Destructoid sat down with the developers of the superhero narrative game Dispatch, Michael Choung (Executive Producer, CEO) and Pierre Shorette (Narrative Director, Executive Producer, CCO).
In an exclusive interview on Nov. 10, two days before the release of the final two Dispatch episodes, the developers talked about how different AdHoc Studios is from their past work with Telltale Games, their thoughts about the future of Dispatch, and why they would love to see fan-made content taking the game's story further. In the end, they also made a special nod to Hades developers Supergiant Games about wanting to work with them on a new game.
Check the full interview below.
Destructoid: Why did you bet on this episodic format for Dispatch, even though it seemed to be dormant?
Pierre Shorette: I think working at Telltale for many years, it was always the dream for it to be at a regular cadence. I mean, obviously, we were in live development at that point, but I think they basically cited live development as an excuse for not having their s*** together.
I think if they could have had everything in the can, they would have and had a more reasonable release cadence. So, I think that was always something that kind of felt like an itch that we all wanted to scratch, because we thought: we all watch television, there are certain shows every year that'll be like the best show that you're tuning in every week for, and I think looking forward to something is nice.
And I think in a very instant gratification world, it's cool to have something that you have to wait for and think about and sit with for a minute instead of it all being sort of consumed, digested, processed, all within like a week.
And also just strategically, we're a smaller game, we're a smaller studio. We were hoping to, if we were providing something good, that it would be relevant for the entirety of the release, and potentially even have the opportunity, which I think we got, to sort of snowball, get people to be like, ‘hey, I want my friends to be part of this conversation,’ and whether they're watching a screen, or whether they're buying the game themselves, and experiencing it that way, I think people were able to share it, and it kind of spread.
Ultimately, because it's something people like, that's why it's working. More than maybe anything else. If we had made a game that people weren't responding to, people would be saying, “episodic can never work, see? Another example.” Success validates things more than the theory behind it.
Destructoid: Do you think it's the difference in Dispatch being a success and maybe the late Telltale games flopping is actually the game being good or the story being more engaging? Or do you think there's something else at play?
Pierre Shorette: We got compared to a lot of projects when we were looking to get financing. It's reasonable to call it a dormant kind of genre in games recently.
We got compared to a lot of games that didn't really do numbers, didn't really sell very well. And we would look at them and go, why are you comparing us to that? Those don't even have good stories, and it's kind of a narratively driven experience. Of course it didn't work. Baseline, you've got to have a good story if you're going to have this type of game.
I do think that that's certainly a factor. I think there will be books written about why Telltale didn't work. And I'm sure there are some people kicking themselves saying that Dispatch working now that might go “we had an opportunity there.”
But I think quality is really it. I also think fidelity… Even towards the end of Telltale, people were kind of complaining about the look being very last-gen. The fact that our project looks a bit more evergreen… You look at Dragon's Lair 30 years later, and you're like “That's rad animation.” It's very stylized, cool animation. I think people look at our game and think this looks like a cool TV show.
I think the viewability of it is something new. When we were at Telltale, I think there was a little bit of anxiety around people streaming the game. They'd be like, “they're just going to stream it, they're never going to buy it.” Well, I think we offer something cool to experience. I think experiencing an interactive narrative is unique to any media. Even watching people's Let's Plays, you see people pausing at crazy moments or screaming and being super invested in these moments.I don't think that happens with passive mediums as often on TV and film. So there's something special to it.
But I also think that streaming being as ubiquitous as it is now is different. It's a different landscape than it was in the early period when we were at Telltale. We've been able to take advantage of that and just say, hey, we'll meet you where you are. If you want to stream it, you don't have 30 bucks, all good. Check it out, be a fan.
And those same folks are the ones that are making all this art, making all these awesome edits on TikTok, all these expressions of their fandom. That's super cool. That's helped fuel it, which I don't know that Telltale had the benefit of at the time.
Destructoid: Checking online communities like Reddit, it feels like players get attached to specific parts of Dispatch more than others. Are there any plans or early ideas that you have to keep using the IP or expanding the game into Dispatch 2 or a new DLC?
