I’m excited. Dispatch is enjoying a real moment in the sun. This is the superhero workplace comedy made by a bunch of former Telltale devs that’s being released in retro-cool episodic instalments each week. The series ends this week – Wednesday is the big finale – but Dispatch can already be considered a success. It’s sold more than 1 million copies and amassed more than 22,000 Overwhelmingly Positive reviews on Steam, which is a response usually reserved for the top-performing games.
Playing Dispatch, it’s easy to see why. I’ve played three of the six episodes and I’m extremely impressed. The action fizzes with spectacular set-pieces and lively camera angles, and the script is Lycra-tight and jammed with unexpected, laugh-out-loud moments. A character pridefully reveals themselves as Toxic Man to which you retort, “Bro, that works for you on so many levels.” The nudity warning you were wondering about suddenly reveals what it is – and it’s definitely not what you’re expecting. Misdrection, surprise, wit: it’s all here.
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What’s more, there’s actual gameplay – and I didn’t expect this. You, as the game’s name suggests, work as a superhero dispatcher, taking calls from people in distress and deciding which of your superhero team to send to help them. There are all sorts of calls from ‘fight this’ to ‘rescue my cat’ to deal with – it is a comedy, don’t forget. Oh and your superhero team is useless. They are Z-tier villains-turned-goodies who hate each other, and you have to knock them into shape.
Gameplay can be quite intense. It’s not a 4X strategy game so don’t get carried away, but there’s plenty to think about. Each hero has strengths and weaknesses and unique quirks – one bat-man (a literal bat-man) has two forms he alternates between, which you have to work out how to manage. There are behavioural problems that stop some heroes working with others, and when you couple that with heroes being temporarily unavailable while they respond to calls, there’s a lot to mentally juggle.
You can earn XP and level heroes up and customise them. There’s a hacking mini-game. And of course there are the quick-time events and timed dialogue choices you’d expect from a Telltale-style narrative series. Altogether it’s a solid and engaging blend.
Image credit: Eurogamer / AdHoc
But what really impresses me is Dispatch has made the qualitative leap from being ‘a game pretending to be as slick as an animated TV show’ to ‘actually being as good as a TV show’. Okay, pause a moment for breath: there will always be some differences. It’s difficult for games to be as fluid and as spectacular as a TV series because they have to also give you, as the player, things to do. They can’t just be tightly storyboarded things. But Dispatch comes very close. The first episode in particular has breathtaking action sequences in it – action that’s easily as good as… well, as good as the action in The Legend of Vox Machina animated show. And this is why I’m so excited, because Critical Role, the voice-actor role-play mega-group that the Vox Machina animated show is based on (and mostly voiced by), is also the publisher of Dispatch. And AdHoc is making a Critical Role game.
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This is a perfect fit. Ever since Critical Role CEO Travis Willingham told Rolling Stone last year that a Critical Role video game was in development, I’ve wondered about what it would be. A role-playing game makes sense given the Dungeons & Dragons foundation of the Critical Role campaigns, but making an RPG is an extremely hard thing to do. There aren’t many video game studios that could do it and do justice to a brand now as beloved as Critical Role. The ones who can are busy making their own things. I’m looking at you Larian.
Plus, Critical Role’s strength is in performance – that’s what the success of its actual-play campaigns is all about: watching really good actors get really involved in a make-believe world. That’s why the Vox Machina animated series (a Mighty Nein animated series is imminent) are so enjoyable, because the actors get to perform their adventures all over again, this time in a condensed, cinematic way. Find a game that can do that to the same level and you’re sorted. Well now we have.
That Dispatch made me think over and over that ‘this feels like a Critical Role animated show’ is some of the highest praise I can heap upon it. That’s not because Critical Role is the be-all and end-all of everything creative – it is brilliant, and it is endearingly wholesome – but it’s because hitting those presentation heights is hard to do. I didn’t think a Telltale-like game was capable of it. But Dispatch has proved me wrong. It looks the part but also sounds the part (it has some Critical Role actors in it, funnily enough), both in terms of the quality of vocal delivery, the zippiness script, and the underlying tone of the game. Landing jokes and actually making people laugh: it’s really hard to do. But Dispatch is funny, cool, and interesting. It’s an enormously impressive piece of work. It has convinced me.
If anyone can do a Critical Role game justice, it’s AdHoc. I am enormously excited for what comes next.
