So Far, Dispatch Is a Smart Superhero Story That Lives up to Telltale’s Legacy

By Elijah Gonzalez | October 21, 2025 | 10:00am

Video Games Reviews Dispatch

So Far, Dispatch Is a Smart Superhero Story That Lives up to Telltale’s Legacy

Seven years later, the absence of Telltale Games is still very much felt. From its early days with the Sam & Max reboots to fully hitting the culture zeitgeist with The Walking Dead, we eventually came to assume that getting a new Telltale game every year, with their episodic release schedules and many fast-paced decisions, was a given. That is, until it wasn’t. And while the studio sort of made a return in 2019 under new management, it hasn’t been quite as prolific, with only one new release—a solidly received take on The Expanse—since then (although, reading about the brutal work conditions at old Telltale, this reduced output is probably a good thing).

I bring all this up because Dispatch, a new narrative-focused superhero game, has quite a few ties to those games: it was developed by Ad Hoc, a studio founded by ex-Telltale staff who worked as writers and episode directors on The Walking Dead, Tales From The Borderlands, and The Wolf Among Us. And thankfully, those ties are deeply felt, because the game comes across as a direct successor to Telltale’s lineage that’s similarly defined by sharp dialogue, fleshed-out characters, and difficult choices (which are of dubious narrative importance). Having played the first two chapters out of eight, I’ll be there weekly to see where this superpowered workplace comedy goes next.

Before getting into the specifics, it’s worth being clear about what the game actually is. It essentially consists of two parts: interactive movie segments and a top-down superhero management sim. As for the former, these sections have even less interaction than something like The Walking Dead, as you don’t directly control your character and can only influence their actions through quick-time events and decision prompts. As for the latter element, these parts often feel like even more mechanics-oriented than most of the games in late-stage Telltale’s mold. While through these initial chapters, more of the runtime is dedicated to the interactive movie segments than the superhero dispatching, each half very much has its merits and ties in nicely with the other.

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Dispatch review

As for the narrative setup, you play as the unfortunately named Robert Robertson (Aaron Paul), or as he’s better known, Mecha Man. He’s one of many heroes defending LA from various villains and bad guys, but unlike most of his peers, he doesn’t have any special powers outside his several-ton mech suit. He’s barely stringing along when, while in the middle of a quest to avenge his father, the previous Mecha Man, his suit gets totaled. Just what is Mecha Man without this high-tech battle armor?

But just as he’s about to be overcome by feelings of inadequacy and guilt over failing to avenge his predecessor, he gets a lucky break, a job offer. He’s been offered a gig as a dispatcher for a corporate superhero firm. Or more specifically, he’s been put in charge of the “Z-team,” a group of ex-villains trying to reform their ways. If things go well, his new company may be able to even fix up his suit so he can get back to where he feels he belongs.

While you’d be forgiven for wanting to compare that premise to the Suicide Squad or any other number of forced supervillain team-ups, one of the biggest differences here is the stakes. Specifically, this world of heroes and villains feels much more grounded, subdued, and human: at least so far, this is very much not the kind of superhero story about battling intergalactic aliens and interdimensional beings, as made clear in how a significant chunk of the second episode takes place inside the platonic ideal of the boring white collar office, one full of half cubicles, questionable gray-patterned carpeting, and all. The former “villains” that Robert is dispatching don’t seem particularly nefarious, and at worst, come off as small-fry jerks.

Moreover, we see how being a superhero has weighed on Robert’s life, his entire life savings being poured into his exorbitantly expensive mech suit, as he lives in a shabby apartment with shades of Rust Holstin’s pathetic crib in True Detective. This weight is a convincingly portrayed element of his character that segues naturally into witty but not overly snarky dialogue that sees him poking and prodding at his new co-workers in some fun ways. Solid animation work and well-considered visual framing help sell both the laughs and more dramatic moments, but one of the biggest factors in placing us in this world is the excellent voice acting.

