Okay, maybe a “sea” of subversions is a bit of an exaggeration, but let’s be real for a second. A lot of superhero media nowadays act too edgy in an attempt to break away from the usual tropes. Dispatch is an insanely refreshing take as it plays it straight and tells a compelling story without relying on shock value or overly gritty themes to stand out. Its fantastic writing is carried in part by a charming cast, and each episode will pull on your heartstrings from start to finish.
Telltale Reborn
As someone who thoroughly enjoyed Tales From the Borderlands and The Wolf Among Us when they first came out, I hopped on the hype train as soon as this game was revealed in last year’s The Game Awards show.
For the uninitiated, Dispatch is made by AdHoc Studio, which as far as I know is mainly headed by people who used to be with Telltale Games. Fans of their older titles will instantly recognize their usual formula of episodic releases and narrative-driven experiences where your choices affect the story in varying ways.
The story, without getting to specifics, has an overall comedic tone, but it gets real serious and emotional when it wants to be (which, to be fair, is pretty often). Some story beats actually had me shedding a tear!
It’s a grounded superhero story in that there isn’t any world-ending threat to deal with. It’s more about the characters than the world itself, which I do wish was expanded on a bit more. For a first season in a game that the devs weren’t even sure would be a hit? I think they knocked it out of the park, because I really want to see more of this cast.
Like a Phoenix
The game is essentially a really long interactive movie where you can change plenty of both minor and major details through your decisions. Yeah, there’s a linear story that the developers want to tell, but your choices do matter in the sense that you get different flavors of interactions through both the animated scenes and the dispatching gameplay (more on that later).
At its core, the game mainly revolves around Robert, a legacy hero who’s following his father’s footsteps as the latest iteration of Mecha Man. In a world where superhumans are a common sight, he’s carrying a well-respected mantle as a completely powerless individual. Think Iron Man, except nobody knows his true identity, nor is he exceedingly rich.
Without going into spoiler territory, the story starts with him losing all of that. Some time after, he’s recruited into the Superhero Dispatch Network, and that’s where you get to work with the “Z-Team”. It’s an oddball group of former villains who want to redeem themselves, though they aren’t really trying hard to do so.
You’re doing all this because the SDN is helping you become the hero that you used to be. At the same time, they’re leveraging your experience to try and whip this group of misfits into shape, as they’ve been performing exceptionally horribly by the time you came into the picture.
Dispatching “Heroes”
AdHoc ditches the wandering point-and-click gameplay sections that Telltale games were known for. Instead, each episode has you working Robert’s new job as a dispatcher for the SDN.
It’s exactly how it sounds like. Throughout the day, all sorts of emergencies happen all around the city, and you get to choose which members of the Z-Team to send over. In these segments, we get to learn tidbits of each hero’s personality, background, and relationships. They’ll also just kinda talk shit most of the time, whether to you or one another.
It’s a fairly simple management game. Each hero levels up and has abilities that you can uncover over time, which increases their chances of success. It’s up to you to choose which people are the best fit for each emergency, and I can somewhat confirm that your choices and performance in these shifts do have an effect on how certain parts of the story play out.
If you’re curious, the “emergencies” vary and can actually be quite funny at times. You could be sending a professional assassin to save a cat from a tree, or have a demon perform an exorcist. On that note, don’t think that a hero-specific option will always lead to a positive outcome. In at least one occasion, I made a problem worse by dispatching a hero that, in hindsight, probably shouldn’t be anywhere near the area.
As far as I know, there isn’t really a fail state for it. At the end of the day, AdHoc is trying to tell a story here, and getting fired from your job would just cut that short. But again, that doesn’t mean you should be neglecting it entirely.
Do Your Choices Really Matter?
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “illusion of choice” uttered in conversations about Telltale’s games, and AdHoc’s first title isn’t immune to that criticism. Yes, it’s true that the story does have a fairly linear path, but I like to think that it not only makes sense economically for the studio, but it also helps preserve the quality of the writing.
Quality over quantity is always great for games like this, and with a limited budget, it’s understandable that they wouldn’t want to animate and voice deep branching paths. It’s not like they have the resources of something like Detroit: Become Human.
I’m not really trying to make excuses for the game, though. Depending on who you ask, Dispatch has two main endings, with a few minor variations for certain characters. Depending on your choices throughout the story, including the dispatching sections, you’ll get different flavors of these endings, and as of writing this, people don’t actually know how some of it works exactly.
Without blurting out any spoilers, there’s one character in particular whose ending is confusing a chunk of the fanbase. What I do want to point out is that their story is all about redemption, and it takes more than just the final two episode’s choices to influence how that character views themselves.
Robert Robertson’s Story
The post-episode stats are an interesting case study in how players think Robert should act. To me, I see him as somebody who’s been through hardship and doesn’t want others to experience a similar fall from grace and, in the case of his team, slip into their old ways.
He’s running a team of former villains, so showing them that there’s a better way to do things is his way of doing right by his legacy without needing to don the suit. He was a well-respected hero forced into becoming a mentor figure, and I saw the Z-Team’s successful rehabilitation as a reflection of his own efforts at turning his own life around. That means getting every member to turn their lives around for the better. All of them.
I’ve finished two playthroughs so far, and I still somehow got a variation of the “best” ending on both despite going on a significantly different path in the second run. Yes, this includes that character who I just alluded to. If you’ve finished the game, you know who I’m talking about, and no, nothing happened on a stretcher for the second run, neither did anything almost happen on a roof (there’s a slight animation difference).
Looking to the Future
While there isn’t a hard confirmation on whether or not we’re getting more Dispatch in the future, they did tease that they’ll “have to make a season 2” now that they’ve seen how well-received the game has been.
This is despite the fact that the game feels a little too rushed, as some of the episodes go by quickly. It’s more of an issue with the episodic releases, though. Somebody who started on day one would be wanting more and will feel more hype for the next episode, while a player getting into it and binging it in one go after everything’s already out would definitely feel the abruptness.
The people yearn for more Telltale-style stories, and I’m a part of that group. I want some more of these interactive movies that I can just immerse myself in for a few hours at a time. With their newfound success, I hope AdHoc can improve on their formula and release longer episodes of whatever they’re working on next (Dispatch season 2, pretty please).
The release of Dispatch actually made me aware of lesser-known titles like Scarlet Hollow, and I’m gonna have to try that out at some point too (Slay the Princess too, which I’ve known about for a while). I don’t really give number ratings here, so I’ll just go ahead and say that I definitely recommend the game for story enjoyers out there. It’s a solid first entry by the studio, and it reminds me of how the first Walking Dead game was received at the time.
For now, I’m taking a quick break as I’m still not over this wild ride. I’m probably gonna go on another playthrough just to make all the worst choices possible… if I can stomach it.