SPACE ODDITY

How Capcom's singular sci-fi shooter is delivering on promises made long ago

- NIALL O'DONOGHUE

Few things are quite as intriguing as a delayed project. As hype builds for long-awaited games such as Silksong and Grand Theft Auto VI, it's hard to resist the temptation to comb over trailers and screenshots, piecing together clues in an attempt to guess what the final production will look like. Capcom has had us on the hook for five years now, ever since it released the first trailer for Pragmata, giving us a brief but tantalising window into its futuristic world. Clearly an awful lot has happened since then, including a global pandemic, the rise of generative AI and the launch of a new console generation, to name just a handful of events. Through all of this, the release date for Pragmata has been pushed back ever further, with no signs of life provided by Capcom since it was indefinitely delayed in 2023. Plenty of time, then, in which our imaginations could run wild. As we fire up a demo at this year’s Summer Game Fest, though, our preconceived notions fade away. The reality, it turns out, is far more interesting than anything we could have come up with.