Dispatch Mid-Season Review

When Telltale really established itself with the likes of The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, we were immediately enthralled in the idea of being the masters of our own stories. Deciding the fates of characters, of the entire world around them, with simple clicks and QTEs. As time went on, the curtain peeled back further and further, and it became clearer that the decisions that actually mattered in the games were few and far between.

It's difficult to blame Telltale for that. It's incredibly hard to structure a narrative where each choice, no matter how large, shapes every aspect of a character, arc, and overall story. You'd be working on a game like that for years, and yet that choice, that ownership becomes almost expected by fans now. We've grown spoiled on the likes of Baldur's Gate III and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, where not only is the gameplay incredibly active and rewarding, but the story feels like it can shift from your decisions, no matter how small they may seem.

This is a somewhat long-winded way of saying I was both excited for and trepidatious of AdHoc Studio's Dispatch. The animation, choice-based narrative, and stellar voice cast harkens back to the Telltale of yore, yet I wondered how AdHoc was going to adapt so it didn't stick its feet in old mud.

Robert Robertson's story of revenge, romance, and redemption kicks off with a QTE-packed action romp before you're thrown into the main setup of the story. Without his suit, the powerless Robert must work a regular day job "dispatching" a team of supervillains turned superheroes in order to pay for the restoration of his beloved mech.

Rather than the typical, puzzle-based point-and-click gameplay from Telltale, Dispatch puts you at a desk and has you manage your heroes. Send them off to different jobs, making use of their strengths and assisting them when you can from your computer through hacking minigames and further choices made mid-job. This gameplay doesn't let you walk around a room, picking up clues while talking to side characters, but it meshes really well with the narrative. The chatter over comms between your mostly useless Z-team adds extra flavour, and dispatching quickly becomes an addictive process. The dopamine hit of a job done well and the perfect hero selected is a rush, while seeing your percentage of success dwindle to failure only drives you towards different strategies and doing better next time. You won't be walking and discovering much in Dispatch, as everything gameplay wise is laid out on a screen or shown via dialogue choices, but the superhero manager simulator aspect is simple and effective in hooking you. Gameplay and story are intertwined in a near-perfect match, as you learn more about the characters and world through the background conversations during your shifts.

At times, though, AdHoc puts too many scoops of story into its Dispatch mixture. Shifts in Dispatch can go awry not because you as a player have made the wrong choices, but because the characters are having a moment due to narrative circumstances. This is really effective from a story perspective, as if your decision-making outside of the main gameplay loop led to friction, you'd expect to see it reflected. However, if you're a perfectionist who hates to see a failure screen while dispatching, you're not going to like it when your agency is taken away during gameplay. Story takes precedence here, even if the gameplay feels intuitive and rewarding.

The animation is bright and clearly high-budget. The cast is mostly stellar even if it can feel like the studio just grabbed the usual voices from collaborator Critical Role along with a few capable YouTubers. And yet that doesn't help me shake a certain hesitance when deciding if Dispatch has rid itself of Telltale's shackled storytelling. There are decisions that matter here, bold and signposted, but due to how expensive the animation and voice acting must have been, I often wonder how many different variations of the same story there truly are. An incident in Episode 2, for example, has the same outcome no matter what decisions you make, and a lot of dialogue seems safe enough that it doesn't have to reference what you've said or done outside of the massive two-parter decisions you experience along the way. I'll also miss the option to remain silent, as Dispatch only gives three dialogue choices at a maximum, not letting you consistently choose not to speak. You probably don't want to waste Aaron Paul on a player who can't be bothered picking dialogue, but the option was always nice to have.

I'm halfway through Dispatch now, and I'm not sure by the end I'll really be able to say it's my story I've experienced, or if it's just one of a few versions of an otherwise linear track. That said, the story AdHoc has laid out is immersive and very well-written. A few lines of dialogue feel a bit trapped in the 2010s Wheadon-esque era of snarky banter, but apart from those eyerolls I found the characters and story beats keeping me hooked from episode to episode, and I can't wait to see more. Aaron Paul and Jeffrey Wright's characters have kept me most intrigued so far, largely because the actors smoke pretty much everyone else. You can tell Dispatch was intended to be a TV show first, because the game is incredibly cinematic. Again, this might make you doubt how much control you can have over these episodes, but it also gives Dispatch an authenticity. A feeling like you're playing something that is usually only meant to be passively enjoyed via watching.

I could easily spend twenty, forty, sixty hours on that superhero management simulator. Dispatch looks like it'll give us a fraction of that time in its story, with episodes running at about 50-55 minutes each, but to stick so firmly to its story is a decision AdHoc should be praised for. Dispatch is bold, effectively looking to revitalise a formula the industry has all but left behind, and bring it to the forefront with big names and what at least looks like a big budget. We'll have the full season review with you next month, but right now, despite some vexing dialogue and an unshakeable feeling of some missing player agency in places, it's a strong start leading to what I hope is a super strong finish.