As a lifelong fan of experiences in the Telltale vein – narrative-heavy games that force you to make difficult decisions that alter the course of the story and how characters feel about you – I’ve been really excited to play Dispatch.
Made by AdHoc Studio, which was founded by veterans of Telltale Games, Ubisoft, and Night School Studio, Dispatch is a beautifully animated comedy about a superhero who’s lost his suit and has to turn to managing a crew of reformed supervillains, sending them off to do good deeds.
As you might expect from its pedigree, it’s a very Telltale-like game. Like Telltale’s work, it features branching narratives, quicktime events, and decisions you can make through conversations and actions. Unlike Telltale games, though, it contains a compelling management sim with surprising depth.
Dispatch Looks Like A Telltale Game From The Future
The debut game from AdHoc Studio is bringing that Telltale magic back.
Dispatch Will Be Released Weekly
It also keeps with tradition in that it will be released episodically, albeit at a quicker clip than its predecessors. Where Telltale games and series like Life is Strange have released their episodes on a monthly schedule, sometimes with longer gaps between episodes, Dispatch will launch two hour-long episodes every week, over an entire month.
There’s a reason for this, besides the traditional Telltale model. According to a recent interview with creative director Dennis Lenart, Dispatch was originally conceived as a “live-action interactive TV show”, but when Covid hit, “Hollywood shut down, everything changed, the tech partner we were working with pivoted their business, and we kind of put it on the shelf for a while.”
Lenart said that the time between turning it into a video game also allowed the team to take inspiration from prestige TV, like Barry and The Bear. Notably, even in the streaming era where it’s becoming increasingly common for TV shows to release whole seasons at a time, prestige TV has stuck to episodic release schedules.
That’s partly because critically acclaimed shows that take months to fully roll out encourage subscriptions, but also partly because these shows are cultural events – remember Succession Sundays? I sure do. Dispatch rolling out weekly keeps it in the conversation… allegedly.
Do We Still Have The Attention Span For Episodic Models?
I do still wonder if the episodic model can really work in 2025. In an interview with Eurogamer, Lenart said that where Telltale’s model went wrong was that it didn’t have every episode ready to go. “People would pay money and then go, ‘I thought you said next week,’” Lenart said. “And it was like, ‘Actually, maybe it’s three or four weeks… We’ll let you know in a few weeks.’ And then that’s a horrible situation.”
Life is Strange abandoned the episodic model several games ago, after Life is Strange 2, likely because the gaps between episodes served to kill hype and frustrate players with uncertain wait times. But is that really the problem, or is it that the time audiences are willing to wait has changed?
Attention spans are shrinking, that’s for sure. Social media has rotted our brains, filling our lives with constant distractions. The streaming era has given us a constantly accessible wealth of media to fill our time with, allowing us to flit from one thing to the next without ever finishing anything.
Dispatch is releasing episodes regularly, which might mitigate some of this. But the culture that keeps us glued to prestige TV week after week doesn’t really exist with video games. Instead, people race to platinum games within days of launch. I want Dispatch to succeed, and I hope that its model works out, but I can’t help but feel like episodic releases just don’t work for this generation of gamers.
-
OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 87/100 Critics Rec: 97%
- Released
- October 22, 2025
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ / Blood, Crude Humor, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs and Alcohol
- Developer(s)
- AdHoc Studio
- Publisher(s)
- AdHoc Studio
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Strategy, Point-and-click, Adventure
