Nicholas Sceusa

Gameplay and Level Designer

nicksceusa@gmail.com

A Look at Dispatch - 7/17/25

Dispatch is a casual action adventure game where you manage a group of superheros who, for a lack of a better description, are somewhat lacking a typical hero's attitude. Essentially you have to work with a group of misfits. The game itself includes elements of strategy but a big focus and point of attraction are the narrative elements and characters. If you are familiar with "The Wolf Among Us", "Tales from the Borderlands", or "The Walking Dead" series from Telltale Studios, this game will feel familiar as a number of writers and directors from that studio are involved with the game.

This has resulted in their famous narrative system being brought to Dispatch. If you are not familiar with the mechanics, there are moments during character interactions or specific events where you have to choose from 3 options. There is limited time so you need to think fast. Characters will then react positively or negatively depending on your choice. However, this is inferred through facial expressions and body language. The game;s only notification is text reading: "they will remember this". A somewhat ominous and famous saying that has become popularized to refer to risky narrative choices in gaming.

For example, in this sequence below a rather large fellow named Roy opted to introduce himself with a fist bump in the men's room. While a little unorthodox, I decided to go with the fist bump as he struck me as a sensitive fella contrary to his size. As the text indicates, Roy will remember this later. This means his relationship with you has changed slightly which will alter how Roy interacts with you during parts of the story.

In previous games, characters who you form a positive relationship with will assist you during critical moments. Meanwhile characters who dislike you are more likely to abandon or fight you depending on the circumstances. For example in the Walking Dead, there are several events where other characters can choose to save you or abandon you during zombie attacks. It all depends on who you decide to support and how you approach difficult situations. The game play loops looks something like this:

The smaller loop occurs regularly from moment to moment when you interact with characters who react to your choices.

The outer loop is very similar. Your character relationships and circumstances in the game are updated; however, the characters will react automatically during or after major story events. This often reflects intense and stressful situations where panic or reflexive thinking occurs.

These loops could be condensed together, but for clarity have been separated to represent short term game play versus long term game play. This also shows how the narrative mechanics effect the entire game. However, Dispatch doesn't entirely rely on the old formula. Things have been changed up a bit.

Since you are the team dispatcher, you primarily play the game from a terminal. This is where you receive calls regarding emergencies or other situations that require heroes. You access the emergency, read the information on what stats would be most beneficial, and then pick a hero best suited to complete the task. If the hero is successful, that hero gains experience which can allow them to level up and handle more difficult tasks. For example, in the sequence below a call was given out to help recover a child's lost balloon. I chose a hero with high strength for climbing. While mobility would have been better, the hero "Punch Up", overlapped with enough of the job's statistical requirements to complete it.

There are a couple of complications of course. A hero is not always available. They need time to travel to the job, complete it, return to base, and rest. This may require you to send another hero to a job that does not meet the requirements, potentially causing them to be injured or downed and unavailable for longer periods of time. Additionally, not every hero is suited to every job. Note in the previous example that one of the requirements is "don't scare the child". It would likely be a bad idea to send the giant man-bat or blade wielding demon despite their higher mobility. Heroes also have their own interests and peculiarities. They may want to do certain jobs that cater to personal interests, such as Sonar being a big fan of a tech company and wanting to meet the CEO during the mission.

While the game does inform you about the results of the job, it does not tell you how each mission affects your team. I personally suspect that each character's mission success and failure rates will also influence their relationship with you and key points during the story. This could add an interesting layer to both story and game play as they are intertwined at various levels. This is a personal theory, but it would make sense for relationships to change depending on the working conditions and interactions. Assuming my theory is correct, Dispatch might have a set of game play loops that look like the following:

At the center we have what I refer to as the Hero Loop. These are actions taken by the heroes without direct control or input.

The middle loop is the Dispatcher Loop. These are the actions and decisions we make as the dispatcher (aka the player). We access the call, send the hero, make performance reviews, and level them up if needed. A particular point of interest is when Robert, our main character, has the opportunity to provide assistance, such as giving advice or hacking into systems to help his team.

Both of these loops together make up the core game play of Dispatch. They could be combined together, but for clarity I separated them into automatic actions versus choices you can make as the player. This makes sense to me as the heroes have their own personality and desires as well.

The Hero Loop is important as it allows us to progress and complete missions for experience; but without input from the player these actions would occur automatically. The call for help, along with the other options in the Dispatcher loop, give the player some measure of control while also letting the heroes handle things directly. It also plays into the role of the Dispatcher; there is only so much we can control.

Finally the Narrative Loop is where we interact with characters, hero or not, directly in person. We speak with characters, update relationships, and events occur at specific times where characters are forced to make choices based on the relationships that have been formed. This outer loop was a big mechanic for the original Telltale games.

Looking at all of these loops together, this game has the potential for more in depth character relationships. Due to the unique position as Dispatcher, Robert will need to interact with these heroes regularly throughout the game both on and off the job, and could provide more opportunities to affect character relationships. This could simply be another method of interacting with characters outside of the original dialogue system, or perhaps there are some additional mechanics that have not been revealed yet. It is a theory but I am curious to see for myself.

I expect there is already a major audience waiting to play this game as the Telltale team's stories were quite popular. I look forward to seeing how this system fully works and getting a chance to see how my story plays out. Needless to say I will be keeping an eye out for the official release date.

Feel free to let me know what you think of the game demo if you have played it and if you have own ideas about how the mechanics might work or what you would like to see in a dialogue system. I'm on linkedIn and Bluesky if you would like to chat.

-Nick

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