Dispatch: The Telltale Formula Perfected

Want to confront the horrors of time passing? Telltale Games released their first season of ‘The Walking Dead‘ in 2012. I dunno about you, but I can feel all thirteen of those years weighing on my back like Atlas carrying the world.

I never cared for that particular series. But I was still a big Telltale Games fan back in the day. ‘The Wolf Among Us‘ is still one of my favorite games, and I have fond memories of their take on Batman. Their games weren’t always the best. Even so, I enjoyed playing them, and as a kid, I loved watching people play them.

Unfortunately, like Icarus, Telltale flew too close to the sun. They spread themselves too thin, tried to grab too many properties. In 2018, the studio was shut down due to financial issues. It’s back now, but with new developers under new leadership. As of me writing this, they haven’t released a new game.

Luckily for all of us, a group of former Telltale developers went indie and formed a new team in AdHoc Studio. And on December 12th, 2024, they released the trailer for their first game: ‘Dispatch‘. A choice-based superhero game, made in collaboration with Critical Role, starring none other than Aaron god damn Paul.

Since then, I kept a watchful eye for any news regarding the title. Right until October 22nd, 2025, when the game finally came out. I missed the initial launch. But when I saw the first few videos cropping up in my feed, I raced straight to the Steam page to pick it up.

‘Dispatch‘ is far, far better than I had anticipated. I had hoped it would be a fun little super hero story. What we got was one of the best games of 2025.

You play as Robert Robertson the Third, AKA: Mecha-Man. For fifteen years, he’s hunted down his father’s killer, Shroud former superhero turned crime lord. But the confrontation goes poorly, and the Mecha-Man suit is damaged beyond his capability to repair. Flat broke and lost, Robert faces an existential crisis.

Until he meets Blonde Blazer, renowned hero and branch manager for superhero company SDN. After a night of drinking, she offers Robert a job as a dispatcher. In exchange for taking charge of the Phoenix Program, SDN will make him Mecha-Man again. Just one problem: his team consists entirely of former super villains. Without any powers of his own, Robert will have to rely on his wits and his words to salvage the Z-Team.

Thus does our choose-your-own-adventure begin. Unfortunately, like the Telltale games of old, most of your choices won’t actually affect the story. There will be a few cosmetic changes and some unique lines of dialogue. But for the most part, everyone who plays will get more or less the same ending.

Like the Telltale games of old, ‘Dispatch‘ litters its cutscenes with quick-time events to keep you engaged. And just like Telltale, these rarely, if ever, actually matter. In fact, ‘Dispatch‘ lets you turn them off completely if you just want to relax and watch. The story stays the same either way.

In spite of all this, the game still had me hanging on my every decision. There were some choices in the last few episodes that actually stressed me out. Had me worrying that I was making the wrong choice, heading down a bad path. The game’s story is so good, so utterly engrossing, that it makes every choice feel like the most important thing in the world. Even if a good ninety-five percent of them are just set dressing.

Now, there is one important thing to note. Most of your choices won’t affect the story. But they will have dramatic effects on the gameplay. We’ll get to that in a bit. First, I want to talk about the cast and characters.

Every single character in ‘Dispatch‘ is instantly memorable. Robert is an incredibly compelling lead. He’s witty, sarcastic, and down-to-earth, with wisdom matched only by his profound sadness. Right from the opening scene, you can feel the depth behind him.

A large part of this is carried by the performance. Aaron Paul is one of the best actors of our time, and he brought his absolute best to the table. Dude gave a voice performance on par with the late Kevin Conroy as Batman. An analogy I do not make lightly.

Also, Robert has one of the cutest dogs in video game history: Beef.

Beyond Mecha-Man and his loyal pooch, we have the Z-Team, our lovable band of losers and misfits. These characters have a Dungeons & Dragons friend-group energy that is instantly infectious. Their banter is absolutely delightful in every scene. Most of the time, writing meme-culture into a story comes across as corporate and out-of-touch; with these characters, it feels natural and organic. Not to mention they’re all absolutely hilarious.

