Ever since choice-based games moved away from dialogue options in which you see exactly what your character will say before they say it in favor of little blurbs that try to sum up the general vibe of what you’re going to say or do before you watch it unfold on-screen, there’s been a loss of clarity between what we think we’re about to say and what we actually end up doing in video games. Part of me thinks this is just the consequence of a more cinematic approach to choice-based games, but poorly communicating what a player will do when they make a decision is a game design issue, and Dispatch, the first project from AdHoc Studio, made up of several ex-Telltale developers, is one of the latest games to fall victim to this incongruity between what the screen says your characters will do and what actually ends up happening after you choose it.
Studios have found different ways to circumvent this danger. BioWare uses emotive icons to communicate an emotional intent with different options, or has even started adding small pop-up windows to lay out exactly what you’re going to do alongside your dialogue option. However, games like Dragon Age: The Veilguard have the advantage of pausing dialogue to let players consider their actions before moving forward. Dispatch, like many of the old Telltale games, including The Walking Dead and Tales from the Borderlands, has timed dialogue choices to create a sense of urgency and keep a scene flowing. That has its advantages, but it also means you can’t include a bunch of clarifying pop-ups like other games might because players won’t have time to read them all thoroughly. That said, you can also just write dialogue options that are straightforward, rather than obfuscating what you’re actually going to do. Minor spoilers for Dispatch’s third episode follow:
In episode three, protagonist Robert Robertson III is gathering his crew of ex-villain dispatchees to let them know that, by the end of their shift, at least one of them will be off the team and in the unemployment line. Exactly who that ends up being is the final decision of the episode, but before you make any such call, the group gathers in a meeting room, and Golem, a sentient pile of mud and dirt, knocks Robert to the floor as he enters the room. The player is given two options here: kick him out, or “give him the chair.” That could be interpreted as you offering him a chair to sit down on, but if you choose that option, that’s not what happens. Instead, Robert throws the chair at Golem, which lodges in his shoulder. Robert gives him a very apt talking-to about being aware of his surroundings, but the violence to get there is not clearly communicated in the options you’re given. It makes for a funny streaming moment, at least, but given Telltale’s history with these kinds of ambiguous dialogue options, folks aren’t thrilled to see these interactions return in Dispatch.
Dispatch is halfway through its eight-episode run, and while I’m enjoying parts of it, I have been feeling a bit railroaded by its decisions thus far. I’m curious to see just how much impact those choices can make by the time the game ends later this month, but for now, it’s mostly just felt like I’ve been on the ride.
