Every superhero needs a “guy in the chair,” and in the upcoming title Dispatch, you get to be that guy.
Dispatch sports a gorgeous comic-like animated series style similar to Invincible, light sense of humor, and unique playstyle that really piqued my interest in a private presentation with developers last week. The devs confirmed “actions have consequences” across the choice-based game’s episodes.
Clocking in with over 700,000 wishlists on Steam, Dispatch generated a lot of hype during Steam Next Fest in June. Led by Aaron Paul and Jeffrey Wright, it’s a narrative-based “superhero workplace comedy” game and the first title from AdHoc Studio, comprised of industry veterans from TellTale Games, Ubisoft, and more.
Today, along with the release date, AdHoc has revealed that Dispatch will be released episodically, taking a page from previous TellTale titles like The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones. With season one, two episodes will launch each week starting on Oct. 22 until all eight episodes are released by the final week on Nov. 12. The devs estimate each episode could take about an hour, with “up to 10” for the full season, “if you’re exploring everything.”
“We think the release format is an underrated part of the player experience,” Nick Herman, co-founder of AdHoc Studio and Dispatch creative director said. “Episodic is a format that makes the story easy to slip into, easy to keep up with, and easy to share with friends. We want the launch of Dispatch to be ‘appointment gaming’ but with the weekly cadence of a TV show, as opposed to asking people to wait months between each release.”
In Dispatch, players play Robert Robertson, a.k.a. Mecha Man, “whose mech-suit is destroyed in a battle against his nemesis, forcing him to take a job at a superhero dispatch center: not as a hero, but a dispatcher.” The game tasks you with rehabilitating a group of former supervillains, managing your roster, and “navigating office relationships and rebuilding your suit for a shot at revenge.”
Like older TellTale games, dialogue options are important, but managing the roster of heroes at your disposal to decide where and when to send them to emergencies all around the city is also crucial. You can level and power up these heroes, too, so there seems to be a solid amount of customization involved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzRQrDK7zUs
The AdHoc devs confirmed they have more stories to tell within the Dispatch universe, but “a lot of it will depend on how the game does” when it launches next month.
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