Michael Choung: It's very early. We're very excited, so of course there are ideas and conversations, but nothing that we can super commit to yet. So just like you, we're looking at Reddit too. We're just like, whoa, there are people asking for an endless mode, asking for all kinds of things, like when's the next season coming out. There were some funny conversations about “Maybe the next season will be out in 3 months” and we're like, “What?”
People seem to be super excited about what could come next. We're definitely having the conversations now, but just nothing to commit to just yet.
Destructoid: Were there any plans you had for Dispatch before that you had to scrap, that will probably never see the light of day?
Pierre Shorette: Maybe some elements of this sort of stuff will show up in the future with other projects, or even season two, potentially, but… We were going with a kind of sitcom model for a while. It was very like any type of sitcom where you get 30, 40 minutes of content that pretty much starts and gets wrapped up.
I remember this old version of Waterboy. In one episode, Waterboy has no self-confidence, and then he becomes really big-headed about himself. Then by the end of the episode, he's sort of brought back down to Earth and learned his lesson. But it was way too compact, way too formulaic. It was really hard to make your choices mean something because it was not crossing over episode to episode. The choice you made at the beginning of the episode would be resolved by the end.
Michael Choung: Some of it, not all of it, is probably the wake of the first instance of Dispatch. The first instance of Dispatch was supposed to be live action.
Pierre Shorette: Like [Black Mirror:] Bandersnatch.
Michael Choung: Very sitcom-y vibes. Honestly, not a huge budget, like. We had to do it very, very quickly. That all died because COVID happened, and just took it with it. There was a period between that live action version and the thing that we shipped where that transition had to happen.
What Pierre is describing is like us dealing with that transition into what ended up shipping. But that's probably like the biggest thing that just it was supposed to be this and then it went away.
Can you imagine? It's hard for us to even imagine. We were months away from going into production. It's hard for us to imagine what that would have been, honestly.
Michael Choung: But also, this is right around The Boys Season 1, previous to anything to do with Invincible being out there also. This was a long time ago.
Pierre Shorette: Oh, we've been catching a lot of flak for Invisigal being exactly like [Arcane's protagonist] V, but we had Invisigal before Arcane came out. Actually, when Arcane did come out, we were all kind of like, “Oh, f***, our game’s gonna look terrible,” because at that time we didn't really have the art figured out, we didn't really know what the hell… and that's such an insanely high bar, so I'm really proud of our team to even bring something to the table that feels like it could sit next to it and still survive.
But we were all intimidated by it, but we definitely didn't steal stuff from it. Well, I actually will say that I avoided watching any of that stuff, because I was worried about stealing stuff accidentally, and I was also worried about us being scared off of ideas of our own, because similar things were done in those shows. I wanted us to just tell the story when I tell, and not be influenced by the fact that other folks have been sitting in the genre for a minute.
Destructoid: Did you expect people to really enjoy romance in the game and do fan art about other characters that Robert can't really engage with?
Pierre: It's weird because I don't want to say ‘yes’ and act like it was all planned. But, I think what's interesting about how people generally feel about the characters is that… I'm proud of the fact that we don't let you linger too long about how you feel about anyone. Even characters like… Prism and Flambe were characters that a lot of people didn't really have a whole lot of good things to say about. Because that's the thing, you have a bunch of villains, so they're going to be s***** to you as the lead character. So, at a certain point, yeah, we want you to not like them. That is the point. But with Episode 5, I think everyone's now a Flambé and Prism fan, and that's what's really cool about it.
We somehow managed to make enough likable characters that folks wish that the romance options were wider.
I think just knowing interactive narrative and knowing the fact that we're on a budget and we have a certain amount of money, and the game looks the way it does because we wanted it to absolutely be the highest visual quality. But it also means that you have some limited options in terms of like how much footage you could possibly do.
And also, just fundamentally, it's hard to tell a good story when your story fractures that much. I wish people could understand how difficult… There are a lot of games that were on the list of games that we got compared to, where they offered a lot of optionality. And that optionality is what made it so that their story itself wasn't very good in the end. It's hard.
