It’s a testament to Capcom’s development teams that even with three major sequels to beloved franchises this year, Pragmata, a new IP, has garnered attention. Part of this is due to the long development cycle, but over the past year, more and more players have warmed up to its premise and gameplay, unorthodox as it seems.
Which is good because the idea of simultaneously hacking and shooting enemies isn’t straightforward. The significant amount of delays was due to the sheer trial and error involved. Director Cho Yonghee reiterated how balancing both elements was one of the “core challenges” when speaking to GamesRadar.
“We wanted players to feel the tension of managing Hugh’s combat abilities alongside Diana’s hacking without any of their abilities overwhelming the other.” It seems the road to achieving this was to ensure that both systems “complement each other, so players experience them as part of a unified gameplay loop rather than separate tasks.”
Suffice to say that it’s worked out quite well, at least based on early feedback. With Pragmata launching on April 24th, several hurdles remain. Optimization is still ongoing, for instance, and given how much the performance controversy affected Monster Hunter Wilds, it’s not surprising to see the team focused on “frame rate stability first and foremost.”
Whether it can achieve that on all platforms, especially the less powerful Nintendo Switch 2, remains to be seen. On the bright side, the PC version is running well (based on the demo, at least) and its Path Tracing support has provided some rather stunning visuals ahead of its launch.