tie into the gameplay, and how does the gameplay affect how we’re going to depict the characters?
“It’s an ongoing process that takes a few cycles for us to kind of flesh out exactly what experience we want, but we hope that it feels cohesive at the end. Regardless of where we started, in the end, the experience you have feels like it was very intentional, and that you get that sense of authorship of this story we’re telling.”
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