A rare insight into how the sausage gets made
I'm going to park my feelings of unease at the fact that it's somehow already been a year since Dispatch came out, as developer AdHoc Studio have revealed some pretty neat sounding additions to the game to commemorate its first anniversary. Well, if you have the deluxe edition anyway (sorry, regular edition owners).
There are two new modes that have arrived with this update (which is already out), one being a cast and crew commentary, the other a storyboard mode. "Over 16 hours of commentary across every episode, with two tracks to choose from in the Settings: Cast or Crew," explains a Steam blog post of the commentary mode. "Different choices unlock different commentary, so your playthrough could share new insights every time you play it. You’ll hear from Aaron Paul, Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham, and more of the cast, plus the people who wrote, directed, and designed the game."
Storyboard mode is quite an unusual one, as it allows you to play the entire game "the way it was first drawn." That means that every single one of the game's episodes can be played while looking at its original storyboards and draft renderings, "so you can see how the scenes and characters were designed before a single frame was animated." Obviously this is something that only really works given how cutscene-focused the game is, and not something that'd be easily possible with other kinds of games, but it's a wonderfully rare insight into how games get made. Neat! Outside of the update which is more broadly applicable to you lot, there is also a concert featuring the game's music happening at Avalon Hollywood in LA on December 3rd. Only one night for that one and there's limited tickets, so expect that to sell out fast.
If you're curious what Dispatch is actually like, here's a few words from Edwin on it: "It's been so long since I played a Telltale-style game that all the Telltale quirks feel novel again. Timed dialogue choices and action QTEs. X will remember that. Hashtag 4 Clementine. Created by a team co-founded by former Walking Dead and Wolf Among Us developers, Dispatch brings all of that charming, movie-night energy to bear on a superhero comedy premise you might broadly recognise from The Boys and Invincible, except that it's more laidback and banter-driven than either of those."