Pragmata devs almost drastically changed Diana's design

Published Jul 30, 2026, 11:12 AM EDT A bad haircut can really change a person Pragmata devs almost gave Diana a horrible haircut to save money Image: Capcom via Polygon Sign in to your Polygon.com account Capcom's action game Pragmata has not been without discourse since its release earlier this year. Some of that has revolved around whether it is a sad dad game or not (it isn't). Much of the discourse has been about the questionable design of Diana, your robot companion who looks like a little girl. Whatever you may think about Diana, however, I think we could all agree she would look way worse with a fuck-ass bob. That was almost a possibility. During the 2026 Computer Entertainment Developers Conference (CEDEC), Pragmata developers Kenji Irie and Serina Ohara gave a talk on hair and facial animations in the game (as reported by Famitsu and translated by Automaton). One of the most interesting parts of the talk revolved around Diana's hair, and the immense amount of work it took to animate. Many games animate hair using something called hair cards, flat polygons with hair textures. Pragmata, on the other hand, used hair strands for Diana. Hair strands are individually rendered and far more realistic, but require exponentially more work. Animating Diana's hair with cards would require 22 joints, compared with about 430,000 animation points for individual strands. Image: Capcom / CEDEC 2026 While animating Diana's golden locks would take more work (and money), Capcom decided it was a vital part of the game. During the talk, the developers said the flowing strands helped "convey a sense of life on the moon," as players watch it sway in the low-gravity environment. Still, at multiple points during development, the team considered giving Diana a big chop to lower costs. This was an option discussed as early as the 2D art stage, with the talk showing off some examples of what it could have looked like. It looks bad! Discussions about giving Diana a bob arose again in the middle of development, with a test model being created to determine if it would help with cost issues. Ultimately, Diana never received the bob cut and Capcom found ways to lower the cost of her massive head of hair. The final model for Diana uses, on average, fewer than 20,000 individual strands. The awful bob cut did still find its way into Pragmata. Eight, Diana's sister, sports a pretty messy bob. That's how you can tell she's evil; the cut exudes bad vibes.