Nearly everybody in Dispatch, Adhoc Studio’s superhero comedy, is suffering from an identity crisis. Protagonist Robert Robertson (Aaron Paul, phoning it in) struggles to find purpose after superhero life while the members of the Z-Team (some type of suicide squad, if you will) he’s been placed in charge of are all trying to make a life outside of villainy. And while it’s somewhat apt, I find that the identity crisis of Dispatch itself is less intentional. Dispatch wants to be something, but it doesn’t commit hard enough to deliver on what that something could be.
The root of the issue lies in the illusion of choice and how it is executed by Dispatch‘s different modes of player interaction. In an attempt not to belabor unnecessary discourse, the short of it is that a good choice-based game doesn’t truly give players limitless choices, but rather effectively gives the illusion of choice. Let’s take Telltale’s games as an example (AdHoc was founded by a number of ex-Telltale devs following its closure in 2018). The Wolf Among Us offers you several choices that will lead to different versions of the game. In reality these choices are more about taking slightly different paths towards the same conclusion in service of making the player feel like they guided the action. In a way you do, but The Wolf Among Us makes those choices feel much more impactful than they are in reality while also not making players feel like they have gone down the “wrong” path at any point.
In comparison, Dispatch feels too often like a story on a single set of tracks. This is best exemplified by the central choice the game is concerned with across its eight episodes: whether you romance Blonde Blazer (Erin Yvette, delightful as always) or Invisigal (Laura Bailey acting circles around Paul as the game’s de facto duel lead). While there is a loose story about Robert attempting to get revenge on the villain Shroud, this is really a workplace romance story, one that asks you to ignore the ethics of dating either your boss or your subordinate. While choices to pursue one or the other are laid out before you at regular intervals, Dispatch‘s overarching narrative not so subtly nudges that if you want the “true” experience you should be pursuing Invisigal.
This is because, as noted earlier, Bailey’s character is the heart of Dispatch, if not the outright star over Robert Robertson. Robertson and Invisigal are foils to each other, both searching for meaning in new lives they never saw for themselves (both thought death would be more likely than quitting the life of a hero/villian respectively). Part of Robertson’s journey is tied to encouraging Invisigal in her journey of rehabilitation. She starts as perhaps the most off-putting and anger-inducing member of the Z-Team, constantly disobeying orders and cracking wise about how this whole program is a waste. By choosing Invisigal’s romance the player is greeted with a number of meaningful scenes that show the character growth of both, ultimately culminating in a climactic finale incredibly dependent on how you interacted with her over the eight episodes.
You could, of course, instead romance Blonde Blazer, your goody-two-shoes boss who mostly serves the same narrative purpose as Robertson does for Invisigal (to help him get better). But the romance with Blonde Blazer is noticeably one note, comparatively. With her, what you see is what you get, beyond a very half-hearted attempt to give her her own very minor identity crisis. Romancing Blonde Blazer doesn’t lead to an emotional culmination with significant repercussions for the story. Ahead of the final episode’s release a number of theories floated around in regards to Blazer’s “true” identity and if she had a secret, obvious attempts by fans to fill the clear narrative void in her character—a void that the game doesn’t care to fill in its conclusion. She’s just set dressing at best, a distraction from the main event. Furthermore, along the way Dispatch offers up choices that seem to push the player back towards Invisigal. It makes it feel like pursuing Blazer is an unintended path that needs to be righted.
There are a number of major plot points that have a similar feeling of being forced. Episode five’s big decision asks players to reveal or hide Robertson’s identity as the hero Mecha Man to the Z-Team. At this point in the story Robertson and the Z-Team are at a critical place in their relationship, one that centers on everyone trusting each other. More than feeling wrong for the characters, hiding the identity doesn’t result in a compelling change to the narrative in itself. Again, like with Blazer, you can make the choice to not reveal this information to the Z-Team but the narrative itself seems to acknowledge this as a mistake that needs to be rectified quickly (a character will reveal the info in episode six to get you back on track).
Then there are the management segments, which offer their own conundrum. Several times throughout Dispatch, Robertson will take shifts that require you to deploy members of the Z-Team to address missions in the Torrance area. Team members have stats that will make them more likely to succeed or fail at any given mission. The goal, naturally, is to not fail as many missions as possible. You might begin Dispatch with the belief that these segments will have narrative payoff or consequences. An early storybeat threatens to cut the worst performing Team member at the end of an episode, though in reality every player will be given the choice between the two same characters regardless of how much you deployed them during your shifts.
Slowly it becomes clear that beyond busywork and noise (the Z-Team constantly bicker) these segments don’t have an effect on the story. Out of curiosity I failed every mission in a number of late game shifts and faced no immediately noticeable changes from another playthrough where I put my all into said shifts. In the truest sense of the word these segments (which also include one of the most annoying hacking minigames I’ve had the displeasure of playing) are superfluous. If these moments of player choice in the form of dispatch shifts mean nothing, why are they here? The answer seems to be: well, what else would the player do? Which isn’t a very good answer.
Whether Dispatch works for you or not, I think it’s fairly undeniable that its greatest strength lies in its story and the performances that bring it to life. The issue is that AdHoc doesn’t commit to telling the singular story that it seems most interested in: The linked redemptions of Robertson and Invisigal. Throughout my time with Dispatch I couldn’t stop thinking about a number of visual novels I love and the way they tell their stories. Many great visual novels rely only on a solid story and visuals to grip the “player,” with some not involving choice at all beyond requiring you to press a button to go to the next dialogue box. It’s minimalist in its interactivity but no less impressive when executed well.
Dispatch has beautiful animation, incredible voice performances, and a solid (if sometimes predictable) story. That’s a solid foundation only made unstable by choices that feel poorly implemented and a management sim tacked on for the purpose of giving the player something to do beyond watching the story play out. The Achilles’ heel of Dispatch is its insistence on adhering to some sort of expectation of what a choice-based narrative title needs to be, rather than what this story needed. Because of this, the result is less than super.
