I played the first two episodes of Dispatch, which I bought literally the day I found out about the game's existence. As far as I remember I've never done such a thing, but this game seems like it could be something special. It's a game in the old Telltale Games mold mixed with a management element. It's about Robert, aka Mechaman, a semi-retired superhero who gets set up as a dispatcher in a network that sends superheroes to fight crime and solve other problems. It's a bit hard to make a verdict about it yet because only the first two episodes (which I cleared in little over an hour and a half) are out, but what's here so far is very promising. As far as I know it's not based on any existing property.
Since we're finally cresting the hill of superheroes being the big thing, yet another interpretation on them could easily seem tired and worn. Dispatch still manages to feel like a fresh take, playing it fairly straight as a workplace drama (so far). It's not aiming for edginess or deconstruction, but uses the superhero setting more for character exploration. What helps is that the writing is legitimately great, the animation during what you might call "Telltale segments" is downright fantastic, and the voice acting... oh boy. The game is in part produced by Critical Role, meaning they're all involved, but in addition you've got online personalities like MoistCr1tikal, Jacksepticeye and Alanah Pearce all doing surprisingly good work voicing the various heroes. Oh, and Aaron Paul as well, aka the most criminally underappreciated voice actor of the century.
Notice how I've talked about this almost more like a movie or a tv show? That's for a reason: the words "Telltale mold" probably already clued you in about what kind of game we're talking about here. The first episode is almost entirely like watching a tv show sans some quicktime events and minor dialogue choices. The second episode has more gameplay, but a hefty chunk of it is still just cutscenes. As well animated, written and acted everything is, if games with barely any gameplay aren't your thing, this likely won't be either.
But what gameplay there is is actually pretty engaging from what little we have so far: you have a map, on which icons appear for various tasks, and you have to send the best superhero for the job based on their stats: combat, intelligence, vigor, charisma and mobility. What I found surprisingly engaging is how the game doesn't tell you which heroes are best suited for a job, you have to intuit that yourself from various keywords and task descriptions. The tasks range from "help a kitten down from a tree" to "put out a fire that's razing the neighborhood", but they also often have additional criteria attached to them: maybe alongside putting the fire out you have to organize an evacuation of the citizens. Putting the fire out probably requires vigor, but managing the evacuation probably calls for charisma. You can send multiple heroes out which drastically improves your odds, but that might make a crucial hero unavailable for another task. Like I said, it's surprisingly engaging and seemingly pretty well balanced.
So yeah, a very positive surprise, and I'm eager to find out more. The rest of the episodes are coming out in chunks in November and December.
