Capcom's upcoming third-person sci-fi puzzle shooter Pragmata is due out next month on April 17, 2026, a week earlier than its initial April 24th date set at The Game Awards 2025. So it's no surprise that we're seeing a little more of the game ahead of that launch date, including a recent demo, and a little more recently, previews from outlets getting one final look at the game ahead of launch.
One of those previews from Japanese outlet 4Gamer (spotted and translated by Automaton), where we learned a new interesting bit about Pragmata's development. In the 90-second overview trailer below and in other trailers, you can see Hugh and Diana run through what is clearly meant to be a version of New York City, but isn't actually New York at all.
That's because within the setting of the game, Hugh and Diana are running through an AI-generated, digital version of New York, and according to game director Cho Yonghee and producer Naoto Oyama, Capcom went to great pains to make sure it felt AI-generated, as the human developers "painstakingly" worked to get the details right - or more accurately, wrong.
"For Pragmata, we set the premise as ‘a fake New York generated by AI," Cho explained. "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 continued, saying, "It mirrors reality, but its unique appeal comes from the setting errors and how they feel out of place, such as taxis sinking into floors, or buses sprouting from walls. Although the premise is that it [was] generated by AI, actually, our human developers painstakingly worked to incorporate mechanisms that express this AI-like uncanny feel."
Cho also explained that part of what made achieving this feeling a "painstaking" process was that the team didn't want to go too far as to make the errors distracting to players. There's a thin line Capcom wanted to walk here, to give the stage the "uncanny feel" Oyama describes.
"Distortion is when something takes a shape that people have never seen before, and things unseen before are considered unique," Cho said. "But if the shapes are too unusual, players might think they’re related to puzzles or that the terrain has some hidden meaning. Balancing distortion to be both unique and merely background was difficult."
It's worth recognizing that the Pragmata team thought that the best way to make something feel like it was made by GenAI was to make sure the AI got things wrong. It's just something to think about when reading about today's GenAI tools.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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