Pragmata’s developers take all your comparisons to Xbox 360 shooters as a ‘huge compliment’, though I’m not convinced by their theory for why players are making the connection

If you’ve played Pragmata, there’s a slight chance you’ve noticed it resembles an action game from the Xbox 360/PS3 era. By ‘slight chance’, I mean the connection has been made by anyone who has looked at Capcom’s third-person shooter for more than five seconds.

Yet while this may have been considered an insult a decade ago, today it is anything but. Not only does the similarity appear to have been a key factor in Pragmata’s commercial success, its developers have been utterly thrilled by players making the comparison.

In an interview with GamesRadar, Pragmata director Yonghee Cho and producer Naoto Oyama were asked how they felt about players comparing their sci-fi adventure to the golden age of third-person shooters, and apparently they began to beam even before the Japanese interpreter had finished translating the question.

“The dev team has heard similar comments from both reviewers as well as players,” Cho responded. “Honestly, it’s a huge compliment. I really enjoyed games during the PS3, Xbox 360 era, and games before that era as well, so hear that it has a similar feel, that’s basically an honour, a huge compliment and I appreciate the sentiment.”

What’s interesting, though, is that neither developer confirms that the era of cover shooters and chainsaw bayonets was a direct inspiration. In fact, Oyama suggests that the comparison is being made because the 360/PS3 era represented a period of innovation:

“Maybe the reason people might feel that way is because, during the PS3 and Xbox 360 era, a lot of different developers and publishers were experimenting with new types of games and just completely new games. Maybe that’s what causes people to feel that way,” he says. “Because the Pragmata dev team, as well, they put a lot of passion into creating something new.”

Frankly, I think it might have more to do with the fact that Oyama and Cho made a linear, single-player action game that doesn’t overstay its welcome at a time when such games are vanishingly rare. Well, they were vanishingly rare until this year. 2026 has delivered a couple similar titles, like Resident Evil: Requiem and 007: First Light. Both those games have sold extremely well too, further signalling that players are hungry for the days when triple-A games were bold, brash, and (relatively) brief.

Which isn’t to suggest that Pragmata lacks for new ideas. Its distinctive blend of third-person shooting and hacking minigame went down well with Justin Wagner in his Pragmata Review: “It’s the ace up Pragmata’s sleeve that makes the whole package a winner,” he wrote back in April. “You aim at an enemy, navigate a small tile maze with a controller’s face buttons or by holding down a side mouse button and using the cursor, then blow them away as normal.”