Capcom has shared a behind-the-scenes look at the development of Pragmata, revealing that protagonist Diana almost had a completely different hairstyle. During CEDEC 2026, developers explained that the team explored giving Diana a bob cut to reduce development and rendering costs, but ultimately decided her long hair was too important to the character’s identity.
The development insights were presented by Kenji Irie and Serina Ohara, who discussed the technical challenges of creating Diana’s highly detailed character model.
Capcom chose character design over lower production costs
According to the developers, Diana’s original long hairstyle created significant technical hurdles because Pragmata renders individual strands of hair instead of relying on traditional hair cards used in many games.
While a standard hair-card setup would require around 22 animation joints, Diana’s strand-based system uses approximately 430,000 animation points, dramatically increasing production and processing demands.
The team even created a test model featuring a shorter bob haircut to evaluate whether it could reduce costs. However, they eventually concluded that the change would compromise Diana’s personality and visual identity.
The developers explained that her flowing blond hair helps
“convey a sense of life on the moon”
while reinforcing the image of a young girl unexpectedly caught up in a dangerous adventure. Since players frequently view Diana from behind during gameplay, the team also believed her dynamic hair animations would make exploration more visually engaging over long play sessions.
Capcom said the final implementation required overcoming challenges related to asset creation, simulation, GPU performance, and optimization across multiple platforms. Although a real person has roughly 100,000 hair strands, Diana’s model uses fewer than 20,000 carefully styled strands, with adjustments to thickness and shape creating a more natural appearance while keeping performance manageable.
The presentation highlighted the balance between technical limitations and artistic vision, showing why Capcom ultimately prioritized Diana’s signature look despite the additional development costs.
Pragmata is currently available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC (Steam), and Nintendo Switch 2.
