Pragmata has been one of the more enigmatic games coming from developer Capcom in recent years. Originally announced in 2020 alongside the reveal of the PS5, this sci-fi shooter takes players into a visually stunning and alluring space station with its two leads, an odd pair who must work together to survive rogue AI machines seeking to prevent their escape.
After being MIA for some time, we’ve finally been getting more and more details on this upcoming shooter that seamlessly blends third-person action with real-time hacking. With its release now coming a bit sooner than expected on April 17, 2026, I got an opportunity to go hands-on with several hours of the game’s more open-ended zones, which showcase the striking visuals and tactical combat against fearsome machines.
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So far, I’m feeling even more tuned into Pragmata’s premise of a sci-fi world gone haywire, which also puts surprising focus on the bond between the human protagonist, Hugh, and his android ally, Diana.
The latest Pragmata preview focuses on Diana and the game’s sci-fi world.
Set in the distant future, space explorer Hugh Williams finds himself trapped within a seemingly abandoned lunar station. After encountering a rogue AI that’s swept across the station, turning nearly all the machines inside hostile, he soon meets a human-like android named Diana, who happens to have the ability to hack robots to expose their weaknesses. Deciding to team up, Hugh and Diana journey across the derelict station to piece together what happened and find a way to escape back to Earth.
I’ve previously played sections of Pragmata that focus more on the more linear, enclosed areas of the game, which helps get players into the flow of the combat-puzzle action and how you’ll use both characters in tandem. The action is an interesting mix between traditional over-the-shoulder shooting and traversal, where you’ll need to time your shots with Hugh’s weapons and dodge incoming attacks as needed.
The added hook of manually controlling Diana’s hacking powers creates an interesting and satisfying rhythm to the action. When it’s firing on all cylinders, the combat is filled with those satisfying moments where you pop open an enemy’s shield and then unload with Hugh’s weapons.
In the latest section I got to play, I explored one of Pragmata’s more mysterious and open-ended sections that’s set in a New York-style metropolis. As we learn from Hugh and Diana, the station’s unique technology has constructed a re-creation of a city on the moon. Still, it’s also gone a bit haywire, showing parts of the city as nightmarishly glitched and teeming with rogue machines.
Ever since the first look, Pragmata’s visual style has leaned into that hard sci-fi tone. The game captures the sterile look of an automated future and the chaos that can form from it, and this section, set in the lunar base’s city, showed Pragmata’s style at its best.
It’s a stunning location that’s packed with details when it comes to walking the city streets, which are always partially, and even incorrectly, constructed by AI. It reminds me of Christopher Nolan‘s Inception, with some areas featuring impossible structures jutting out in odd places. It was a nice surprise to see Pragmata’s non-linear sections really go for scope here.
What really impressed me most about this section was how well it handles combat and exploration – and this is where Pragmata’s combat gets a bit more complex with its flow. To escape the city, I had to unlock various nodes scattered in the alleys and buildings to unlock a massive gate leading to the city’s take on Times Square. This is not an open-world section, but the freedom of movement I had to dip into alleyways and boost up into higher passages was interesting to see. I also liked uncovering hidden rooms that held special combat encounters against the more elite machines.
This section also showed off more of the game’s advanced hacking and shooting systems. Hacking can not only open enemy defenses, but you can also unlock abilities to initiate multi-hacks on clusters of enemies, and even outright freeze certain targets.
Pairing these with Hugh’s more powerful weapons, such as the rain cannon, which can pierce targets, and the grenade launcher, really made the battles feel dynamic and exciting, a stark contrast to the slower-paced fights in earlier parts of the game. However, elite enemies can also counter-hack Diana, which puts blocks on the hack grid, and the only way to disable them is to shoot the jammers on their bodies with Hugh’s weapons.
During the more hairy encounters with different machine types – such as the fast-moving flying drones, the common guard types, and the larger walker enemies – I had to pick and prioritize targets based on which were more dangerous than others. This is where using all the tools you have available comes in handy. It was so satisfying to initiate multiple hacks at once, use a status gun to free enemies in place, and then unload with my shotgun on exposed targets.
This tactical element was really surprising to see, but there were moments when I felt the combat veered a bit too far into overwhelming spectacle. While some of the fiercer fights with groups of enemies landed that way for me, I also felt the large boss battle that capped off this section was a bit difficult to follow, as it is a bit of a different pace compared to the tighter fights throughout the city.
This was a generally fantastic fight that really upped the sense of scale for combat. Still, it’s also a fight that emphasizes careful platforming and traversal, which made it a bit difficult to keep up with. Still, it’s an impressive battle that I really liked seeing play out.
Throughout the game, Pragmata really focuses on Hugh and Diana’s bond, and as the game progresses, Diana learns more about humanity, its history, and how they came to the moon. This also plays in the shelter, the player hub in between missions, where upgrades, new perks, and even costumes can be acquired.
But what elevates the shelter is that you can decorate the shelter with new constructs, which include old-style CRT television sets, playsets, and other artifacts from old Earth that Diana can interact with. It’s a cool take on a standard player HUB, and I enjoyed seeing Pragmata lean into building its world and characters.
What I’m reminded of when thinking back on Pragmata is how experimental and unorthodox it feels for a Capcom action game. It actually reminds me of the similar style of action games released in the early to mid-2000s, such as the underrated sci-fi shooter P.N. 03. It’s a very stylish action game, but also thoughtful in its ideas for balancing two different gameplay systems.
From what I played, Pragmata has a great handle on its strange concept of a combat-puzzle action game. I’m very much on board with where this weird and oddly compelling shooter will go next, and hopefully Pragmata’s larger story will make this extended wait all worthwhile.
