Pragmata’s New York-like cityscape is meant to feel like it has been created by AI, even though it was “painstakingly” made by Capcom’s very human developers.
That’s coming from Pragmata’s director Cho Yonghee and producer Naoto Oyama, who explained this area was intentionally designed to feel “AI-generated”, because it isn’t “the real” New York City, and that had to come across. To achieve this, the Pragmata team made deliberate ‘errors’ like inverting streets and adding “buses sprouting from walls”.
“For Pragmata, we set the premise as ‘a fake New York generated by AI’,” Cho explained to 4Gamer (translated by automaton). “When familiar locations appear, players can relate more easily. On top of that, to make it clear that this isn’t the real New York, we wanted something slightly distorted.”
Oyama added that while this New York-inspired location “mirrors reality”, its “unique appeal comes from the setting errors and how they feel out of place”, such as those aforementioned wall buses and “taxis sinking into floors”.
The Pragmata producer noted that “although the premise is that it is generated by AI” it was of course Capcom’s “human developers” who “painstakingly worked to incorporate mechanisms that express this AI-like uncanny feeling”.
This took a lot of careful work, as the development team had to make sure they struck a balance between this world being visually interesting for players, but not so distracting that any distorted ‘errors’ could be mistaken for puzzle clues or similar. “Balancing distortion to be both unique and merely background was difficult,” Cho said.
Thankfully, this approach seems to have worked, with Oyama saying Capcom hasn’t received any feedback from players suggesting that the paths in Pragmata are too difficult or confusing to follow.
Pragmata was once planned for a 2022 release, having been originally revealed in 2020. It is now slated to launch across PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 next month, on 17th April. If you are keen for more before then, though, there is currently a demo for Pragmata available on Steam.
“The result is a fascinating mix that was only better in its more difficult and more thought-provoking proper hands-on than it was in the two previous proof-of-concept style demos,” Alex Donaldson wrote in Eurogamer’s Pragmata preview.
