The secret identity is a cornerstone of superhero fiction. Spider-Man is secretly Peter Parker (or Miles Morales), Superman is secretly Clark Kent (or is it the other way around?), and Iron Man is secretly Tony Stark (until he announces it at a press conference at the end of the first movie and basically blows up the importance of secret identities for the duration of the MCU, but I digress). Dispatch, the debut adventure game from the Telltale Games veterans at AdHoc Studio, plays with this dilemma to incredible effect.
Robert Robertson (Aaron Paul) agrees to work as a superhero dispatcher at the start of the game because the robotic suit that allows him to fight crime as MechaMan is broken beyond his skill to repair. But most of the Z-list superheroes he finds himself managing from his new office job have no idea Robert was actually the guy in the mech.
This is a minor element of Dispatch’s overall narrative but, while speaking with the game’s star-studded cast, I was surprised to discover just how many of them have dual identities of their own. Few are only voice actors.
During a series of Zoom interviews, I discovered that the cast of Dispatch includes a rapper, multiple writers, a YouTube filmmaker, actual play livestreamers, podcasters, stand-up comedians, and a CEO. In that way, Dispatch is a truly millennial superhero story; Tobey Maguire didn’t have a side hustle.
The Critical Role Connection
Laura Bailey and Travis Willingham — who play the heroes Invisigal and Phenomaman — are promoting this game while in the midst of the exciting start of Critical Role’s fourth, and biggest, season yet. Bailey, who worked with AdHoc founders Pierre Shorette and Nick Herman when they were previously at Telltale Games, was initially sent a vertical slice of the game and showed Willingham who was immediately impressed.
“She was like, ‘Hey come check this out.’ Not of course breaking any NDAs or confidentiality agreements,” Willingham jokes, with the implication that they very much were breaking the rules. “But it looked so good and the quality was amazing and the animation style was so superb that I instantly reached out to Pierre Shorette and Nick Herman.”
That led to a deeper level of involvement from Critical Role. Matthew Mercer, who served as DM through the show’s first three seasons and is now a member of the season four cast, is also onboard as a voice actor, and CR is partnering with AdHoc on a video game set in the universe of their own show.
“We really do love supporting creator-owned content,” Bailey says. “Having a studio [where] they are in charge of their own IP is a beautiful thing and having done that ourselves we know how hard it is. And also we see this amazing beauty in it.”
Seeing All Possibilities
Playing a character in a game like Dispatch, where you can travel down many different paths depending on the player’s choices, requires another kind of split identity. As Erin Yvette, who plays Blonde Blazer — the statuesque heroine who recruits Robert — explains, “We got scripts in advance so you can get an idea of your character as a whole.”
It’s very common, Yvette says, to only get a few scenes at a time. “It’s really a luxury to see their full arc and all the different branching versions of them that can exist. And then you synthesize all of that information to create one person who is capable of all of those different faces.”
Yvette and Bailey actually swapped characters midway through — with Yvette taking over Blonde Blazer from Bailey and Bailey taking over Invisigal — so both have literally embodied dual identities throughout the production.
Joel Haver, who plays aspiring hero Waterboy, is better known for his improvised independent films (live-action shorts and features as well as rotoscope animation) which he releases for free on YouTube. He shared Yvette’s sentiment, saying that his method of filmmaking prepared him for the branching path approach of a game like Dispatch.
“It is like choose your own adventure. It’s like D&D. You’re making it up,” Haver says of his films. “You’re like ‘what would my character do next, what’s the next scene?’. I’m very used to that sort of freeform narrative thing because I’ve made 20-plus features and only one of them ever had a script. So I really adore that approach to creativity. And I think that’s what makes playing a game like this so fun. That you’re becoming the storyteller.”
Haver notes that Dispatch forces you to make quick decisions, too, which leans into the improv angle. “This game doesn’t even give you the chance to pause and make your choices. You have to do them in a split second and kind of comprehend like you would in real life or like you would in an improv production. You gotta decide on a whim and it speaks more to your gut reaction, rather than the most logical reaction to each thing.”
I also interviewed stand-up comedian Fahim Anwar for this piece, but he chose to do the interview in character as Lance Canstopolis, which was funny, but unfortunately did not provide any usable quotes.
Writing And Rapping And Acting
Cast members Alanah Pearce and Mayanna Berrin have experience with more traditional forms of writing. Berrin is one of the co-writers of Dispatch, while Pearce worked on God of War Ragnarok while at Santa Monica Studios and is currently narrative director for the indie metroidvania, Layers Deep.
Pearce says that seeing how the sausage gets made from the narrative side is “extremely helpful” as a voice actor. “In no small part because… I understand the questions to ask to get the context I need… It helps to have a picture of how game dev works, and how those cycles work and watching the team like in real time — because we recorded in the space of about a year-and-a-half — iterate on things and develop the characters and develop their relationships as well.”
Berrin, interestingly, began the process doing scratch (or placeholder) voiceover work, before getting hired as a writer, and then brought on to play the hero, Coupe. “I really appreciate that they didn’t just see me as just one thing,” Berrin says, “because I think it’s really easy to get locked in as you do this thing and that’s all.”
The rapper Thot Squad shared that sentiment. In addition to playing Prism, a pop star-inspired hero, her song Pound Cake is memorably featured over the credits of an early episode.
“That’s what I really like about AdHoc,” Thot Squad says. “They’re not looking for one puzzle piece… it’s like what’s everything that you can bring to the table. And I’m very fortunate that they like the things I say and they like the things I sing.”
That seems to be key to AdHoc’s approach. They’re looking for Batman and Bruce Wayne, not one or the other.
