Dispatch Review: an episodic interactive game that plays like a charming, emotional animated series about dispatch work

On November 12, the final episodes of Dispatch were released — a game that became a Steam hit in just a few weeks, selling over a million copies and attracting a rapidly growing fanbase. Here’s what makes this interactive animated series about a dispatcher’s daily life in a world of superheroes and villains so captivating.

The player takes on the role of Robert Robertson, a former superhero known as Mechaman — a sort of Tony Stark, but with a bulkier suit that has been passed down from father to son for three generations, and without an endless supply of money. After a failed attempt to take revenge on the archvillain Shroud for his father’s death, Robert’s suit is destroyed, and his remaining savings go toward repairing the collateral damage across Los Angeles.

Robert is left with nothing: his revenge failed, there’s no superhero work left, and his entire legacy has been trampled into the dirt. To make matters worse, journalists fan the flames with their uncomfortable questions.

Seeking solace at the bottom of a glass, Robert meets Blonde Blazer in a bar — a high-ranking superheroine in every sense. A playful flirtation with her turns out to be an HR test before he’s hired at the new dispatcher service, where he will work for the greater good.

Robert has to play babysitter to Z-Team, a group of former villains and misfits given a chance to rehabilitate themselves and walk the path of heroism through superhero work. Naturally, none of them understands what it really means to be a hero, sacrificing everything to save others, or even what a standard 9-to-5 schedule entails. It’s up to the player to turn them into the city’s best superhero team over the course of eight episodes, navigating a host of both humorous and dramatic twists along the way.

Unlike older Telltale games, Dispatch completely removes the ability to freely walk around a scene in search of an active object or a reason to chat with other characters. Interactivity is limited to choosing dialogue lines, phenomenally rare QTEs, and the dispatcher simulator — which turns out to be surprisingly engaging.

When starting his shift, Robert must respond to calls from citizens urgently needing superhero assistance — from the trivial “get my cat down from the tree” to “killer cyborgs are storming the bank.” As one might guess from the scale of the problems, some tasks can be handled even by the laziest members of Z-Team, while others require sending several of the strongest heroes, capable of preventing even a galactic-level threat.

Exclamation marks appear across the Los Angeles map, popping up here and there, and players need to respond before they disappear. When answering a call, the player must determine, based on key words in the request, which team member to send on the mission.

For example, you might be asked to clear a road blocked by fallen boulders. You send the slow-witted but good-natured powerhouse Golem — a guy strong enough to handle such a blockade. Meanwhile, Prism, with her millions of followers and experience as a mega-star, can be sent to a charity concert to perform her best song.

However, people in distress don’t always make their intentions clear. Sometimes, emergency situations arise where Robert must personally step in and guide a hero. At these moments, players must choose one of several options: try to quietly neutralize the deranged cultists, engage in direct confrontation, or attempt to persuade them to abandon their dubious practices. Each action requires a check of one of the hero’s attributes. Chose a fight? Be prepared — the strength stat needs to be above roughly five points, or failure is guaranteed.

Robert can also remotely access cameras and computers to assist his colleagues through mini-games. In a schematic virtual space, players must enter combinations, search for frequencies, and activate electrical connections. With each new episode, the mini-game grows more complex — antivirus programs appear, or codes break into segments — ensuring the gameplay never becomes monotonous.

Each completed task grants experience points, which can be spent to develop five aspects of the hero, increasing the chances of mission success. There are also passive skills that can trigger unexpectedly during solo or paired operations — everything depends on the specific character and their traits. Occasionally, special training sessions become available, revealing hidden abilities in the team members, though these are rare and temporarily take the hero out of action. Robert’s efforts are recognized as well: good performance earns him promotions and active items, like the ability to serve coffee to a tired employee or patch up an unlucky hero with a bandage.

However, neither a streak of successes nor a streak of failures affects the story’s progression — except in the final episode. No one in the cutscenes will notice if you fail at your dispatcher duties. At the same time, the story events directly impact day-to-day work: characters may start scheming against each other after arguments, or Los Angeles might be hit by heavy rain, slowing movement and increasing the number of calls.

For experienced players, the gameplay may feel overly simple. However, judging by the statistics after each episode, not everyone succeeds at the hacking mini-games or task management challenges. Dispatch doesn’t claim to be a hardcore simulator, so it shouldn’t be criticized for its simplicity. On the contrary, the game is designed for a broad audience — including those who might have last held a controller back in the heyday of Detroit: Become Human.

Gameplay in Dispatch isn’t the main draw — AdHoc Studio, which includes many veterans from Telltale Games, makes from the outset that it focuses on interactive narrative projects. Yes, the dispatcher-sim gameplay is more than competent and often enjoyable, but the real thrill comes from the studio’s obsessive attention to character development and the dynamics between them.

Players care about the fate of every talking polygon on screen, debating online why romancing the prickly, headstrong Invisigal is the best choice, while others are “wrong” for pursuing a relationship with their boss, Blonde Blazer — breaking workplace ethics and further demotivating certain team members in the process.

The effect is achieved through a combination of stunning visuals — richer and more detailed than many modern animated series — authentic voice acting, and a thoughtful approach to personalizing every character in the story. Even the most unpleasant personalities blossom over time, as Robert adjusts to the company of former supervillains, not to mention those who capture the player’s attention from the very first episodes.

It’s worth highlighting the incredible effort the voice actors put in — Aaron Paul bringing to life Robert, the slightly subdued hero without powers, and, for example, the comedic half-human, half-bat character Sonar, voiced by YouTube star MoistCr1TiKaL. Every line feels vibrant, emotional, and natural. When a joke lands, it’s delivered with just the right emotion and perfectly timed pauses, making it easy to believe that, yes, this is exactly how that character would respond in that situation.

Dispatch proves, in every way, that audiences aren’t tired of superheroes as a setting — they’re tired of weak scripts, clichéd characters, hollow preachiness, and repetitive moralizing. People want to enjoy themselves and share their experiences with others. Dispatch expertly entertains while also giving players plenty to discuss after each episode. Thanks to the dialogue choices, each player’s playthrough is slightly different, encouraging multiple replays to explore alternative decisions and uncover new story possibilities.

Dispatch impresses — its characters are vividly drawn, and the voice cast delivers wonderfully, blending big-name stars with popular YouTubers. The gameplay, presented as a dispatcher simulator, is simple but serves as an excellent complement to the cutscenes, which are rich in humor, drama, and agonizing choices. This is one of those rare cases where each pair of new episodes sparked a genuine rush of endorphins instead of driving players into despair over squandered potential and awful narrative choices that lead nowhere.

The game is available on Steam and PlayStation 5, with versions for other platforms planned in the near future.