A Complete Dispatch Rewrite
Screw it, I’ve got time and I need to waste it somehow.
So, what is Dispatch?
It’s a game where you’re a hero – or rather, former hero. Your mech blew up, oopsy-daisy. Either way, you have a new day job – leading the ‘Z-Team’. A group of former villains who are trying to do good… but doing so poorly. It’s your job to dispatch them to the right locations and jobs, all while.
Anyone who’s seen my other post will know that I had… a lot of thoughts. And honestly, my feelings are mixed; I like the game’s premise, but I like a lot of premises within games, good and bad. What I don’t like are the microaggressions and the issues with the overall plot and how it doesn't tackle these themes with the weight they deserve. I think it needed to be longer and more meaningful rather than the equivalent of fast food. So, this is a proposal of how to change it.
Here are the requirements I’ve put on myself;
We can’t introduce new main or side characters to fix existing problems. Extras like at the Sardine and SDN HQ however can be created, as this wouldn’t be too resource-intensive. More on this later.
Their overall personality and themes can’t change. Whatever changes are made should still resemble the original in most ways. (This includes Prism, Invisigal, and Sonar; arguably the most problematic of the cast.) Phenomaman should have a little patheticness, Flambae will be hostile, etc.
The main plotline will be the same. However, I’m ok with adding extra romances between Robert and the other characters, and I mean all of them.
At most, we can only add 4 more episodes.
For the main physical design changes:
Give Flambae more of an Afghanistan accent, or give him a tan. He’s only white-passing, as the game lists that he is from Afghanistan. It helps to make it clear that he’s not really white; if skin color doesn’t work, then play around with his facial features a bit. I get that Flambae’s VA does look similar to Flambae, but I don’t think Robert looks like Aaron Paul or Invisigal like Laura Bailey especially. Also, Flambae is the only Afghanistan representation in the game, I wouldn’t push for it otherwise.
Coupé has less grey in her skin. Her tone’s a bit muted, which I don’t really like, especially when she’s one of only two Black women in the main cast. Though to be fair, I’m pretty sure it’s because the entire cast doesn’t have any undertones. Don’t really know why, but I’m not experienced enough in 3D animation to be able to answer that. Additionally, Coupé will be more slender to fit the ballerina theme and make her body type a bit different, as well as a bit older.
Waterboy’s going to be Black. Yes, he can have the same pathetic appeal his original counterpart does, and yes, ‘Sparkling Water’ ship still exists. Yes, Phenomaman functionally counts as white, he passes as such. Though, speaking of Phenomaman…
…Phenomaman is now Phenomawoman! Phenomawoman would present the same as her male counterpart as we do need more body types, though she’d obviously be feminine as to match the masculinity of Phenomaman’s design. I think the closest example is Emma Frost from Marvel Rivals… with more clothes obviously. (No exposed thighs.) This is also to solve the issue I had with the ‘CUT’ in episode 3.
Make it so that Invisigal’s asthma doesn’t affect her invisibility. Rather, it’s just a focus thing, nothing more. Technically, Invisigal’s asthma would affect her if she ever dropped her inhaler in the middle of combat, but then it feels less like the disability was made to ‘balance her out.’
Prism’s also going to be wearing an afro, like in most edits I’ve seen made by Black artists. I recognize what her design is based on, but how cool does a reflective Afro sound? Plus, gives Prism a way to just flashbang an entire crowd at once. I think keeping her cake is fine since I don’t want to remove the appeal and I want her to be a parallel to Flambae. Plus, it’s not really sexualized in game, so I’m fine with it. She’ll be in the middle between Invisigal and Coupé age-wise.
Malevola’s going to look more… demonic. She’s going to have a build similar to Golem, or Sonar if we want to use partners. Dispatch is awful at body-diversity when it comes to its women, honestly. (Golem, Punch-Up, Sonar, and Flambae have different body shapes from each other. Prism, Coupé, and Invisigal have very similar body types.) As for age, it’s indeterminate like Golem is.
