It's been over 7 years since Telltale Games laid off an overwhelming majority of its staff and shut its doors, seemingly for good, leaving projects like The Wolf Among Us Season 2 and The Walking Dead: The Final Season in limbo. The episodic storytelling titans had been around since 2004, both inspiring and traumatizing generations with their narrative twists and engaging gameplay. Thankfully, not everything they did went to waste. The Walking Dead: The Final Season was finished by a handful of developers, thanks to Skybound, the company that owns the Walking Dead IP, and a handful of Telltale alumni moved on to different studios, and some even opened a new one.
Founded by Telltale titans Nick Herman, Dennis Lenart, Pierre Shorette, and Michael Choung, Adhoc Studios opened its doors in October 2018, teaming up with Critical Role on Dispatch as well as other projects.
"It’s the kind of collaboration you hope for... We’ve known the Critical Role team for years... It made sense in the best way possible, so we’re thrilled we get to team up and cause some trouble together."Michael Choung, Adhoc CEO.
With two titans in narrative storytelling working so closely, as well as experience from Ubisoft and Night School Studio added to the mix, it's no surprise that Adhoc is slowly becoming a studio that takes advantage of content consumption and interaction, according to Shorette in an interview with Variety.
"With streaming platforms in our homes and cell phones in our pockets we’re in this unique time where the barrier to entry to interaction is gone. So as a group of people whose expertise and experience has come from making Interactive Narrative that sits in that space between, we feel now is the perfect time to form a studio that focuses on creating content for a new space,"Pierre Shorette, Adhoc CCO.
This past week, after much anticipation, they finally released their first title: Dispatch, a "superhero workplace comedy." And boy, it was well worth the wait.
You play as Robert Robertson, aka Mecha Man: a middle-aged superhero on the cusp of financial ruin and critical levels of burnout after his super suit was destroyed in a failed attack on the supervillain that killed his father, a masked stranger called Shroud. Approached by the Superhero Dispatch Network, Robert begins to work as a Dispatcher for a group of ex-villains while the Network repairs his suit.
The story itself is hilarious and interesting. I'm a sucker for sticking powerful, magical beings in day-to-day situations, and it works well here. It's the inverse of The Incredibles; superheroes are so ingrained into society that they need a dispatching network to help the people of Los Angeles in a more organized way, while also helping people like Robert with stability and resources that aren't easily accessible. The worldbuilding is fantastic, and the writing is high-quality. It's very lighthearted in tone, compared to what I was anticipating, with some moments having me pause the game so I could finish laughing. However, the game also knows when to get serious. The two episodes we have are heavily narrative-focused, with minimal gameplay. It does risk turning away some of its players, especially since the demo was mostly gameplay-centric. However, it helps to lay the foundation for the remaining six episodes, with plenty of mystery and vague details to theorize over while we wait for them to come out.
Robert is a deeply relatable protagonist. A powerless guy just trying to do right by his family and the city that relies on him, hiding that trauma and pressure behind a deadpan sass. Arron Paul does a fantastic job of making Robert sound both hopeful and dead inside at the same time, with stellar delivery on each line. Even though we spend most of our time with Robert, he is not the only hero we see. In fact, he is elevated by the supporting cast. They are top-tier, with voice acting legends like Laura Bailey and Matthew Mercer, A-List YouTubers Jacksepticeye and Moist Cr1tikal, and even popular rapper Yung Gravy bringing the world of Dispatch to life with their own charms and nuances in each of their performances. I personally love Flambae; his snarky attitude and somewhat menacing demeanor are so well executed that it's hard to believe that this is Lance Cantstopolis's first major role in voice acting!
Moving on to gameplay, we unfortunately did not get to see much of it. As I mentioned, the two episodes we have are very story-focused, with the game even presenting the option to turn quick-time events off for a more narrative experience. What we did get to play was fun. The resource management adds a layer of strategy to every call, since there's a waiting period after each hero returns to the network. The ability to level up your heroes and use items that can shorten rest times helps ease the burden if, say, you only have slow, beefy heroes and you just got a call that requires speed. The hacking portions were definitely my favorite. Hacking in video games can be very hit or miss, at least for me, so I was pleasantly surprised by Dispatch. They're concise and easy to follow, yet still challenging in a way that's engaging. It doesn't pull focus away from dispatching your heroes, either, but instead helps you to feel more involved. I wish we got to experience more of it, and hopefully we will in the next set of episodes.
Which brings me to my last note. I've seen a lot of fans upset at the weekly release schedule, and while I understand, I think it's reasonable. Telltale was known for its months-long waits in between episodes, with The Walking Dead especially. I'm not the biggest fan of episodic or chapter releases, either, but this allows Adhoc to both garner hype for the game and perform any final bug fixes for each episode. We've all been victim once or twice to a game releasing to poor reviews due to glitches and bugs on launch, and if it takes a week for Adhoc to prevent this and make the best experience for us, then I'm more than happy to wait.
All in all, Dispatch is a game with a lot of potential. If we see this level of quality throughout the next six episodes, I have no doubt that we'll be looking at the biggest narrative experience of the year. Adhoc Studios has done well to harness the magic that made Telltale Games so great while also putting their own flair into it. I can't wait to see what they do next! Hopefully, we'll get some news soon about that Exandria title from Critical Role.