AI is the villain in Pragmata, but director Cho Yonghee wants to stress that his evil AI is slightly different to our real-life evil AI thanks to 'the presence of an AI character like Diana'
There are just some things that lend themselves to being great villains. There's snakes and Brits (aren't they the same thing, aha!) but there's also been the long-used theme of an artificial intelligence that gains sentience and then immediately realises that humans suck, and so tries to do away with us all.
We've had infamous cases like HAL-9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey or AUTO from WALL-E in movies, or GLaDOS and SHODAN in videogames. There's certainly a lot of examples as to why humans probably shouldn't be racing to perfect the next thing that'll probably dislike us.
But now we have another game to add to the list, Pragmata. You see, in Capcom's newest series, the big bad is none other than an AI, specifically an AI program called IDUS. This is what has taken over the moonbase where protagonists Hugh and Diana find themselves stuck. It doesn't seem like the AI particularly hates them, it's just reacting like a white blood cell would to a foreign body.
It's also important to note that Pragmata's antagonist wasn't inspired by what we're experiencing today, at least not intentionally. "The time that the game's concept was originally being created, we're talking back in like 2020, or so, it hadn't quite reached the heights that it has right now, of the sort of the AI revolution," director Cho Yonghee tells me. "And how much we're seeing in the news as a force for both good and bad.
"We took a different approach that in this game, there is the the AI Nemesis that's part of the background of the storyline and the problem you're trying to overcome, but also the presence of an AI character like Diana, who is not only helpful, but is also able to teach you certain things from her perspective that maybe Hugh doesn't have from his perspective as a human character."
Hugh Williams, the guy in the high tech suit and the primary protagonist, is a human, but he's joined by Diana, an android AI that looks like a little human girl but can hack robots, destroy crystals, and is the key to getting around the moon base. Together they make a very fun and lethal team who work together to overcome the evil AI.
"It really just illustrates that this kind of technology or tool is something that can be used for good and bad purposes," Yonghee adds. "Within this story context, you'll see how the relationship with AI that Hugh has takes on different forms, whether it be the AI itself and how it's trying to take over, versus the naivety of Diana and how she learns to cooperate with a human being.
"In a way, she sort of grows up into a more human-like presence. And those themes are something that, as I said, we were thinking about them quite a while before they became so such a daily concern in this day and age. But perhaps that shows how they're eternal themes as well."
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