Endings can make or break a story and tremendously affect how an audience remembers a work. (Case in point: Game of Thrones. Oof.) They’re tough to nail down, especially if a creator wants to ensure every character gets a happy ending, even when circumstances seem dire for the cast.
Pragmata’s plot surrounding a rogue AI and killer robots is a bit thin, so the relationship between astronaut Hugh and childlike android Diana is what carries its narrative. They spend the bulk of the game together fighting clankers and bonding at an artificial beach when they get a moment to breathe. (Does Diana breathe? Probably not.)
As their relationship grows, so does the player’s attachment to Hugh and Diana, making it so Pragmata’s ending hits even harder. Capcom stuck to its guns with a bittersweet ending, and the game is better off for it. Even Hugh’s actor David Menkin knew the conclusion was “a bit inevitable,” and accepted his character’s fate.
[Ed. note: This article contains spoilers for Pragmata’s ending and its “secret ending.”]
In a climactic moment, Diana is badly wounded by fellow Pragmata android Eight, who makes a heel turn to become the game’s Big Bad. Eight ordered the moon base’s AI system IDUS to wipe out all life on the base, and intends to travel to Earth and destroy it via dead filament, a dangerous byproduct of the lunafilament material that plays such a crucial role in the game’s setting and gameplay upgrade systems.
After learning all this, Hugh escapes with Diana in tow, bringing her to a repair center. He’s attacked and wounded by a bot infected with dead filament before Diana can wake and save the day. What he doesn’t tell her is that he’s infected with the dead filament, and his days are numbered; it basically eats up organic matter, and Hugh saw firsthand what happened to people attacked by it via a holographic video.
Hugh’s helmet can completely cover his face and the dead filament growing on it, meaning he can hide his condition from Diana until the very end. He does so until Eight and the dead filament final boss are defeated, only revealing his condition once Diana is tucked away in a spacecraft bound for Earth.
Knowing Hugh is bound to perish is a tough pill to swallow, but it’s the only logical course of action for the story to take. Menkin, the voice of Space Dad Hugh, “did wonder where we were going and then when I got to read it, I was like, ‘Yeah, of course. Of course I die,’” he told Polygon over a video call in the lead-up to Pragmata’s launch.
Eight is preparing to wipe out life on Earth — there’s no time for Hugh and Diana to take a detour trying to find some sort of cure that may or may not work. Narratively, giving Hugh any sort of cure would be an eye-rolling decision. After all, everyone else on the station perished.
In accepting his fate, Hugh immediately recognizes his life was forfeit, and that he has bigger priorities — ya know, saving Earth. Someone less heroic might have chased selfish desires in prioritizing trying to find a cure, and a lesser game would have saved its hero so he could then live happily ever after on Earth. Instead, Hugh ensures Diana can live that happily ever after, a testament to his altruism and newfound parental instinct. As stated on the holographic beach, Diana wants to venture to Earth, and Hugh supports that goal, even at the cost of his own life. It reflects how parents often have to sacrifice today to create a better life for their kids tomorrow.
For what it’s worth, Menkin agreed with Hugh’s decision to hide the truth from Diana. “Then I’d have to explain what dying is,” the actor explained. Time is of the essence — big parenting talks about death will have to wait. Diana only just learned what a beach is like. Explaining death might be too much, too soon.
The game ends with Hugh drifting back to the moon as he watches Diana’s spacecraft with a post-credits scene of Diana arriving on a real beach on Earth. Though… is that truly the ending? A brief secret ending, obtained after beating the post-game Unknown Signals mode, includes an additional scene that raises questions. After the credits roll, Cabin says, “Welcome back! What’s this? Traveling alone today?” to an unseen character.
This is the type of canon conundrum that only video games can really achieve. Is the canon ending the one where Hugh dies? Or is it the secret ending where he presumably makes it back to Cabin somehow alive? Maybe he just hasn’t died yet, or maybe he’s survived the dead filament for good.
It’s not clear that Cabin is even speaking to Hugh here. For all we know, this final nugget of dialogue, with Cabin speaking to someone “traveling alone today,” could be set in the far future. Perhaps Diana has returned to the moon base. Who knows! But, the fact that this ending is only presented after an optional post-game mode means that the majority of Pragmata players will see Hugh for the last time when he dies in space.
Judging from the way Menkin spoke about Hugh, he’s at least confident his character is dead. On recording Hugh’s final moments, he said, “Finding out if I should die with my eyes open or eyes closed” was an “interesting experience.”
The developers hadn’t animated Hugh’s final scenes yet, and therefore weren’t certain if Hugh would be dying with his mask on or off. Menkin had to wonder: “How does someone go, ‘Okay, I’ve done my job, I can breathe out, I can relax, and when I breathe out and I relax, it means that it’s over.’ What happens then? Do you close your eyes or do you keep your eyes open? It was a really weird thing.”
Pragmata wasn’t out yet at the time Menkin spoke with Polygon, and he hadn’t played the final game. “The amazing thing about it is I don’t know what that moment looks like because I haven’t gotten there,” he said. Hopefully he’s pulled a Charlie Cox by now and experienced the game he starred in firsthand, because Pragmata is a doozy.