We all want the very classic structure of drama, and it's hard to maintain that if you have this multiverse that you're having to contend with every time that choice comes up. So we have big choices that will be very resonant. Like the end of your game should be different than other folks' end of their game. But it won't be David Cage style, where there's like 30 endings. Because it's hard to write 30 good endings. It's hard to write one good ending. So I think we have like, I think our endings are good, and there are multiple.
Destructoid: Will you guys consider expanding these romance options in the future of the franchise? Some people are asking for a dating sim of Dispatch. Is this something you would probably try to explore in the future?
Pierre Shorette: I wish we could do a non-canon dating sim. Just like a separate, just kind of live in its own world on the checkboxed section of adult content Steam. Something that just could not impact… because that's really, truly the part that would be too much to handle, how much it fractures the story.
Because you want to feel all that stuff, so it impacts every single scene that everyone's in. But I think part of us in the studio are like, “I guess what people really wanted was a dating sim.” So it certainly had us thinking about it. But I don't think it can… Who knows what happens in future seasons? But there are some story constraints. Which is why, if it's set outside of the story, it’s way more feasible.
Also, someone's going to make this, dude. Someone's going to make this. There's going to be some unauthorized version of this, or a visual novel or something. The fandom's been going.
Destructoid: And how do you feel about this? If it ever pops up, do you care?
Pierre Shorette: Do your thing. We tell stories where we invite, we're allowing people to co-author the story with us. You can't engage in that relationship and then be like, “But don't write your own stories. Just come to ours!” That'd be insane. So, we're stoked for it.
I hope someone writes some side story that eventually becomes, like, its own thing. That would be awesome.
Michael: A Twilight situation? Like 50 Shades of Grey?
Pierre: Yeah. If that happened, that's incredible. That's awesome.
Michael: Well, they should expect a legal conversation with AdHoc Studio [laughs]. But beyond that, yeah, we would encourage it.
Destructoid: What kind of games would you like to see taking this narrative-first approach?
Michael: The game I've probably put the most number of hours in, and I believe it's a game that Pierre recommended me, is Slay the Spire. I've put more hours into that than any other game in my life, and I would like to know more about that story. I want to know the stories of every single character that shows up in that game.
And then if there were a flip, like an older RPG that maybe you can turn into a narrative-first experience, my immediate go-to would be Earthbound. They did something cool with an RPG at a time when everyone was kind of doing copies of other things. Imagine that IP is treated sort of like Stranger Things.
Pierre: I can't wait to get into Hades 2, because I loved the first Hades and played it till my eyes bled. Supergiant is obviously fantastic, and I think a Hades sort of universe version of what we're kind of doing, like talk about dating sim, talk about drama, talk about great art and character design. That would be fantastic. Actually, that's a great idea. We should call these guys.
Michael: That team does an incredible job of telling a story within that universe. I'm thinking about those trailers that they do sometimes, where it's actually animated. That would be rad. I would be so into that.
Destructoid: Would you try to work with them on this, like make an episodic Hades game?
Pierre: I mean, that's certainly something to talk about. Everyone's asking for season two, and we're already like clenched. The war is over, a new war begins. Go back into battle, you know? So I think there's probably more opportunity out there than we have the bandwidth for. But something like Hades would be a dream.
Destructoid: Do you have anything else you want to add?
Pierre: Thank you to everyone who has been a fan of the game, whether you purchased it, whether you bought it, whether you made some art, whether you did whatever you did that is contributing.
Even any commentary that is negative, we accept this as well. We're reading all that, too.
Michael: We're monitoring [laughs].
Pierre: Yeah, but it's truly like… I think all conversation is good. The worst thing that can happen is feeling nothing. I'm just stoked that it's reaching some people, and that the response has been overwhelming. We've all been moved in the studio, and none of us, I think, expected this. So it's been awesome.
The post Dispatch developers talk about the game’s future, fan content, and why working on a Hades game would be ‘a dream’ appeared first on Destructoid.