This is where the voice cast gets absolutely wild. You’ve got industry veterans like Laura Bailey as Invisigal, Erin Yvette as Blonde Blazer, and Travis Willingham as Phenomaman. You even have another incredible Hollywood actor in Jeffrey Wright as Chase. Then you’ve got YouTubers, namely Charles White (penguinz0) as Sonar, Seán McLoughlin (jacksepticeye) as Punch-Up, and Joel Haver as Waterboy.

And you know what? It works! Every single member of the cast does a phenomenal job! They take already strong material and elevate it to a whole other level!

The whole cast is so good that it feels like a crime not celebrating everyone. But if I can just rant about one more, it’s gotta be Matthew Mercer as Shroud. Of all the villains he’s put a voice to over the years, I honestly think this might be the best. So much so that the voice filter feels like it’s holding him back.

The character himself makes for a perfect antagonist. In a game all about making choices, Shroud fixates on finding the most ‘optimal’ path, over-analyzing and planning for every single possibility. Plus, his design is really cool and genuinely menacing. This is a ten out of ten supervillain.

Let’s change gears real quick and talk about the visuals. ‘Dispatch‘ is almost entirely made up of pre-rendered cutscenes; it’s basically a TV show that lets you pick the dialogue in real-time. A very well animated, well directed, and well edited TV show. The cell-shaded comic book art style looks amazing. The character designs are 10/10s across the board. The action scenes are creatively choreographed, complete with some jaw-dropping sakuga moments in the final episode.

Hell, the game was even released like a TV show. Every week after the initial release, two more episodes were added. Normally, I hate shit like this in video games; if I buy it, I want all of it right out the gate. But here, it worked extremely well! It helped cultivate the community, letting people chat and theorize and explore alternate routes. Each new episode drop felt fresh and exciting, and every single one was worth the extra wait. Honestly, I’m sad that the season is over, if only because I’ve lost something to look forward to on Wednesdays.

The music is an absolute home-run. Andrew Arcadi’s score is nothing short of magical. Each track fits the mood of the given scene perfectly. From calming ambience to dreamy romance and dreadful confrontations. The main theme is so damn catchy I still hum it to myself in the shower. It’s a wonderful score.

Which makes those rare moments of silence all the more impactful. My personal favorite comes during the gameplay section of Episode 7. Gone is the chill and cheery main theme. In its place is… silence. No banter among the Z-Team, just the sounds of incoming calls and heavy rain.

On that note, let’s finally talk about the gameplay.

The Telltale games of old were point-and-click adventure games. Explore the environment, pick up items, talk to people, etc. ‘Dispatch‘ forgoes this, opting instead for a superhero RPG.

It’s a simple system. Calls will come in from across the city, asking for help ranging from fighting criminals to delivering pep talks or helping cats out of trees. Each hero on your team has a wide range of stats and abilities, which you can customize as they level up. You need to find the best hero for a given job to maximize your chances for success.

If your hero (or heroes) surpass the stat requirements completely, the job is an automatic success. But watch out; certain calls later in the game will punish you for going too far. For example, some calls restrict the Combat stat; send a hero too good at fighting, and you’ll automatically fail. Conversely, some assignments provide experience bonuses if you match a certain stat requirement. Going back to our earlier example, a Combat hero would automatically fail, but a high Charisma hero could earn themselves a nice bonus.

But things don’t always go according to plan. Many of your calls are going to face complications. In such an event, you’ll need to give your dispatched team orders on how to proceed. These will zero in on one specific stat; if you pick the Combat option on an Intelligence hero, you’re in for a bad time. Or, if you send the right specific character, and you’ll unlock a special event with an automatic success.

Not all calls are a one-hero job. You’ll often need to send a team to get it done. The stats between heroes is added together, vastly increasing your chances for success. Certain heroes even have synergy bonuses with each other to further increase their abilities. Pay close attention to the story; if a pair have strong chemistry in dialogue, they’ll more than likely work well together in the field.

