Pragmata Completed

 Pragmata is a good game.

I think that's been the general critical consensus. I've now finished it, and while in true Capcom fashion, there's some bonus content I've unlocked for having beaten the story, I've got the main thing packed up. Indeed, I even 100% all of the items in each zone (though I think there were like one or two Mini-Cabins I didn't find - but the "map complete" percentages were all 100%).

I don't want to get too much into spoilers here, but it is really interesting to me that there are only really four major characters in the story, and one is dead by the time the game starts.

As charming as the game's central relationship between Hugh and Diana is (and it really is charming,) there's a certain melancholy to the story, born in part by the fact that it all takes place on a moon base where everyone's dead. Shortly after the game begins, Hugh is the only living person on the base. (There's not a lot of talk about the actual name of the base - I think it is, hubristically enough, called Babel, and run by the Delphi corporation.)

I guess we should get into spoilers now:

The final level, which is really only one among 5 other than the brief visits to areas that you don't come back to, introduces new elements of Dead Filament corruption, which requires some tricky use of Diana's new ability to cleanse it. When we confront Eight, who is our final boss (though there's also a sort of "QTE" boss after her) we need to, or at least have a far easier time with her, if Diana can cleanse the shell of Dead Filament she wraps herself in.

I died once to this final boss, which I think marks only two times I died to a major boss (the other was in the Terra Dome) and maybe four deaths overall. The game isn't terribly hard, basically, but that doesn't mean I didn't feel challenged. Sorting out which tools and weapons will serve you best is a big part of the game, though given how limited ammo is, you'll often be forced to pick up whatever weapons the game gives you instead of your favorites (I rarely fully ran out of ammo except against bosses). I favored a build focused on overheating foes and thus getting to critical-hit them, usually killing non-boss enemies and, with one of my mods, also damaging nearby bots. It did mean that I heard Hugh shout "take this" far more than I think the game intends you to, but that's fine - it was a satisfying way to play.

Of course, by the time we start the final zone/level of the game, Hugh is unfortunately already doomed. Shot through with Eight's Dead Filament, it's already eating away at his body. While he bears it long enough to defeat Eight and get Diana to a cargo shuttle to take her to Earth, he knows that he's not going to make it, his last act being to send a tearful Diana off to safety as the base crumbles around him.

I get it - there's an element of parenthood where you have to acknowledge that you're not going to be around for them forever - but it also feels, honestly, a little rote. Of course there was going to be some kind of bittersweet tragedy to the end of the game. It was just whether Hugh was going to die protecting Diana, or Diana was going to have to sacrifice herself for him.

I do really appreciate the constant warmth of their relationship - Hugh's fate (we don't see him die, so technically they could always say he survived somehow, though I think this would undercut the emotion of the game's ending) is tragic, but the way that he lives is really endearing - there's no gruffness. He's not some hardened space-marine. He's actually just a technician, and while he remains impressively competent under pressure, the terror of what is going on around him is not something he hides. He just prioritizes keeping Diana safe, which makes him feel heroic.

After the credits, Diana emerges from the shuttle on a tropical beach, recalling the scene earlier in the Terra Dome. We don't know what will become of her, but she does have Earth to explore.

There's an interesting element in the background of all of this: a vaguely dystopian corporate world on Earth, whose callousness leads to this tragedy. Daisy, the girl on whom both Diana and Eight are based, died. Dr. Higgins was not yet convinced that the treatment he was developing had worked, but the corporation went behind his back and subjected her to a clinical trial without his consent, which went badly and killed her.

The rage at this injustice led Higgins, as he was dying himself from Dead Filament exposure, to curse both the Delphi corporation and all of humanity, and Eight misinterpreted this dying rage as a genuine directive, leading to her genocidal acts.

So, I guess there's something of a cautionary tale here about technology, though I'm not sure that the thesis is all that clear.

To me, the game felt short, but that also might be that it was compelling enough for me to play it for hours day after day. There's a lot of interesting mechanical depth to it that felt like it got just complex enough to let you feel like you were able to strategize without being so complex that I could never imagine using 90% of the options.

The story feels pretty self-contained, so I don't really imagine a sequel making much sense unless it's a totally different story. But the gameplay mechanics are something you could build on.