Mandy won’t be '''pretty''', or at least, not as idealized. Her normal form will have a bit of disheveled hair, messy clothes, stuff like that. If the point is that the amulet makes her ‘’perfect’’, then her regular form should look human, not like a supermodel. For that, we’ll make it so that while Blonde Blazer isn’t plus-sized, Mandy is. It’s not that the amulet makes her perfect, it’s that the amulet makes her society’s depiction of perfect. We’ll get back to that later.
Blonde Blazer is bisexual, though Invisigal thinks she’s bisexual. (Invisigal will be graysexual (limited sexual attraction) with very inappropriate humor. Considering my own experience, asexuals having very sexual humor is not as uncommon as you’d think.) For sexualities, Flambae is gay and everyone else is how you imagine them to be.
Not as many goons have Asian / Black facial features. Some, yes; but not everyone. A lot of Shroud’s minions aren’t white, like Toxic who looks Asian. Or even some of the criminals you face like in chapter 1. I feel like the percentage is over 50-60%, but I am not watching this mediocre game a fourth time to determine that.
Going over some character dialogue changes:
Blonde Blazer becomes more crass and less corporate in her mannerisms when she’s talking with you and/or Invisigal. Invisigal should be having an effect, let us notice that.
Sonar’s less… horny in his dialogue. He still has his drug addict problem, but he’s no longer as horny when it comes to the women. He’s not going to be a complete walking HR violation.
Invisigal is also getting a rewrite; she’s sexually explicit mind you, just less sexual harassment. It’s an ongoing joke in the fandom that she violates a lot of HR rules, and there’s some truth to that. Unfortunately, it is used rather carelessly in my opinion; it’s not used to properly develop her character.
Prism’s going to be defensive; she’s a pop star, that’s going to come with overactive stans. However, a lot less focus is placed on her anger. I’ve come to realize that when it came to the dialogue people came up for her, they gave her a lot of anger; unfortunately, in the original source material, we mainly saw her angry. There weren’t too many scenes where she was actually talking in a normal mood, which… yeah, that’s being fixed.
Mechaman can now be Wreckawoman! This doesn’t change much, aside from a few dialogue options and interactions. Robert (F) will still be called Robert because her dad assumed that a boy would be born and he was too stubborn to change the name; she prefers Roberta or Robbie.
Some stuff that goes unchanged:
Invisigal’s smoking with her asthma is a very subtle but also very good way of showing her self-destructive tendencies without it being spelt out.
However, with this being a longer game, we will need some extra gameplay changes. I get the feeling this became popular in the same way a lot of FNAF games did; it has a very short, effective, and simple game loop. There’s nothing wrong with this formula, I’m not bashing such games for doing so; it’s just that they worked under the context of a story being presented in a very short amount of time. Dispatch is a game that could have done this, but only if Z-team had 4-5 members. Regardless, based on the rules, we need to keep all 10. So, I’ve decided to make the following changes:
Heroes can get injured if they’re sent on a mission, even if it succeeds. There’d just be an easier check determining if they succeeded, and a difficult one determining how much they needed to sacrifice to get the job. This seems like a negative, and truth be told, it mostly is; however, it gives characters like Malevola more things to actually do. Additionally, some other characters will get healing perks as well to accommodate for this. (Flambae and Golem. Also, the fact that Waterboy has his Holy Water perk also makes it more enticing.)
All missions will have higher requirements, especially for 3-4 slot missions.
We’re going to remove the auto-fail condition as well; it just punishes you for not knowing what quests are coming up next.
However, heroes can recover from being downed. It will take longer than a standard rest time, but they can.
There will now be three shifts per episode: morning, afternoon, and evening. Each of these are three hours in-game, roughly speaking.
I could propose more, but I’m not a game designer; I tried coming up with ideas for second sets of perks, but that took far too long. I feel like that takes away from my focus anyhow; the story. So, any other gameplay changes from here will affect the actual story. But, there will be some important gameplay choices later on.
The structure, with this in mind, will be ‘Intro -> Morning Shift -> Break 1 -> Afternoon Shift -> Break 2 -> Evening Shift -> Conclusion.’ Some episodes, however, will muck up the pattern to make it less predictable. From here on out though, I’ll be referring to ‘Robert’ to make sure I don’t make too many typos.