Disclaimer: This review may contain mild spoilers for the game “Dispatch.”
“Dispatch” is a choose-your-own-adventure style narrative game developed by AdHoc Studio, in collaboration with Critical Role. According to AdHoc Studio’s official website, the development team is made up of “industry veterans” from Telltale Games, Ubisoft, and Night School Studio.
The game draws heavy inspiration from old games created by Telltale Games. If the name rings a bell, they’re responsible for “The Walking Dead,” “The Wolf Among Us,” “Tales From the Borderlands,” “Minecraft: Story Mode,” and “Batman: The Telltale Series,” among many other industry hits.
While playing “Dispatch,” you’ll likely run into many familiar voices along the way. The main character is voiced by Aaron Paul, best known for his role as Jesse Pinkman in “Breaking Bad.” Joining him on the cast are popular actors and voice actors Laura Bailey, Erin Yvette, Travis Willingham, Matthew Mercer, and Jeffrey Wright. AdHoc Studio could’ve stopped there with their star-studded cast, but they also brought on popular YouTubers MoistCr1TiKaL and JackSepticEye, alongside rapper Yung Gravy, and many other notable names.
Plot Overview
“Dispatch” follows the main character, Robert Robertson III, who is third in line to be the superhero known as Mecha Man. Before the events of the game, Robert’s father was killed by his archnemesis, and supervillain, Shroud. Robert goes on a lifelong journey of trying to avenge his father until he loses his Mecha Man robot suit.
He’s forced to retire from being a superhero until he’s presented with the opportunity to become a dispatcher at the Superhero Dispatch Network (SDN), led by one of the strongest superheroes named Blonde Blazer. In exchange for his work as a dispatcher, SDN agrees to help Robert rebuild his Mecha Man suit and ultimately try to get back into the fight.
In the meantime, Robert is tasked with managing a team of villains SDN brought together to try and rehabilitate them into heroes known as the Z-team. The range of crimes committed by the team members during their time as villains ranges widely, which creates an interesting chemistry amongst them.
As things unfold, Robert is forced to make multiple tough decisions on who to keep and cut from the team. Nothing comes easy, but he has to do what he thinks is best for everyone.
Without spoiling anything further, I’ll say confidently that the story is the best part of this game. The development of all the characters, seeing how your decisions impact the plot, and watching your team grow into a capable group of heroes (depending on your choices), is what makes the game so fun. It brings back the glory that Telltale Games used to pride itself on, and as a fan of this choose-your-own-adventure style of game, that’s all I can ask.
Gameplay
Overall, this game is going to run you about eight or nine hours, depending on how quickly you get through specific episodes, or if you’re like me and decide to replay a few of the episodes to see the different outcomes the game has to offer.
While this game relies on cutscenes and a movie-like feel to tell its story, there are still some important gameplay aspects to note. It’s not anything particularly crazy, but between cutscenes, you’ll be dispatching your team of heroes to different missions around Los Angeles. You’ll occasionally be interrupted with an opportunity to hack things to make the missions easier for your heroes, but it doesn’t have a huge impact on the gameplay outside of a few moments.
The beauty of the gameplay comes from finding out which of your heroes work best for specific missions, seeing their interactions with each other, and the random dialogue and quips that add a good laugh to the experience.
If you find yourself lacking a specific skill from your team, don’t worry, because as you send your heroes out to missions, they’ll gain experience, level up, and unlock skill points and abilities to use.
If you don’t like this style of gameplay or storytelling in video games, I would still highly recommend giving “Dispatch” a try. It’s short, simple, and cuts straight to the point, which will likely grab attention early on.
Final Verdict
“Dispatch” does everything that it set out to do very well. It has an incredible story, interesting characters, and many memorable moments. While I think some of the things that happen are your typical superhero cliches, that’s part of the charm. If you want to be a superhero, you can go that route. If you want to get revenge for the victims of the main antagonist, that’s another route you can take as well.
The multiple paths in this game are why it has much more replayability than other games in the genre. For the first time, it seemed like my decisions truly mattered, which isn’t something I always felt in Telltale games.
At no moment did it feel like this game was dragging on. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time, especially from episode five onwards. Episodes five and eight were my favorites for multiple reasons, but because of spoilers, I’ll simply tell you to go enjoy them for yourself.
As I think over the way things shook out in this game, I would welcome a season two, but I don’t think the game necessarily needs it. However, I would love to see AdHoc Studio acquire the rights to the dead Telltale series, like The Wolf Among Us, and bring new installments to those. It’s wishful thinking, but we can only dream.
My final verdict for this game is an 8.7/10. If you love superheroes and interactive stories, this game will be for you. It’s a reasonable price of $30, so I encourage you to pick up the game for yourself and enjoy everything it has to offer.
