Choose One:

• “Pain”
• “Potential”
• “Fear”

Dispatch is an adventure game about Robert Robertson, a superhero who’s taking an unplanned break after he lost a fight with a villain. He must lead and support a team of rehabilitated wannabe heroes and decide which would be best for specific missions. The independent game developer AdHoc Studio developed the game. The team includes industry veterans who were a part of Telltale Games, and you can see the soul of that studio in this game.

Since Dispatch is an episodic interactive story game, it’s seen as a successor to titles like The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and Minecraft: Story Mode. The game is currently at the halfway mark of episode releases, and as players reach this point, many are starting to ask: Is it as good as the nostalgic games people fondly remember from Telltale Games?

But Why? (Without Spoilers)

Dispatch is set in a world similar to Invincible. It’s our current-day world if superheroes existed. Superheroes are employed, and there is even insurance you can get to protect your property if it gets damaged in a fight. We get to see the reality of being a hero that isn’t funded through these programs, where they work for a company instead. We can see that you can still be poor as a hero, and on the flip side, see villains be rehabilitated into heroes. Robert is leading the only team of ex-villains, giving him an added challenge.

The game is split into two different gameplay loops: The Dispatches and The Narrative.

The Narrative includes our main character, Robert, interacting with different characters. As the player, we decide what he says and who he romances. The dialogue is mostly fun, minus a few cringey lines. Dispatch is on the edgier side, with a lot of self-deprecating humor. Most of it lands, but if that is not typically what you find funny, you will not enjoy the main character and supporting cast.

The characters you interact with are interesting and provide a lot of fun variety. Listening to them bicker during your time dispatching is a real highlight! The actual dispatches are quite entertaining, too. A large part of each episode is dedicated to this gameplay loop and includes choices that could benefit Robert’s relationship with his team.

Like when leading a group of actual people, while he is calling the shots, his team can ultimately decide to do something different than what is requested of them. This can add a frustratingly fun challenge to dispatching and ultimately affect your completion rate!

I am enjoying the game so far. It has a great level of polish, which surpasses my expectations of a Telltale game. The animation is gorgeous, and I love the simple fact that it looks like a movie during the narrative sections. The voice acting is phenomenal as well. I am invested in the romance I have developed with my character of choice.

What makes me nervous as a player is the overall run time. At the halfway mark, I am about five hours in. In the first episode, we are introduced to who is seemingly the big villain, and we have not seen any updates about him since his introduction. I am worried this might lead to a rushed final battle or the player feeling swindled because of the price tag and the lack of time with the characters they enjoy.

The game has the strength of having compelling characters that the player can care about. If they don’t all have the time to have a satisfying ending, I could see it lowering the overall rating of the story.

Since the player reaches the halfway point so quickly, there is simply not much to talk about without mentioning spoilers. I could hype the (beautiful) animation and mention the soundtrack, but what matters at the end of the day is if the story of Dispatch is compelling. I hope the game takes the momentum it has and runs with it.