Like most other players, I was captivated by Telltale Games’ take on The Walking Dead. This was a game that allowed you to forge your own path through its story, where your choices mattered, and Clementine will remember that. The choices ultimately didn’t really matter because the story always had to reach a set conclusion, but that wasn’t the important bit. I felt like I had a real stake in the game and that was enough. In the years that followed, however, Telltale went on a decline with their attempts at telling stories with other established IPs including Batman, Borderlands (though this was pretty good), and Minecraft, just to name a few. The shiny veneer of Telltale’s “illusion of choice” games started to fade, and I eventually got bored.
AdHoc Studio is a new team comprising several ex-developers from Telltale Games, and Dispatch serves as the studio’s debut title. Despite my misgivings and disillusions with choice-based games, my time with the first two episodes (out of eight) of Dispatch have completely reinvigorated my excitement for the genre.
Starring Breaking Bad actor Aaron Paul and Westworld‘s Jeffrey Wright, Dispatch puts you in the shoes of Robert Robertson the Third, an ordinary man in a giant mecha suit just trying to do some good in the world. A world that’s overrun by superheroes and supervillains alike, by the way. After an unfortunate run-in with a mysterious villain named Shroud, Robert’s mecha suit is destroyed and he’s forced to retire early. Thankfully, he’s rescued by a rather fetching super lady who goes by Blonde Blazer, who convinces him to work at a dispatch office to help train a bunch of supervillains-turned-heroes realize their full potential.
Right off the bat, Dispatch immediately grips you with its stellar voice cast and characterization. Robert is immediately likable, thanks in no small part to Paul’s recognizable deadpan performance, which lends itself well to Robert’s own devil may care attitude. The choices you make in Dispatch affect Robert’s world view and I chose to play him as a snarky but honest and well-meaning guy who doesn’t beat around the bush. The result is, well, basically a replica of Jesse Pinkman but without all the meth and with a little upgrade in the physical prowess department.
Starring alongside him are Jeffrey Wright as Chase, an older mentor working with Robert at the office, and Erin Yvette as Blonde Blazer, who’s basically his manager and, from what I can gather, either a potential love interest or someone who’s going to backstab the shit out of Robert by the end of the game. Supporting them are the Phoenix Program: a team of supervillains looking to redeem themselves as superheroes. Notably, Invisigal (previously known as Invisibitch, superpower self-explanatory), Punch Up, a short man blessed with superhuman strength, Sonar, a literal bat, and more.
Aside from making choices, you’ll spend time serving as an actual dispatch officer for the Phoenix Program. A call comes in, the situation is explained to you, and you must dispatch the appropriate hero based on their abilities. The more a hero goes out, the more experience they accrue, and their stats can be leveled up. Conversely, if a hero fails too many missions, they could go down for the count and even suffer a stat deficit. It’s a lot harder than it sounds, and when I had to do my first dispatch shift in episode 2, I quickly found myself overwhelmed and struggling to get my heroes in order and trying to match them to the correct missions.
The good news is that you’re meant to fail some of these. The wonderful thing about Dispatch is that there doesn’t really seem to be a way to properly fail the game, as the story seems to work around how you’re progressing, which I appreciate. In the second episode, I had to help Invisigal navigate a dicey situation with a civilian and a perpetrator in a donut shop. There was a point where I could have Robert hack into the store sprinklers to give Invisigal an advantage, but when I failed the hacking mini-game (totally not my fault by the way, but more on that later), Invisigal was able to work around it and eventually come out on top. The entire donut shop situation went balls up with the civilian getting injured and the perp getting away, and I’m sure things could’ve gone much smoother had I been smarter about my decisions, but I loved the way the story played out.
Robert ends up getting in a huge fight with Invisigal as Sonar hilariously watches from the sidelines while reading his crypto bro magazine. Everything worked out in favor of a stronger story in my view, as Robert’s still trying to earn the trust of his team while navigating the complications of leading a bunch of villains and misfits. I loved the dynamics between the characters and it’s a joy listening to the team haze Robert over comms while talking over him. The writing and dialogue flow so naturally that I found myself completely glued to the screen the entire time.
It definitely helps that Dispatch has totally nailed the snarky superhero tone that’s so popular these days, too. With shows like Invincible (which I’m sure Dispatch drew some inspiration from) and The Boys surging in popularity, AdHoc has done a fantastic job capturing the sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek commentary of superhero fatigue and blending it with grounded realism.
If there are any complaints to be had, it’s that the mini-games feel superfluous and sometimes frustrating. Every now and then, Robert is forced to hack into some gizmo or other, and it involves you moving from node to node while pressing the WASD keys in a certain order to create new pathways and look for passcodes. It’s a pretty simple mini-game in general, but it often felt like busywork to help pad the runtime and keep me away from the story.
It’s not all terrible, until it actually gets in the way of the story. Going back to that Invisigal donut shop situation, I was 100% certain that I’d managed to get all the clues I needed to crack the code for a sprinkler and progress. However, because I didn’t key them in the right order (though there were seemingly only two possible combinations and both were apparently wrong), Robert couldn’t activate the sprinklers. Again, I think everything worked out for the best in terms of story progression, but it was frustrating not knowing how or why I went wrong, especially since it looked like I was really close to getting the best possible outcome.
Still, this is a miniscule complaint that does very little to dampen the excitement I have for Dispatch. I’m only two episodes in so far, but I’m a huge fan of what AdHoc has done here. Dispatch has all the ingredients it needs to craft a wonderful choice-based narrative game, and I have faith that AdHoc will stick the landing.
An early review code for the game was provided by the publisher.
