Dispatch Preview (Demo Impressions)

• Release Date: 
• • October 22, 2025 = Episodes 1 + 2
  • October 29, 2025 = Episodes 3 + 4
  • November 5, 2025 = Episodes 5 + 6
  • November 12,2025 = Episodes 7 + 8
• Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5
• Developer: AdHoc Studio
• Publishers: AdHoc Studio

Dispatch is an upcoming indie game that might be a late dark horse to take some trophies during award season. 

AdHoc Studio, formed by some of the core team members behind Telltale Games’ golden era, which featured The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and Tales from the Borderlands, is developing and self-publishing it.

Naturally, the game is a narrative adventure with dialogue choices, but it puts a unique spin on the formula with team management and deployment elements. You play as Robert, a former superhero whose suit was destroyed, and he is beginning his new job at the SDN (Super Dispatch Network).

Your job is to facilitate the messy group of heroes in the Phoenix Program, an aptly named initiative created by the SDN to expand their superhero roster by absolving and reforming ex-villains. You’re tasked with assigning them to their missions each day based on their individual powers and personalities. Obviously, it’s easier said than done with the group collectively lacking respect for Robert. 

Having been planned initially as a TV show, it’s no surprise that Dispatch is absolutely stacked with talent. The title is headlined by Aaron Paul and Jeffrey Wright, but also features VA legends Laura Bailey, Matt Mercer, and Travis Willingham alongside creators from the gaming scene like Alanah Pierce and Moistcr1tikal.

The result is a mix of classic Telltale storytelling, hints of Invincible, the Suicide Squad and Thunderbolts, with a dose of Bojack Horseman’s tragic charm. 

We’ve tried the excellent demo, so stick around for our full thoughts on Dispatch!

Dispatch’s gameplay is split between two sides: the dialogue choice adventure and the team management side.

If you’ve played past Telltale games, you’ll be right at home on the choice adventure side. You dive into a beautifully animated comic book world with choices that come quickly and often.

Based on your answers, the characters you interact with react accordingly, giving you an impact on the direction of your relationships and other plot points. 

When you’re on the clock and your shift begins, Dispatch’s gameplay shifts toward a bird’s eye city map and makes you “the guy in the chair” who calls the shots (or tries to at least).

Your ragtag team of misfits includes the likes of Sonar (a literal bat-man), Flambae (a pyro who you’ve had run-ins with during your hero days), and Malevola (a half-demon with portal powers but is always late to meetings). 

From your computer, you can access each one's profile, which covers their origins, powers, strengths, weaknesses, and more. 

Across the city, you’ll see alerts, missions, and requests from citizens continuously pop up. These include anything from mundane tasks like saving cats from trees and breaking up bar fights to higher-stakes assignments like escorting a VIP or preventing a heist.

It’s up to you to weigh the pros and cons of who is the best fit for the job. Oftentimes, it’s a trickier decision than you’d think. Essentially, it’s a more evolved version of This is the Police (2016). 

Some missions allow you to send multiple heroes — is it worth sending three of them to make sure things go smoothly, or would one hero be enough? Your best talker is completing another mission, and tensions are rising at an important event —  do you try to send in your next best diplomatic option or resort to intimidation with muscle instead?

Once your choice is made, you might have additional options pop up on how to proceed. Eventually, there will be a probability roll that factors in the hero sent, their stats, and their performance. 

If all goes well, you get experience and can upgrade your attributes over time. Choose incorrectly, and you can end up with debuffed, injured heroes.

There are also some side missions that Robert can solve himself by “hacking”. These mini-game sequences involve a timer and you navigating through paths with the directional pad.

Overall, things can get hectic quickly as you walk the tightrope of making on-the-spot management decisions and trying to predict which heroes are the best ones to save for potential disasters.

Although the demo stopped before the end of a full shift, we assume that the two sides of Dispatch (dialogue adventure + management) will influence and build upon each other.

While the Dispatch demo was short and sweet, we were impressed by its offerings. The animation, writing, and voice acting were unsurprisingly tight and immersive. It definitely felt like the good ol’ days of Telltale long past.

As always with narrative games, we hope that the player can have a real impact on the outcome and that the experience isn’t too railroaded. Of course, the demo isn’t the right place to judge, but we did do separate playthroughs, and the results were basically the same in most places.

On the dispatch gameplay side, there was an impressive amount of depth with each hero having distinct passive and stacking effects. The banter on the radio between your squad was a notable bright spot that tied it all together well.

Compared to other games where your deployed team members would always do what you say, we were pleasantly surprised when some heroes went rogue and ignored or resisted orders like Ash Ketchum’s Charizard. 

The one low spot that stood out was the hacking segments. While the rest of the game is well-paced and engaging, it felt like mind-numbingly easy filler. Even if there are more complex “puzzles” in the full version, conceptually, it just doesn’t feel cohesive with the rest of the package.

That being said, it feels like a real treat is in store for us with Dispatch, and we’re looking forward to buckling in for the rest of its journey.