AdHoc’s game had a very different beginning. They were inspired by Game Freak and Nintendo’s franchise.

The story of Dispatch largely focuses on our relationships with Invisigal, the burnt-out SDN employee, until Robert Robertson III arrives on the scene. Whether you support him or not has a huge impact on the story, resulting in a beautifully cohesive plot in AdHoc’s debut game. However, things could have turned out very differently.

A Polygon interview with narrative director Pierre Shorette reveals this. In the original script, players basically chose their starter Pokémon. We didn’t have a team. We showed up, and our boss asked us to choose someone we wanted to mentor. AdHoc’s original idea was for the player to choose from Invisigal, a troubled criminal closely related to the central story and themes; Waterboy, a perpetually wet nerd; and Mr. Whiskey, a guy in a fursuit.

However, this didn’t really work, Shorette explained. At a certain point, they realized that what they had always done throughout their careers—and what people loved most—was the kind of narrative storytelling and interactivity that builds up over a season and makes us feel like we are part of a bigger story. They almost abandoned this approach, but then they asked themselves, “What if we took the existing setup and looked at the arc of a season on a higher level?”

This change in development also meant that the darker series became more hopeful, thanks to the pandemic and the cheerful sports sitcom Ted Lasso. There was a lot of debate about whether it was necessary to hurt people or if they could just hope for the best. This was probably the best solution for the studio who now probably plans the second season of the game.

Source: PCGamer, Polygon