There’s been many “dad games” in recent years, namely video games that focus on the experience of fatherhood. Most of them, like The Last of Us or the God of War reboots, feature gruff, older men with beards doling out tough love to their kid companions as they learn to embrace their roles as dads. Capcom’s new third-person shooter Pragmata goes in the opposite direction. Astronaut Hugh almost immediately bonds with the childlike android Diana when he finds her on an abandoned moon base and gradually becomes her surrogate father over the course of the game. Hugh doesn’t clash with Diana like Kratos and Atreus do, but uplifts and encourages her.
David Menkin, the voice of Hugh, is all for it. “I’m proud to call myself space dad,” Menkin told Polygon over a video call. “I think that’s an honor.”
Hugh and Diana spend the entire game together, whether they’re destroying robots with Diana on Hugh’s back or playing hide and seek at their shelter. Their relationship is the undisputed emotional core of the game and helps make Pragmata a kinder “dad game” than its genre counterparts.
“The only way that Hugh can relate to Diana is to see the child in her. She is unique, but she is a child and she is learning things,” Menkin said. “Everything that he does is there to support her because she is supporting him. She’s keeping him alive.”
Though he’s not a father himself, Menkin is “the world’s best uncle.” He calls himself lucky for being part of “quite a few people’s lives from the very beginning to seeing them grow to adults,” and he’s channeled that experience into his role as Hugh. Menkin said he’s had “so many frustrating conversations around a dinner table with kids, with teenagers, and with adults” about the state of the world. “The interesting thing is that I learn more from the frustrating conversations when I have them with younger people.”
