Dispatch developers revealed that they did not include the classic "stay silent" dialogue option from the game. The team shares why they decided it wasn’t worth supporting.
Dispatch Devs Explain Why Silent Dialogue Options Were Cut
Less Than 1% Of Players Use It
Dispatch creative directors Nick Herman and Dennis Lenart of AdHoc Studio revealed during a talk at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), held March 9-13, 2026, that the team decided against including the traditional "stay silent" dialogue option from the game. Internal player data from their previous narrative titles showed the feature was rarely used.
Speaking at the conference, Herman said some players enjoy responding to conversations by staying silent, joking that it can be fun to play like an "absolute weirdo" and react to every choice with a blank stare. Drawing from data the team had seen from their time working on narrative games at Telltale Games, Herman added that "silent options were triggered either intentionally or unintentionally less than 1% of the time across all users globally."
Several members of the team at AdHoc Studio, including Herman and Lenart, previously worked at Telltale Games, the studio behind narrative-driven titles such as The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us.
The team still considered including the option in Dispatch, but Lenart said supporting it across the game’s dialogue would require significant additional work. Offering silent responses throughout the game’s roughly 120 dialogue choices would have resulted in "almost 15 full minutes of Robert not saying anything," Lenart said.
Even when the protagonist says nothing, the surrounding scene still has to be fully produced. As Herman explained, "It doesn't sound like a lot, but we still had to write other characters reacting to that silence. We have to record voice. We had to storyboard, animate, light, and polish all of this."
Ultimately, the team chose not to support the feature. "All this to support less than 1% of situations, especially as a new studio, really felt not worth it. So we killed it," Herman said.
Story Unfolds Through Dialogue Choices
Dispatch is a "superhero workplace comedy" where players guide the story through dialogue choices during story scenes while working as a dispatcher for a team of superheroes. As Robert "Mecha Man" Robertson III, players must decide how to respond to coworkers and teammates while also choosing which heroes to send to different emergencies across the city.
Conversations often focus on team dynamics within the Z-Team, including leadership decisions, workplace tensions, and personal relationships. In many narrative games—particularly those from studios like Telltale Games—players can also choose to remain silent during conversations, allowing characters to react to an awkward pause or unanswered question instead of a direct response.
For more information about the Dispatch, check out our article below.
