The 3D-printed girl

Capcom’s latest game, Pragmata, appears to embrace a long-held trope in video games, depicting a dual protagonist setup of an older male character and a younger female character, with the former slowly becoming paternally endeared to the latter. But Pragmata has some key differences from its many predecessors. 

Most critics have pointed to the portrayal of Hugh, the surrogate dad character, as a standout, because Hugh starts out kind and remains so, rather than needing a surrogate daughter figure (or, in Kratos of God of War’s case, a son) to make him realize he shouldn’t be an asshole. This is true to the extent that Hugh can be described as having a personality at all. By dint of his smiling blandness, he is a refreshing change from The Last of Us’ Joel, Kratos, or Bioshock’s Booker deWitt. But he doesn’t hold a candle, personality-wise, to Lee Everett from Telltale’s The Walking Dead. Even Leon Kennedy in Resident Evil 4 (more of a big-brother type than a paternal figure for Ashley Graham) has more going on internally than Hugh.

The big difference I see in Pragmata, compared to all of these other games, is actually not the portrayal of Hugh, but rather, the portrayal of his young female charge, Diana. Or perhaps I should call her D-I-0336-7, because she is not a human girl. She is an android, designed in the image of a 7-year-old human girl.

Unlike Ellie in The Last of Us, Clementine in TWD, or Ashley in RE4, Diana does not necessarily need Hugh’s protection. She may be physically diminutive, but she can survive without Hugh’s aid and, unlike a human 7-year-old, she doesn’t require constant supervision — or, seemingly, any supervision at all. She does not even require oxygen to breathe, nor food to eat. And unlike Atreus in God of War and Elizabeth in Bioshock: Infinite, Diana’s arc is not a coming-of-age story. She very literally cannot age. Like Claudia in Interview with the Vampire, she is an immortal child, but unlike Claudia, her brain does not seem capable of growing older.