Two of the lead Dispatch creators believe Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul wouldn’t have agreed to be in the game had he realised how much work it would actually be.
Aaron Paul plays the central role of Robert in the game, the player character, so he features throughout. His acting commitment, then, was not slight.
“It was gruelling,” narrative director Pierre Shorette told me recently. “We were worried he would never work with us again because it took so long. It’s like water torture, a drip here and there. We’ll call him after eight weeks of not speaking, like, ‘Hey, we need you for four hours.’ It’s like, ‘Fuck, I thought I was done with this.’ We just had to keep bringing him back across two years because he’s in basically the entire fucking game.”
“I think if he knew what this was going to be,” game director Nick Herman added, “he wouldn’t have done it.”
“He would have said no for sure,” Shorette agreed. “For sure.”
Originally, Dispatch studio AdHoc had been talking about getting Rahul Kohli to play Robert. “But we had and have a cool casting director that had a great relationship with [Aaron Paul], and I think he did respond to the script,” said Shorette. “He was feeling it.” Aaron Paul had also been in dark animated comedy Bojack Horsemen, which has tonal similarities to Dispatch. “He responded to that aspect of the game,” Shorette said. “Thank god too, because I don’t know what this is without him at this point.”
Shorette went on to reveal that he had actually spoken to Aaron Paul fairly recently, around the time Dispatch was released, in October/November time. “I was like, ‘Hey dude, I feel empty. You’re famous and successful – do you ever feel this way?’ And he immediately called me. It was a cool big bro move.”
It was during this conversation that Aaron Paul told Shorette that he’d been approached in France by people – fans – who’d played Dispatch and apparently loved his work in it. Aaron Paul has moved to France, by the way, according to Shorette. “And I think he got approached a couple times on the streets of Paris,” Shorette said.
“That happens all the time [for him] but it’s usually someone calling him ‘bitch’ across the street referencing Breaking Bad, obviously. People were hitting him up while the game was still coming out episodically like, ‘Hey, love you in Dispatch,’ And he was shocked that it reached France and that it kind of popped off.”
“Think about how long he’s been in the zeitgeist,” Herman added. “People only walk up to him for Breaking Bad. For someone to come up and say, ‘Hey, this video game that is coming out right now: I love you in it’ – it just doesn’t happen for him.”
And remember it’s just Aaron Paul’s voice in the game, albeit his very recognisable voice – not his digital likeness or captured performance. “I think that’s when it clicked for him, like, oh this is real,” Herman said. “This is a thing that popped.”
The ramifications of that success, of Aaron Paul being praised on the streets of Paris for his work in the game, are that he’s much more likely to agree to be a part of whatever AdHoc does with Dispatch next which will probably be a Dispatch Season 2. “I think probably, if we’re being real, it kind of needed to do what it did for him to be interested in doing it again,” Herman said, laughing.
Dispatch has been a studio-defining success for AdHoc, which had been struggling for several years to get the game signed and released. Eventually, a partnership with role-play mega-group – and now gaming brand – Critical Role paved the way, and the game quickly captured an audience and raced to 2m sales. Now AdHoc will need to decide what comes next for Dispatch while also making a game based on the D&D adventures of Critical Role.