Imagine if your abusive ex-boyfriend broke into your home while you were there. Or if you accidentally amputated your leg with a buzzsaw. Or if you found a car bomb next to your office. Rare probability events with potentially grave consequences are what emergency dispatchers are for and what 911 Operator simulates. They can be lifelines to salvation… or deathlines to damnation.

In career mode, players experience a month as the titular 911 operator in any city of their choosing (I’m not exaggerating when I say any). And it can get hectic. A supermajority of each day is spent managing a limited number of police, medical, and firefighter units around the map. The ratio of incidents to first responders more often than not exceeds 1. In addition, the player’s camera is incapable of zooming out far enough to survey the entire map adding to a feeling that the dispatcher will never have full control of the situation.

Although directing units gets repetitive, the game is broken up into disconnected chapters each with their own theme. My favorite is the fireworks factory explosion which is basically “shit hits the fan” actualized. The resulting fires wildly spread through the city, so players will need to rely on every unit to succeed. Firefighters will need to fight the fires. Paramedics will need to tend to the wounded and, God forbid, the deceased. Players might even consider bringing in police to help clear rubble if they’re short on hands. But the best part is the 911 calls.

The moment that most sticks out in this chapter is the call I got from a panicking mother, trapped in a burning apartment building with her two kids. I guided them to a room next to a fire escape and ordered her to open the window and book it. My thought process was that they needed to get away from the fires as soon as possible. But because I forgot to tell them to close the door they had just entered through, opening the window caused a violent backdraft. The entire family perished.

The voice acting and dialogue ain’t The Last of Us: Part II (which is extremely well written by the way). But it doesn’t have to be. Video games can get away with things that most movies and books can’t by virtue of the audience actively participating in the storytelling. Bartek Gajewski and the team leverages that fact to do the heavy lifting in engaging the player.

But I know that there is so much more that can be done with the game’s core concept. Take the film The Guilty (2018) as an example. It’s similar to 911 Operator in that the audience only sees the dispatcher’s perspective. Because they can’t see what’s happening on the other side of the line, imaginations run wild. But the actors and writers of The Guilty elevates it beyond 911 Operator on a visceral level.

3/7

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