Telltale Games left a gaping hole in the episodic gaming genre when it shut down in 2018. It’s a hole that has never been filled to the same standard set by the Californian developer throughout the 2010s.
With games like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, Telltale mirrored the revolution occurring on television at the same time, but in video games. It created cinematic stories with fleshed out characters, dividing the game up into monthly episodes. There was no binging, you lived with these characters and the consequences of your in-game decisions for an extended period.
From the ashes of Telltale came AdHoc Studio which was formed by ex-staff alongside veteran developers from Ubisoft and Night School Studio. Seven years later it has emerged with Dispatch, a superhero comedy comprising eight chapters that has the spirit and heart of its predecessors.
The game’s animation is silky smooth (more impressive than most cartoons on TV too) and it has a stellar cast led by Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad) who plays the grumpy and cynical hero Robert Robertson. When his Iron Man-esque suit is destroyed in battle, he’s forced to take a job as an operator at a superhero dispatch centre in Los Angeles.
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He’s put in charge of the Z Team by his new boss, Blonde Blazer (Erin Yvette) and given a helping hand by Chase (a hilarious Jeffrey Wright). The unit is made up of former villains who are trying to be the good guys, but they’re unruly and need taming. Robertson takes on the role of mentor and therapist, delivering inspirational talks to keep them in line despite their shameless antics.
There’s a crossover in Dispatch’s gameplay with past Telltale titles: you have to make decisions around Robertson’s dialogue and actions that impact the other characters, but that’s it. We don’t get to control Robertson’s movement as the game plays out like an interactive TV show with you dropping in at crucial moments. It feels like it’s been designed for a modern audience with a short attention span, zipping along at a smooth pace.
Amongst all of that is a resource management game which you play using a digital map when Robertson begins his shift at the dispatch centre. You send heroes out to emergency calls around the city by choosing the best candidate for the job. For example, Punch Up is, unsurprisingly, good in a fight, so you’d get him to take care of a bar brawl. Sonar is intelligent and charismatic, so he’s perfect to coax a cat down from a tree.
Heroes need time to rest and they’ll sometimes get injured or go rogue, depending on what’s happened in the story previously, so there’s enough going on to make the gameplay feel engaging. There’s also the occasional hacking mini game that involves solving a puzzle by moving a ball around a grid. It’s not the most nuanced experience but amusing nonetheless.
The action is in the writing, however. Robertson forms relationships with his team, picking them up when they’re down and throwing noodles at them when they’re annoying. At the game’s core is a tale about redemption and identity; Robertson unwittingly embarks on a journey to confront his own demons while coming to terms with who he is beyond an expensive piece of armour.
It’s on the nose but fiercely compelling, emotionally moving and at times, outrageously funny. Having spent the past few weeks with these strange characters waiting for new episodes to be released has been a treat. My weekly dose of Dispatch will certainly be missed.