While Aaron Paul is obviously best known from Breaking Bad, he’s no stranger to voice acting work (Todd Chavez in BoJack Horseman), and that experience is quite obvious in his portrayal of the game’s protagonist, as he gets across both the character’s wit and quiet weariness. Meanwhile, the rest of the cast is quite stacked, featuring much of Critical Role, such as Laura Bailey, who channels flickers of Kaine in her thoroughly pissed off Invisigal, or Travis Willingham, who plays a cartoonish hero we’re introduced to in a cheaply produced company marketing video as he delivers stiff corporate slogans, only to realize that he always talks like he’s delivering a stiff corporate slogan—it’s a good bit. Their performances heighten the office hangout shenanigans and more serious moments where the stakes are high alike.

And all of that isn’t to mention the other half of the game: the superhero dispatching. While I sort of expected a sharply written piece of genre fiction from ex-Telltale folks, I was more surprised at how reasonably fleshed out the management sim part of the game feels. While nowhere near as intensive as dedicated games in this style, you’re forced to make quick decisions as you balance risks and rewards.

Basically, the way it works is that you’re shown an isometric view of your designated small chunk of LA. From here, icons will appear on the map symbolizing incidents that you’ll need to dispatch members of your team to handle. They range from a cat getting stuck in a tree to life-or-death ordeals, and to ensure the job is done right, you’ll need to carefully consider which hero to send by comparing their abilities against the situation description. Basically, each character has stats, and the better their stats overlap with what’s required for a given situation, the more likely they are to succeed. There’s a bit of a tabletop RPG tilt to it all.

Things start out easy enough, with a small trickle of problems, but before long, your screen will be full of blinking red icons as the time left to deal with these situations ticks down, granting a sense of tension. Much of the challenge comes from deciding when to dispatch a single team member versus multiple: if you send more than one, they’ll be much more likely to meet the stat requirements to fulfill the mission, but considering that each mission takes real-world time to resolve, and then even more time the dispatchees to rest up afterwards, you can very easily run out of little guys at hand.

Each unit also has special powers that can change their stats in certain situations or have other effects; one team member is a man-bat who switches between an intellectual, humanoid form and a hulked out beast form, causing his strength and intelligence stats to flip. On top of this, you can also level up these characters and allocate new stat points, letting you customize your team. While there are a few problems, like the controls feeling occasionally fiddly on a controller, I was pleasantly surprised by this part of the game, and the dispatching loop does a good job putting us in Robert’s stressed-out headspace, as the happenings from this mode bleed into the cutscenes outside of them.

That said, there are a few other rough edges to the experience as well, at least on PC: I had a big problem with screen tearing, even with V-sync on, as well as some audio desync issues that distractingly sprang up during more busy setpieces. These sequences also weren’t helped by the quick time events feeling fairly anemic so far; it sounds like an odd criticism, but these simply lack the punchiness required to up the action scenes. It’s quite telling that in the settings setup at the beginning of the game, the default toggle has QTEs turned off altogether. Honestly, these kinds of problems, specifically the technical issues, also remind me of Telltale, as does the text that once again reads “X will remember that,” after you make a decision; hopefully, the consequences of your actions will have a bit more bearing on the plot than they did in most of those previous games.

Still, these are fairly minor problems in the grand scheme of things, and between its strong writing and well-rendered world, the first two episodes of Dispatch have sunk their hooks in. Will Robert Robertson get his revenge? Will he (maybe misguidedly) express his feelings for his cool buff superhero co-worker, Blonde Blazer (Erin Yvette), who is also his boss? Will he find a way to turn the Z-team into a better letter in the alphabet? Regardless of the answers, I’m very excited to tune in next week and find out.

Dispatch was developed and published by AdHoc Studio. Our review is based on the PC version. It is also available for the PlayStation 5.

Elijah Gonzalez is an associate editor for Endless Mode. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.