The title is a little misleading. I think most of the characters have great potential to be amazing. However not a single one of them lived up to that potential. Ironic, since the game is literally about living up to your potential and becoming more than what you think about yourself.
Yes, I know this is Adhocâs first game as a studio. No, I wonât be any nicer to it because of that. I applaud them for making such a polished first game, but that doesnât mean I will shield it from my criticism and my opinions.
I would like to preface this with the fact that I still enjoyed this game enough to play through it twice. There are many many things wrong with it, but I also enjoyed a lot of the comedy and the general idea of the game. It fell short a lot, but overall I think as a first game from a new game company, itâs pretty okay.
Dispatch is, in my opinion a good game. But itâs not a good story. Itâs a pretty âmidâ story. Itâs the kind of story that I would expect from a terrible Netflix show. Itâs like Second screen content, not made to be thought too deeply about. That being said, here is me thinking slightly deeply about it.
Where it really misses the mark is in itâs characters. Their motives are either incredibly murky, not fleshed out or explored in any depth, or just plain boring. Pretty much every character is as deep as a puddle.
Almost every character in this game could be described as having all wit and no substance.
Shroud
Lets start with Shroud, the antagonist/villain of the game. He is a character who used to work with Robertâs father (Mecha Man) in a super hero group. They worked together to make the âAstral Pulseâ, which powers the Mecha Man suit. Then, for an unexplained reason, turned into a villain and then killed Robertâs father. Nothing else is known about that situation at all.
Why did he decide to become a villain? What was his tipping point and what happened to him that he thinks being is villain is better than being a hero?
What were the circumstances of his fight with Robertâs father?
Why couldnât he just make another Astral Pulse since they made it together? Why does he even need the Astral Pulse since he seems to be doing just fine without it?
What is interesting about Shoud besides his quippy remarks? Nothing much. There is nothing compelling about him as a villain because he is so shallowly written.
He says that the only way to protect people is by being a bad guy, but then he sends his goons to kill people and destroy the city with explosions, itâs so dumb.
These are all incredibly important questions that, if answered, would have made Shroud a more interesting character. However, none of these questions ever get answered, and the audience is only told âShroud killed Roberts father and he is a villain.â Thatâs it.
I think Shroud is one of the most half-baked villains I have seen in recent times.
There is a lot missing from his arc and a lot that is poorly explained.
Invisigal
Invisigal is probably the only character in the game that gets a somewhat interesting arc, however it is very under baked.
Every single âemotionalâ moment is incredibly surface level and just doesnât hit at anything very deep.
Once again, answering basic questions like: âWhy did she become a villain?â and telling us a bit more about her past would have made her so much more compelling.
And her whole arc about being evil and almost killing Robert, then deciding to be good the next day is suuuper half-baked.
I donât even really understand her âCome to jesusâ moment much at all. Sheâs a villain who works for Shroud so that she can get augments from him to improve her powers by making her lung capacity larger (because she can only turn invisible when she holds her breath and she has asthma) and is then indebted to him for that.
She is then ordered to put a bomb on Robertâs mecha man suit and promises her debt will be cleared if she does it, so she does.
But thereâs not a whole lot about why she decides to stop being a villain. Like thereâs no explanation as to why she decides to put villainy behind her.
Thereâs nothing about what made her become a villian in the first place, so itâs hard to understand her extremely quick shift from being âevilâ to being âgoodâ.
Then you learn later in the game that sheâs still working for shroud for the whole game, which makes all that crap she told you earlier seem like a lie, but itâs all very murky because itâs one of the only moments in the game where you actually felt like you were finally getting to know her as a character. Maybe I am just stupid, but it all felt rather underexplained and confusing. Because it seems like she is acting for the entire game (which I feel like she isnât the kind of person to be good at acting) and then only at the very end does she actually decide to be good, or the writers didnât know what the fuck they were doing with her.
Blonde Blazer
Boooooring. She gets absolutely nothing explained about her.
- Sheâs a famous super hero who works for a corporation
- She is actually a brunette without her powers, which apparently is cause for insecurity? (if you go on a date with her you learn this)
She would have made such an amazing character, I actually really liked her whole âWho am I if I am not Blonde Blazerâ thing that they hinted at so many times but never fully leapt into.
Sheâs a really fun character, it was sad to see they did pretty much nothing with her for the entire game.
Robert
Robertâs revenge (or lack of, depending on your choices) arc would have been a lot more interesting if we had actually learned anything about his father other than:
- he was absent because he was a super hero (okay, cool, heâs saving the city at the expense of being there for his son)
- he got killed by the main villain of the story because âŠ. reasons?
Thatâs literally all they tell you about his dad. Why should I care about his relationship with his father at all when I donât know anything about him?
As a writer, you are supposed to make the audience relate to and empathise with your characters and there was almost nothing there for me to care about at all.
I understand how Robert can be relatable from the other aspect of his character, which is the âWashed up Heroâ trope, which was definitely a really interesting aspect to his character, but the main hook of his story, catching shroud for killing his dad and destroying Robertâs life is so lacklustre and uninteresting. If they had just added more backstory, more emotional character moments, it would have been good.
(need to write more here later)
Chase
Chase is probably one of the only characters that is given a well-done story arc in the game. He was a superhero, who realized his power came at the cost of his life, so he stopped being a hero. He aged too rapidly and lost out on doing all the things he wanted to do in life and has resided himself to working at SDN where he can still be of a little help.
Then, he should have died like they were hinting at, which would have added some emotional impact to the final scene of the game, which has almost none.
The ending, while nice that he is alive, left a bad taste in my mouth purely because of how devoid of emotional impact it had.
His decision to go and save invisigal was the only part of the game that made me feel something (that and Robert crying over his hospital bed, because their relationship was the only well done relationship in the game.)
Other Z-Team members
Pretty much all the other Z-Team members are just there to be funny, they have very little substance and arenât really worth talking about.
The ending of the game was also just incredibly stupid - maybe I will write more on that later once I have sorted through my thoughts on it.
Itâs quite obvious that very important character moments were either cut or watered down in this game and thatâs a bit sad to see. The game was way too short for the number of character it had to flesh out and it shows. If they had focused on less characters and just tried to really understand their characters and their motives, it would have had a lot more emotional impact and the characters would have been better utilised in the story.
Side note: Yes, I know this game is supposed to be a comedy. But that doesnât mean the writing is any less bad. Yes, the jokes are funny, but the characters are still poorly crafted.
Another side note: I did not find any of the âHR Violationâ jokes very funny at all and I think they were in quite poor taste.
Third side note: If any of this is explained in the comic, which I have not read, that still means the game is suffering from poor writing because all the information you need to care about a character should be in the story you are watching/reading/playing. Having all the context outside of the story is pointless.
TLDR:
The writing seems to suffer from a lack of clear character motives and key points of characterâs lives not being tied into their storylines. This leads to either half-baked characters or characters that are literally only there to make a quick joke and then leave the frame.
I think if I were to compare this to something else, I would compare it to Tales from the Borderlands, which is pretty similar to this game in terms of mechanics and genre. Itâs a comedy telltale game that actually makes good characters with proper motives and much much better character writing. If I ever replay that I may do a comparison.
Feel free to contact me if you feel I got anything wrong here and I may re-think my stance, but this is just my opinion after playing the game twice.