i played until episode 4 so far and to be honest, it has been really underwhelming. in many ways it’s superior to telltale’s old games but also it’s weaker in the most important aspect which is story.

the overall asset quality is good and the animation is really great (anime inspired to say the least) but the voice acting is really inconsistent. the cast is a mix of professional VAs, youtubers and writers. most of them do a good job but some of the acting feels without direction. the weakest one by far is moistcritikal. his microphone quality is noticeably worse than everybody else and he doesn’t do acting as much as reading the lines with intonation. i loved joel haver though he’s great.

one of the earliest things you notice is how short each episode is. i managed to play all four episodes in about 4 hours, most of which was spent inside the dispatch mini game. getting aaron paul to voice your MC and high quality animation wasn’t probably cheap so they compensated by shortening the episodes as well as the episode release schedule to make it more like a TV show. when i finished the first episode and the “your choices vs everybody else” credits popped up i genuinely thought “oh they’re showing you choices mid chapter as well that’s nice you get a small break in the middle of the episode”. it’s also more like a TV show where they front load the episode with something like a big action scene or a sex scene to get you hooked in to watch the rest of the episode. the biggest sacrifice of shorter episodes is definitely the story.

the character designs are interesting but every character is extremely shallow. almost all the characters are reality TV levels of cliche. the main characters are the stoic but sarcastic handsome bruised protagonist that could easily be a self-insert, the innocent blonde that is immediately interested in you and breaks up with her boyfriend to date you, the punk rebel girl that’s hostile at first but develops feelings for in no joke 3 or 4 shifts of you working behind your desk and a mysterious red computer eye villain that killed your dad. the supporting cast includes the heroes on your team with such distinct characters such as finance bro drug addict, asshole show off, red demon lady, dumb rocks, small circus strongman, mysterious dark assassin and pop star with an attitude problem.

the pace is not fast but the story develops too quickly. friday you come in and everybody’s an asshole that don’t like their jobs. monday your boss forces you to cut one of them so all of them sabotage each other in order to not be the one to get cut. then you give a pep talk (which is shitty and short i might add) and suddenly everyone gets motivated to do their job and be a hero. you do a final pep talk with the punk and she does awesome and gets saved and later that night she has a wet dream about you. it’s like the writers figured out a good story has emotional beats, but they cut all the buildup and only included the beats.

the only interaction you have with your team (aside from invisigal) is through radio chatter in the mini game which is just basically them confirming that their trope is indeed what it says on the tin. there’s also some character interactions in the form of team synergies which are better than nothing, but still surface level and shallow.

the other main part of the game is the actual dispatch mini game itself. to be honest i liked it. it’s not something i would play in an endless mode but it’s fun. it’s simple and some of it is scripted, but managing your team’s skills as well as figuring out which hero is best based on the text description is kinda fun, although sometimes the description can be very heavy handed. the contrast between serious and silly missions that pop up are hilarious, and some of the characters’ reactions to them over the comms is also good. there’s also this hacking sub mini game which is not great but it gives you a break from looking at the map.

the last part is the impact of your choices, or rather the lack of it. i know a lot of people care about non-linearity and impactful choices but honestly it doesn’t matter to me. for me the illusion of making choices in the first playthrough is still as satisfying as making actual choices, and knowing my choices don’t actually matter is not a deal breaker. that being said, the game is also bad at crafting the illusion of choice. we will probably see the impact of choosing which character to date, or who to cut and add to the team in later episodes, but when your goal is to get your suit fixed up and avenge your father, it kind of doesn’t matter. the dialogue options also seem not impactful at all but i can’t describe why.

i like that another studio is trying to make and iterate on the telltale’s format of an adventure game, but i don’t think Dispatch is the right direction for the genre. another issue for this kind of game is the monetisation. when the players know that they are essentially getting the same thing by watching a free youtube walkthrough series (there are tons of no commentary walkthroughs as well) and there is almost no replayability why would anybody pay for your game? that’s to say, i don’t think making this type of game more expensive and shorter is somehow gonna work out in the long run.

as i said at the beginning i’ll play the rest of the episodes too but my hopes are not high. i know people sometimes refer to superhero media as “capeslop” but i don’t think it really applies to this game. i just want to play more adventure games goddamit