When indie studio AdHoc, veterans of the well-known Telltale games, announced Dispatch, the promise of a superhero story told through a corporate lens sounded like a clever twist on a familiar genre, and delivered just that.
Released on Oct. 22 for PC and PS5, the game throws aside the flash and action of a usual superhero game for a look into the behind-the-scenes chaos of the hero business.
You play as Robert Robertson, an ex-hero who has lost all meaning to his career when his famous MechaMan suit is destroyed in battle and he’s approached to take a job as a dispatcher for villains-turned-heroes. Each day, you field distress calls, assign your ragtag crew to handle them, and balance their fragile egos while keeping the city from falling apart. It’s equal parts strategy sim, workplace comedy, and narrative drama— a mashup that shouldn’t work, but somehow does. It uses episodic game design to its advantage, with each episode marking around an hour of impressive storytelling and never a dull moment.
My favorite aspect of this game is the seamless dialogue choices that kept amazing me the further I played. Unlike older choice-based titles like The Wolf Among Us or The Walking Dead, the dialogue choices connected to the story beautifully and never seemed meaningless. A small conversation choice in episode one would be brought up later in the story, and it felt like my choice was the original script all along. On top of the effortless dialogue choices, the script is phenomenal and a big step up from the earlier Telltale titles that AdHoc originated from. With episode one titled “Pivot” kicking off into a quick-time-event adventure, fighting the killer of your father, and culminating in a loss of the career you worked hard for.
While Dispatch is an amazing game with mounts of praise, I did notice a few bugs and inconsistencies during my playthrough. The first thing I noticed was the short length of the episodes. I ended up playing the first three episodes in under 3 hours, and it was surprising to me how fast the time went by. I can’t tell if the episodes just flew by because of how engaging they were, but when they finished, I felt like they were lacking… something. The ending often came so abruptly and left me wishing that there was just a bit more game play to add to the story.
AdHoc has created such an amazing game, and I really wish they could’ve utilized the narrative they had more. Another issue was some small bugs relating to the narrative choices, like picking a dialogue option and a different line is said.
Overall, I think AdHoc has done a great job with the story they’ve created, and I believe Dispatch is going to win many Indie game awards, and a possible game of the year nomination, like we saw with the 2024 indie rogue-like title Balatro. Dispatch stands out as a fresh and exciting indie experience and proves that small indie games can still deliver big emotions. Its unique storytelling, tense atmosphere, and creative game play make it a title worth playing and supporting. If the first few episodes are a sign of what’s to come, Dispatch has a bright future ahead.
