You’d be forgiven for confusing the new video game “Dispatch” with a TV show. In fact, its creators hope you do.
“We want people to look at this and think it’s a premium animated television show,” said“Dispatch” director Nick Herman. “We don’t want them to look at it and think it’s a game.”
The story of “Dispatch” follows a battered ex-superhero, played by Aaron Paul of “Breaking Bad” fame, as he’s recruited to the Superhero Dispatch Network. Over the course of eight episodes, released on a weekly basis, players steer Paul’s character through workplace rivalries and romances, all as he tries to whip former supervillains into a respectable crime-fighting team.
“This kind of started out as what if ‘The Office’ meets ‘The Avengers,’” said “Dispatch” writer Pierre Shorette.
Shorette and Herman previously worked for Telltale Games, a company known for story-driven adventures based on other properties, from “The Walking Dead” to “Tales from the Borderlands” to “The Wolf Among Us.” But after joining forces with other veteran game developers to found AdHoc Studio, they crafted something wholly their own — an irreverent comedy designed for broad appeal.
“We definitely think there’s so many people out there who would really love this, who would never think about playing a game,” said fellow AdHoc co-founder Dennis Lenart. “Hopefully, this could potentially be their kind of gateway into this type of experience.”
But while the AdHoc team always wanted to reach a wide audience, their vision changed drastically over years of development.
“It started as more of a short-form live-action television show that was interactive,” said Herman. “This really weird new bleeding edge thing that kind of fell apart when COVID happened — we were about to step onto a set.”
So AdHoc decided to animate the game, with a voice cast drawn from Hollywood talent like Paul and Jeffrey Weight, YouTubers like Jacksepticeye and Joel Haver, and industry legends like Laura Bailey and Travis Willingham of “Critical Role.”
The sharp writing and high production values of “Dispatch” impressed these veterans. “This is an animated series. It’s a movie,” remarked Willingham. “It’s something you can’t possibly be from a game and it’s such an improvement over what we know from Telltale-style games in the past.”
“Our job can often be weird to describe,” said game actor Erin Yvette. “But being able to show them a clip from ‘Dispatch,’ it immediately interests any layperson, whether they’ve played a video game before or not.”
But it’s the game’s many branching choices that set it apart from the animated TV shows it emulates.
“There’s a sense of ownership that comes with the choose-your-own-adventure element of it,” said Yvette. Her co-star Laura Bailey agreed.
“I know when I play these kind of games, I always want to go back and see all the choices, but it’s so hard to make the other choice,” Bailey said. “When you’re presented with these same options, I’m like, ‘No, no, this is me!’”
Like the classic Telltale games, “Dispatch” even provides statistics at the end of each episode that tell people what percentage of players made the same choices they did.
“You might get a choice and think 100% of people think like I do, I’m positive,” said Lenart. “Then you get to the end and it’s like you and 14% of people did this — then you talk to your friends and they’re like, ‘Why would you do it your way. That makes no sense.’”
“Dispatch” developers think these stats don’t just spark conversations; they also keep the game trending as its episodes drop week by week. But they also hope the game’s slick animation keeps it in the zeitgeist.
“We’re looking to do something that felt more evergreen,” said Shorette. “I don’t look back at season three of ‘Bob’s Burgers’ and go like, ‘Oh, this looks really last gen,’ — it’s just not even a barrier anymore.”
So far, that approach seems to be paying off. “Dispatch” has sold more than one million copies, an impressive number for a small studio. Shorette believes Adhoc has succeeded at attracting newcomers and hardcore gamers alike.
“We’re comfortable sitting in this place in between — maybe your thumbs are tired from playing Battlefield,” says Shorette. “Come on over, the new episode of ‘Dispatch’ is out. Hang out with us for a while and have a good time.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2025 WBUR