“We are definitely not doing QTEs,” said Dispatch's creative director
I'll admit, I didn't expect much from Dispatch's gameplay before I played it. After all, it's more or less a Telltale game, which were always more concerned with dialogue choices and story sequences than they ever were with gameplay. But, somehow, AdHoc managed to make Dispatch more fun to play than it is to watch.
In a GDC talk with Dispatch creative directors and AdHoc Studio cofounders Nick Herman and Dennis Lenart, they discussed how the game's puzzle mechanics developed. Early in development, the team wanted to focus on light puzzling minigames that would directly tie into Robert's job at SDN—dispatching.
This didn't begin with a dispatching minigame, but one thing was certain in Lenart's eyes: "We are definitely not doing QTEs." Herman used an example of helping Invisigal through a security camera feed, where you'd switch cameras to navigate the space, interact with objects, and call things out to her.
dispatch, adhoc studio, nick herman, dennis lenart, qtes, gdc, puzzle mechanics, dispatching, telltale, security camera