It’s been so long since I played a Telltale-style game that all the Telltale quirks feel novel again. Timed dialogue choices and action QTEs. X will remember that. Hashtag 4 Clementine. Created by a team co-founded by former Walking Dead and Wolf Among Us developers, Dispatch brings all of that charming, movie-night energy to bear on a superhero comedy premise you might broadly recognise from The Boys and Invincible, except that it’s more laidback and banter-driven than either of those. So far, anyway – the game’s first couple of episodes are out now on Steam.
Dispatch casts you as Robert Robertson, aka Mecha Man. As the story begins, Robertson has cornered the supervillain Shroud, his father’s killer, in a disused gasworks. His attempts at revenge misfire, however, and he’s left in a coma with a trashed mecha suit he doesn’t have the funds to fix.
On regaining consciousness, Robertson faces a gloomy retirement as a regular mortal with a long list of superpowered enemies. But he’s saved from the calamity of normal life (and a beatdown at the hands of some Skittles-themed gangsters) by Blonde Blazer, a touchy-feely Superwoman, who runs the local Superhero Dispatch Network. She enlists Robert as a dispatcher – the long-suffering radio babysitter for a group of upgradeable heroes. Having traded his spandex outfit for an untucked shirt, Robert must send his team to answer emergency calls in the course of a light but hectic tactical management subgame.
I say heroes, but Robert’s troupe actually consists of reformed supervillains and general fuck-ups. Sonar is a white collar criminal and literal Batman who is probably more Connor Roy than Bruce Wayne. Invisigal is a lech and a brat who communicates exclusively through sarcasm. Flambae is a firebug, perhaps a little too predictably. Coupé is a pretentious edgelord ballerina. Malevola is a demon atheist.
The writing wastes no time chucking you into a cauldron of rioting emotions. Robert has somewhat inexplicable chemistry with Blonde Blazer, who I’d call a jolly hockey sticks personality if she were from England. He has less sexy chemistry with Flambae and Invisigal, though I would be 10000% unsurprised if they both turn out to be romance options. Dispatch feels like a show in which everybody is DTF, marinated in the post-post-MCU understanding of superheroes as rancid, jobbing celebs and beautiful perverts. There’s a penis POV scene in the opening episode, and many of the powers have a kink element – Waterboy’s gift is “making things moist”.
Self-awareness abounds in the script, to the point of being self-aware about being self-aware. Everybody is trying to out-banter everybody else, in echo of Archer, but it stops short of being obnoxious. Robert’s deadpan cynicism grounds the tone when needed, and for all their posturing and misbehaviour, the rest of the cast are both credible emotional beings and a pleasure to be around. The animated scenes are swish in a way I never thought videogames would accomplish, and the voice actors – a mix of Hollywood, videogame and streamer talent – feel perfectly at home in the roles. The humour generally manages to seem unscripted.
The aforesaid light management experience that fills the gaps in what could otherwise be a polished Netflix feature is surprisingly engrossing. Incidents pop up on a top-down city map, and you pick heroes with a matching skillset to answer the call before the time runs out. When heroes emerge victorious they gain XP and levels, allowing you to improve one of five stats. When they screw up – well, it’s often amusing to see the fallout.
The cast keep up a barrage of heckling throughout each shift. Sometimes they go AWOL, as when Invisigal insists on checking out a doughnut shop burglary to curry favour with the owner, or when Sonar demands to be allowed to pitch his “human meat alternative” to a visiting star executive. Sometimes, the mission has branching outcomes – escort this teenage thief home, or give him a pep talk? Lest you feel too passive, there’s a little hacking minigame at intervals that consists of rolling a clump of data through a labyrinth of QTEs. These slabs of gentle strategickal horseplay gel impressively with the TV show elements: Dispatch is technically two games fighting over one screen, but it never feels that way.
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I’m not sure the story will prove to be anything special in the long haul. Partly it’s that there have been plenty of these jaded or knowing Marvelous workplace comedies now. Partly it’s that Dispatch has the air of a tipsy podcast: on some level, it doesn’t aim to get anywhere. It’s more focussed on setting up the next off-colour interaction with a caped liability. It’s the kind of show where villains are happy to be the butt of the joke.
I also feel like the writers are catering to the insecure male nerd demographic a bit too obviously by putting scrawny yet capable, gamer-adjacent Robert at the centre. There’s a touch of Ready Player One to the guy. Still, these are modest complaints. If you’re in the mood to Tell a Tale, enjoy unrehearsed-feeling putdowns, or have a guilty fondness for stained and sculpted spandex, Dispatch has your number.
