You weren't just incredibly unlucky in Dispatch's final shift, your high success rate failures were "intentional"

Dispatch can get more than a little hectic at times while you're giving the Z-Team their marching orders. Obviously, sending the multiplicative Golem out is always the correct call; he's ostensibly everyone's ride or die, after all. But there are times, especially in Dispatch's closing act, when not even Yung Gravy can carry you through. During the final shift, everything went to pot. I was pulling the remnants of my hair out as yet another 80%+ success rate call ended as a total bust. I asked AdHoc magicians Dennis Lenart and Polly Raguimov if there was some sort of trickery involved, and their response brings vindication. Spoilers ahoy.

Dispatch's gameplay loop progressively ramps up in difficulty as the episodic story game progresses, introducing new mechanics and more sophisticated versions of existing ones to keep you on your toes. Later in the series, it even introduces an instant fail system should you send out heroes with stats that exceed a certain threshold. This gets bass boosted to the max in Episode 8, as you also have to reckon with either Coupe or Sonar, depending on who you decided to cut from the Z-Team. As Lenart and Raguimov explain, the dire state of affairs is also reflected in your likelihood of successfully completing calls.

"I think I can say that the most common one that people are running into is that final shift," Raguimov begins, "you're attacking Coupe and Sonar, and you're like 'I'm 85%, I've never failed an 85%' - that is intentional.

"It is meant to be harder, not impossible," she continues. "But it's like, 'okay, they've got their Red Ring enhancements, they're more than what you normally deal with.' So even if you're so close, like 90% there, there's the chance that you do roll into that 10%."

"It's not like they're all individually scripted," Lenart chimes in, "where it's like, 'this time it's this, this time it's that.' It's just representing the state of the world at that time."

I certainly had my suspicions that Dispatch was cooking the rates a little at points, and to be honest I can't even be mad. If anything, I think it's a brilliant way to really amp up the tension in a moment where the Z-Team's facing down its most unforgiving challenge. The chaos, the frustration, it's all beautifully synthesized, elevating a simple dispatching minigame into a crucial storytelling tool. Of course, this isn't the only way Dispatch does this, as Raguimov explains how dispatching was progressively layered, transforming it from a simple "matching game" that was "too easy" into something far more comprehensive.

"We were like, 'that's not very fun,'" Raguimov regales. "So we just kept adding more things. The powers went through a lot of different iterations; we kept trying to work in combinations and how they would play off each other. There's a lot of stuff that was added late game. [For example,] don't go too high on the combat or else you'll auto fail, which I know is a bit controversial, but we kept trying to be like, 'how do we keep it fresh as you play?'

"It was kind of challenging to layer in the other side of things, the banter that the team has, so that it didn't feel like too much," she continues. "There was concern on the team like, 'they just don't stop talking,' and it was constant. You're trying to read stuff, send people [on jobs], and then you just have the Z-Team just saying nonsense in your ear. I think we ended up with a good balance of that, to the point where people can still hear them, and they're kind of in the background. But I do notice people are like, 'okay, shut up, what do I have to do here?' And it's kind of like you're Robert in that situation."

Even though Dispatch's gameplay element isn't its main draw, AdHoc has clearly put in the craft to make it stand alongside its incredible cutscenes. It's a testament to the sheer amount of care afforded to the breakout hit, and I long to hear the Z-Team yap away once more; Season 2, pls.