The Best Superhero Game’s Deleted Sex Scenes Could Still Be Released One Day, Writer Tells Us
Dispatch, the episodic workplace comedy about superheroes, has quickly turned into one of the biggest surprises of the year — racking up over one million sales and blowing up across social media. And it’s the latest in a line of long games, like Baldur’s Gate 3, where players have absolutely lost it pining over the game’s romantic interests. But that’s not something the developers at AdHoc Studio, founded by former Telltale Games workers, necessarily expected.
“I don’t know that I anticipated it to be as ravenous as it’s been. It’s probably why we didn’t plan for more romance options, because we didn’t know it was going to be such a meaningful part of the experience for folks,” Dispatch writer Pierre Shorette tells Inverse, “One of my secret shames is I think I default to romantic comedy in my writing and my whole life. I’m trying to pull out of that and make things more serious. Even in Wolf Among Us or Tales From the Borderlands, there’s some romance.”
In Dispatch, protagonist Robert Robertson can pursue a vaguely romantic relationship with two remarkably different heroes — Blonde Blazer and Invisgal. But it’s certainly not the focus of the game. That was entirely intentional, taking the game’s overall tone into account.
“I don’t know that Dispatch is any one thing. The nicest thing about having streamers play a game is you can just see if stuff is working,” Shorette says, “So if we can have people freak out at seeing a wiener on screen, laugh at a fart joke, and then somehow cry at the end of all that. I’m happy it’s working, but I also don’t think we made a ‘gooner game,’ and people know that now if they’ve played up to Episode 6. It’s interesting to see the community switch up real fast, and lock in.”
Despite the popularity of Dispatch’s characters, no one outside of Invisigal and Blond Blazer was planned as a romance option.
AdHoc Studio
All that being said, Dispatch was in development for years and shifted both styles and tones — as part of our larger interview publishing tomorrow, Shorette even says it was initially planned as live-action. And romance enjoyers might be dismayed to learn about some of what was cut.
“We definitely cut some sex scenes. Which, in retrospect, we shouldn’t have,” Shorette says, laughing, “Maybe folks will get to see those one day.”
Shorette adds, “There isn’t anyone on the development team that wouldn’t have a laundry list of stuff they wish they could polish more or gotten into the game. On the writing side, our team has a bunch of darlings that had to be killed along the way. We’re still an indie studio, I think people forget that because it’s doing so well and looks so good. But because it looks good, it costs a lot per second to make this video game, and sometimes it costs things that often with these games is branching too.”
While it’s too hard to confirm exactly what the future of Dispatch might look like, AdHoc has already confirmed it’s considering a Season 2 — whatever shape that might take. Shorette notes “there are some payoffs and things we didn’t get to do that pain us, and maybe there’s a future we can get some of that stuff into the game — down the line.”
Dispatch also features a wide array of talented voice actors, from Aaron Paul and Laura Bailey to Alanah Pearce and Charles White Jr. (better known as MoistCr1TiKaL). But the response to Dispatch has overwhelmed Shorette and the rest of the team, to say the least.
“I’m glad we made something that seemingly has penetrated and gotten into people’s psyches, into people’s hearts, and they feel like they’re invested, and want to see what’s next,” Shorette says, “I think that’s part of why episodic worked. An episodic format doesn’t work without something that’s worth waiting for, so I think we got lucky there.”
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