I came to Dispatch with a goal: to be cool. After seeing the trailers for Adhoc's revival of Telltale's signature choice-driven cinematic story games, I thought it would be fun to cast the protagonist, Robert Robertson, as a straight-laced boss who only deals in tough love.
I used to play every Telltale game with a character arc in mind, mostly to see if they could lend themselves enough to my interpretation. And the superhero world of Dispatch, caught up in the corporate machine, provided me with the perfect setting for my story.
A former superhero turned operator of the Superhero Dispatch Network, an agency that takes calls from civilians in danger and sends heroes to their aid, Robert leads Team Z. This dysfunctional team of loud-mouthed, reformed supervillains are easy targets for tough love and harsh criticism from managers. Dispatch is an episodic game where half of the weekly episodes have you sitting in the operator's chair and sending Team Z to solve cases, level up their individual stats, and deal with any mid-mission problems that arise.
But I was here for the other Telltale-inspired half of Dispatch. Filled with dialogue choices, chaotic split-second decisions, and branching paths, it was exactly what I loved about Telltale's The Walking Dead. And I got many of them. From the very beginning I warned about mistakes. Stop making excuses. Establishing authority. In one early scenario, Invisigal, my reckless apprentice with the ability to turn invisible, failed a mission by ignoring instructions. I walked up to her and she delivered a crushing blow that knocked Robert down. Proof that I ruffled feathers.
However, it wasn't until two episodes into my HR calling ritual that the opportunity to truly lay down the law came to my desk. Team member Z had to be let go permanently and I made a decision. Seeing that Invisigal was on the chopping block, I was ready to take sweet revenge for Robert's bruised ego (and cheek). But before I could knock her out, she left the team of her own free will.
In a subsequent phone call, she explained candidly that indeed was trying to be a hero. This wasn't an eye-rolling pity party. Dispatch text is too smart for that. She just sounded defeated. And as my thumb hovered over the special “Be an Asshole” button, I felt a chill. The dynamic between her and Robert was too personal. Too well acted and relevant. So I advised her to return to the team.
However, the story insisted that I cut someone out instead: either Sonar, the crypto-bat monster, or Kupe, the deadly flying assassin. But I felt too emotionally invested in the decision to be objective. Sonar had to stay. It was less useful than the Coupe. Frankly, he was a liability. But if the previous mini-game mission in which he begged to pitch ideas to Elon Musk's thinly veiled stunt double was any indication, this dude needed some friends, a little validation, and some purpose away from Reddit.
These decisions closed the third chapter of Dispatch, and they were the moment when I realized that I couldn't hack by being cool. Team Z was too nice. I liked them so quickly that I couldn't torture them with my role-playing. Even as I tried to get back on track, an episode later I was asked to fill the empty spot in Coupe, and despite being offered a legally separate Superman, I chose Water Boy: a bumbling, bumbling SDN janitor who desperately wanted to be a superhero. He was clumsy, potentially dangerous to himself and others, and his strength was simply violently vomiting water, but my God, this guy had a heart!
My Robert turned out to be an amazing soft-spoken person. I could never bring myself to be cruel because Dispatch's various reformed supervillains and their sarcastic corporate nannies were too cute and the writing too charming to spoil my feeble attempts at tough love. Since episode four, my sneaky role-playing experiment has turned into a cozy weekly hangout with my gang of super-powered misfits, and I wouldn't change it one iota.
