Dispatch

Dispatch owes a lot to comics like Invincible, Astro City, and even Fables to an extent. It is a revisionist hero fantasy where superpowered beings are so commonplace they serve as glorified rent-a-cops to an ungrateful society. Despite this, their status in society is such that even those without powers, like our hero Robert, try to emulate them.

Robert is a third-generation DIY hero, Mecha Man. His father and grandfather both died protecting the city in their homemade suit which bears more than a little resemblance to Iron Man. Robert has only just taken up the mantle when he's grievously injured in combat. Washed up and with little prospects, he meets Blonde Blazer, the leader of a superhero dispatch agency, who wants Robert to work for them as a dispatcher.

The catch is that instead of real heroes, Robert must work with Z-grade villains looking to rehabilitate themselves into would-be-heroes. With the help of Chase, a close friend left handicapped by powers, Robert sets off on an underdog redemption arc not just for himself, but his entire team of kicked-in-the-head losers.

The game itself unfolds like the first season of a TV series, and it's not surprise that Dispatch began as a pitch for one. There's little in terms of player choice (ultimately the ending is down to two major choices), but it rarely feels like you're railroaded into something you didn't want.

That illusion of control is incredibly hard to achieve and it's something I'd argue most other choose-your-own-adventure titles rarely accomplish. Even previous Telltale adventures like The Walking Dead and Fables felt aggressively tedious in the ways they forced player choice into a narrative it didn't fit into.

So it's with great relief to see that AdHoc Studios has learned their lessons from previous iterations. Dispatch feels like the most refined version of this genre, even as it brushes against its limitations at the same time. But when you're having this much fun just hanging out with the characters, does it really matter?

Gameplay is limited to making choices and handling dispatching duties, which itself is a fun enough simulation requiring fast decision making and good roster building. For the most part you're there to enjoy the banter and learn more about the characters, at least until the final episode, where Dispatch decides to amp up the difficulty for no good reason.

There's also an entirely unwanted and tragically designed hacking minigame that is quite simply the worst. It's not fun and most of the time it just feels like it was thrown in as a last ditch effort to pad out the thin gameplay. The same goes for quicktime fight sequences, which were dated right out of the gate back in the mid-2000s.

The cast itself is mostly fantastic, especially when it comes to the leading trio of Laura Bailey, Erin Yvette, and Aaron Paul. They bring welcome gravitas to even the clunkiest bits of office romance. The always brilliant Jeffrey Wright is also a highlight, easily stealing the show as the acerbic Chase, who once could outrun anything on the planet and is now forced to sit behind a desk.

The rest of the crew is more of a mixed bag with a collection of YouTubers playing essentially themselves. How much you'll enjoy them depends entirely on how much you already like their online personas. It's thanks to the smart writing that by the end I couldn't help but enjoy their company, even if I wasn't a fan in the first place.

Sadly, the script takes weird turns at the beginning and it isn't until the third episode that it really finds its own groove. The first two episodes feel like the most rough of the bunch, with oddly juvenile humor and a weird emphasis on placing the female characters are trophies for the player. The bit about Phenomaman comforting the player that he and Blonde Blazer never had sex is a particularly lousy standout.

But once Dispatch finds its footing, it turns into one of the better written and directed stories this year, be that in gaming or television. It's fun, flirty, and immensely entertaining. And it has Beef, who is just the best.

Based off the first season, I'm hugely excited to see where AdHoc Studio takes the story next. The seasonal structure could work beautifully for this type of gaming experience, but only if they're released at a reasonable pace. It took Dispatch a full seven years to go from concept to finished product, and that won't work for a sequel. But two to three years? That just might be tolerable.

My fingers are crossed that this one gets a long and healthy multi-season order right away.