Pragmata isn’t The Last of Us with robots — you’re missing the point

Pragmata looks like a dad game on the surface, or maybe a “cool uncle who’s nice to his adopted niece” game. Hugh’s a good guy. He takes care of Diana, a little child-robot who seemingly grows close to him. She wants to learn about his life and experience the things that matter to him. It’s sweet! It’s also fake. Diana’s a robot, and there is no parent-child relationship here. There is, however, a little warning about placing too much value in things that aren’t real.

Hugh’s first concern when he meets Diana is keeping her safe — because she’s quite literally company property. He worries what might happen to him if she gets hurt, so it’s in his best interests to take good care of the little not-kid. He eventually becomes more attached to Diana, even trying to help encourage her sense of self in the Terra Dome by asking her to think about what she wants out of life. It’s a concept wholly alien to her, of course. She’s not a kid, and the idea of “what I want” means nothing to an entity that exists to do what others want. She “wants” to save Eight in the Terra Dome, but Eight is tied to the station and, by extension, the AI controlling it. So, saving Eight isn’t what Diana wants. It’s what something else wants her to do.

However, Hugh’s apparent concern for Diana is unsurprising. She’s designed to encourage a sense of protectiveness and attachment: her tiny size; her only clothes being a ragged blue coat; her bare feet (she couldn’t be any more waif-coded even if she held up a bowl of gruel and asked for more); her surprised joy at discovering toys; her life spent in solitude before Hugh showed up. The thing is, none of this matters to her. Not the loneliness, the fake cats, the toys. Maybe not even Hugh.

When you first encounter REM data — that’s a digital recreation of something real from Earth, like a TV set or a playground slide — it’s a half-deleted globe. You find it in the holographic remains of a room where the floorboards are phasing out of existence, and there’s a distinct sense of unreality about it all. Pragmata wants you to realize that this is just a copy of something. It’s missing a soul. That impression only gets stronger when you get to not-New York, a superficially accurate recreation of the metropolis plastered with advertisements and the sense of busyness. Hugh remarks that it’s a decent imitation, but it’s missing something human and feels all off.

Image: Capcom via Polygon

Shortly after that, the pair arrives at an apartment complex where a table set for dinner reminds Hugh of a treasured memory from his youth. His adopted family would always eat dinner with him and listen to anything he had to say about his day, no matter how childish or “unimportant” it seemed. It meant the world to him. Diana can’t understand it, though, and not in the way that kids don’t always grasp things on a deeper level. She simply can’t conceive of spiritual and emotional nourishment, and instead thinks of the exchange in terms of energy efficiency. It’s a decent imitation, but it’s missing something human.

Fast-forward to the next area, the Terra Dome, when Hugh and Diana stumble upon a digital recreation of a lovely beach sunset. Diana is initially unmoved by the sight. Hugh tries to scoop the water, and Diana copies him, but only because he does it first. She has no interest in the water. It’s just more 0s and 1s to her. Hugh starts talking about his memories of the beach next, the wind across the sand, and other intangibles that only a human could understand. Diana gets excited and says she wants to see all these things too. But just like with loneliness and family meals, she has no concept of sea breezes or watching the sun sink beneath the waves. She’s just copying Hugh.

Kids tend to copy the people they’re around, but it’s done for their benefit as they try on different identities and figure out how the world works. Hugh’s feeding his life into this robot and only getting a reflection of himself back. Maybe he thinks Diana is like an adopted kid or a niece, and the intentional blurriness of the game’s relationships mean you can have a totally valid read of it as an adoption game or a dad game. But Pragmata‘s ending suggests another reading, a little caution against investing so much of one’s life into unreal things.

In the game’s normal ending, Hugh dies. The idea is that Diana will go to Earth, see the beach — do all the things Hugh wanted her to do. Maybe she will. But just like the half-fazed floor boards and the soulless imitation of New York City, something’s not quite right here. Diana won’t be visiting Earth as a human appreciating things as only humans can, or carrying on Hugh’s legacy. What Hugh left behind is little more than a storage device full of memories that it can’t even understand.