This is where abilities come into play. Each hero has a list of unique powers to help their team or boost their own abilities. You can unlock more of these by sending your heroes to training, temporarily removing them from the field. Build your characters right, and they’ll become true forces to be reckoned with.

My personal favorite was Golem. Early on, he gained an ability that let me completely rewrite his stats once per shift. If I was getting a lot of Charisma calls one day, I could turn him into a spokesperson in just a few clicks. Or, if the rest of the team was busy and an emergency cropped up, I could quickly rebuild him into the perfect hero for the job. I legitimately lost count of how many times this ability saved my bacon.

Remember when I mentioned your choices effect gameplay? This is because each shift throws unique challenges at you, some of which are shaped by your decisions. In Episode 3, someone is getting cut, so the Z-Team spends the whole day sabotaging each other. The next day, the member closest to the one you fired goes AWOL amid an incredibly busy shift; good luck and figure it out.

The grand finale pits you against an actual boss fight! You’ve got to repeatedly take down an extremely powerful foe while managing crises all across the city. Fail too often or take too long, and it’s game over. As a grand finale set piece, it is absolutely incredible! And because of the many poor decisions I had made over my playthrough: much, much harder than it needed to be!

But Robert doesn’t spend the whole shift sitting back and relaxing. Mecha-Man may have lost his suit, but his hacking skills are a force to be reckoned with. This is basically a little Flash browser game from back in the day, and I say that with abundant fondness. Rolling around as a little dodecahedron, you’ll navigate a digital grid by solving little puzzles.

I’m honestly amazed with how much depth and attention went into this mini-game. It starts out incredibly simple, but gradually evolves to be much more than a brief change of pace. You gotta find keys that require directional inputs ala Helldivers II. Anti-Virus software will hunt you down and kill you; fail the hacking and face the consequences. Steal an electrical charge to protect yourself, or to power systems and reshape the maze. Some of these get pretty complicated, and more than a little challenging.

Personally, I always found the gameplay side of Telltale games to be their weakest link. It was like a rollercoaster; the first time, but ride that baby again, and it suddenly feels tedious. Half the reason they were so popular with streamers is because people didn’t actually want to play them.

‘Dispatch‘ does not share this issue. The gameplay is simple, but sports enough depth to warrant more than one playthrough. Sure, you could look up a guide and optimize every single shift to play the game perfectly. But that’s Shroud behavior; don’t be like Shroud. Personally, I enjoy flying by the seam of my pants, trusting my gut and taking my best guess.

If there’s one thing I want added to this game, it’s a gameplay-only mode. An endless shift that gets progressively harder, something like that. When my only real complaint about a game is that I want more of it, you know the developers were cooking something good.

I’m legitimately blown away by how good this game is. Everything in this game is a home run. An incredible comic book story. Beautiful animation. Jaw-dropping performances. A wildly enjoyable superhero RPG. Every single corner has been made with the kind of dedication, talent, and love most triple-A studios could only dream of.

Personally, I cannot wait to see what AdHoc makes next. I’d love to see a season two, but I’d be totally down if they did something else. We’ve seen a ton of fantastic indie studios step up this year, and they’re definitely near the top of that list. If their next title is even half as good, we’ll be eating well.

If you haven’t played it, consider giving ‘Dispatch‘ a shot. Not only is it incredible, it’s also very reasonably priced. $30 USD for a package this polished is an absolute steal in my opinion. Hell, it’s so good I’ll probably go back and play it again once this article goes up!

And people say the superhero genre is dead. Nah. Folks are just tired of low-effort slop. Cough cough Marvel cough cough.

Thank you very much for reading. This article ended up becoming much bigger than I had planned; I guess I didn’t realize just how much I loved this game. I can only hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.

Until next time: stay safe, and have a wonderful rest of your day.