Dispatch Review

Telltale Games flew too close to the sun and fell into the sea. Not even a superhero could have saved them from sinking. But before their demise in 2018, they released two gems: Tales from the Borderlands and Wolf Among Us. AdHoc was founded by some developers who worked on both. It is no coincidence that their first game, Dispatch, lands near their prior greatness. Strong writing, fantastic characters, great composition, funny dialogue, and an immaculate art style are why Dispatch is worth every cent.

You play as Robert Robertson, aka Mecha Man, a powerless hero who helps citizens within advanced robotic armor. Sadly, following a tough battle against a villain named Shroud, the mech suit is ruined and its unique source of power destroyed. With no money and no allies, your crime-fighting days are over. But a friendly superhero named Blonde Blazer offers you a deal: work as an emergency dispatcher and they will fix the mech suit. Sounds good, right? Until you realize you are assigned to dispatch the awful Z-Team, a ragtag group of ex-supervillains who can’t even save themselves, let alone others.

Straight off the bat, the writing is exceptional and maintains a high quality across eight episodes. The dialogue brings many laughs, the delivery is perfect, and the scene direction puts it all together. It is paced extremely well and there are a handful of brilliant choreographed sequences (e.g. the bar fight) with intricate details. Add in a few well-used songs, and it often trades blows with Telltale’s best work. Choices alter outcomes, like which heroes are added or dropped. There are also two love interests, one of which has unbelievably good chemistry with the main character.

The narrative is bolstered by the excellent cast. Outside the Z-Team, there is your witty old friend and speedster, Chase, and a cheerful robot-repairman named Royd. But the Z-Team is where most of the sublime personality resides. Flambae is a fire-powered hero who makes fun of you, including in a hilarious song. Invisigal is a rebellious loner who initially hates you and struggles with her role. And Waterboy begins as a cleaner but may eventually become a useful member of the Z-Team. The core voice actors (including Aaron Paul, Jeffrey Wright, Erin Yvette, and Laura Bailey) are exceptional. Other characters are voiced by content creators. Normally this would be a huge turn off, but most actually bring decent personality to each character.

Your task as a dispatcher is to send the heroes to the right distress call based on their strengths and weaknesses, via a city map. Need to chase down a criminal? Choose the knife-throwing Coupé for her flight mobility. Require a hero that will negotiate a peaceful outcome? Pick the psychedelic light-powered Prism for her charisma. If a call succeeds, you might level-up a hero and raise their stats. Sending multiple heroes increases synergy and there are other buffs based on squad order. There are also hacking mini-games, where you navigate a grid and open/close gates under a time limit.

As you view the map and send heroes around the city, some story is being delivered via radio comms. Initially the Z-Team make fun of you, tease you for having no powers, and don’t cooperate. Some even sabotage each other when their position is on the line. But eventually, your dispatch skill, rapport, and leadership brings order to chaos. And this natural arc of turning zeroes into heroes is rewarding.

While the dispatching is the main gameplay, it is probably the weakest part. It is required for the story and did not reduce my enjoyment, but there could have been half as many dispatch sessions and it wouldn’t have bothered me. It occasionally comes across as busywork and dissuades me from immediately replaying the game, which is ironic in a genre that has always lacked meaningful gameplay.

Finally, it must be said that the game’s art design is unreal. Normally it is possible to see the odd polygon and shadow glitch, but not this time. It looks hand-drawn by an army of talented artists, with insane attention to detail and exceptional color consistency. Some action scenes appear too choppy as it imitates cartoon framerates, but this might not be a problem for some.

If you liked Telltale at their peak then getting Dispatch is a no brainer. The strong writing and characters are enough, but it also has wonderful art design and memorable action pieces. It takes just over 7 hours to beat, which is a whisker shorter than Wolf Among Us. AdHoc could handle just about any franchise, but hopefully they continue to work on original creations. If they ever need to break-glass-in-case-of-emergency and bring out the superheroes, they’ll know just where and when to put them.

Performance: Flawless @ 1440p

Test Machine: Ryzen 5 3600, ASUS 6700 XT, 16GB DDR4, Win 10 Pro