Review
"Cronos: The New Dawn" tested: a terrifying, almost perfect horror masterpiece
by Domagoj Belancic
"Dispatch": a quiet but effective superhero adventure
21.11.2025
Translation: machine translated
Pictures: Kim Muntinga
"Dispatch" focuses on the day-to-day administration of a fallen hero. Instead of battles, the focus is on team coordination, dialogue and moral decisions. The result is a narrative adventure that deliberately breaks with familiar superhero structures.
My name is Robert Robertson III. For years, most people only knew me by another name: Mecha Man. The guy in the legendary suit who saved cities, stopped nasty villains and acted like he had everything under control.
Then came Shroud.
My nemesis. My father's killer.
And with him, the day my suit, my powers, and my entire legacy vanished in a single blow.
Without armour, there's not much left.
A few scars.
A lot of debt.
And a man who suddenly has to find out who he is without his previous life.
So now I'm sitting in the office of the Superhero Dispatch Network (SDN). Blonde Blazer, a female superhero, picked me up before I went down for good. She calls it a transitional role. I call it a life I would never have chosen: dispatcher, a kind of operations coordinator. Lots of paperwork, responsibility without fists.
My new team is called Z-Team: rehabilitated ex-villains who are surprisingly good at second-guessing decisions I haven't even made yet. I lead them. Without a suit, without Astral Pulse, without anything that looks like heroism.
And yet... sometimes it feels like I'm making more of a difference here than I used to on the front lines. Maybe because for the first time I'm not fighting a monster, but myself: against the blockage in my head, against the anger, against the feeling that I mean anything at all without mecha.
I am not a fallen hero.
I'm a man who gets up again.
What «Dispatch» is really about
«Dispatch» looks like a classic adventure game at first glance, but that falls short. AdHoc Studio - a team of former Telltale developers specialising in narrative games - has created something that functions more like a look behind the scenes of an over-the-top superhero universe.
At its core, «Dispatch» is a mixture of narrative adventure and a light management game. My task: coordinate missions, decide which skills make sense in which situation, and lead a team that has more personality than a desk jockey would like. The mechanics themselves are simple, but the context in which they take place makes them exciting. Because it's not about flying through the air yourself. It's about making sure that others arrive safely.
The SDN is less a heroic headquarters than a strange hybrid of call centre, operations management and group therapy for people with... let's say: special abilities.
Eight episodes, one broken hero, one unpredictable team
«Dispatch» tells its story in eight episodes, each lasting around an hour. This format suits my new role amazingly well. Each episode feels like a layer of my everyday life in SDN: clearly delineated, but always with open threads that lead into the next phase. This episodic structure gives the plot structure without constricting it. It offers enough space to play out conflicts while remaining compact enough to keep the pace high.
Typical of Telltale's style, the focus is clearly on decisions. Many conversations offer options: a certain tone of voice, an impulsive response, a diplomatic retreat or simply different actions. At the end of an episode, I can see my most important decisions, also in comparison to other players. I love statistics like that.
The focus is always on my perspective as Robert Robertson. «Dispatch» uses my loss - the destroyed suit, the broken identity - not as tragic background noise, but as the motor of the narrative. Everything revolves around how I try to remain capable of acting in a world without armour. Humour and drama alternate without slowing each other down. One moment the Z-Team amuses me with my office awkwardness, the next an unexpected twist forces me to confront my past.
Instead of classic superhero pathos, «Dispatch» focuses on everyday moments, friction and personal conflicts. It is not about a hero saving the world, but about a man trying to redefine himself.
And therein lies the power of the narrative structure: it allows the game to feel big, even though almost everything begins and ends in an office.
The characters in «Dispatch»
As much as «Dispatch» focuses on the story of Robert Robertson, the game lives at least as much from the people - or rather: the personalities - that surround him. The Z-Team is not a classic ensemble of heroes. They are rehabilitated ex-villains, people with abilities and flaws that are often louder than their powers. Each of them has a backstory that constantly resonates and makes my day-to-day work more complicated than I would like.
What «Dispatch» pulls off impressively is the sense that I'm not just using or assigning these characters. I work with them as employees. I correct, discuss, clarify, defuse. Every decision makes waves. Sometimes in the assignment, but often in the relationships between them.
Blonde Blazer is the sober antithesis to all the chaos: professional, determined, but never unapproachable. She is the kind of person who can enter a room without raising her voice. And yet people listen to her.
Chase, the colleague who guides me through the first steps, seems like someone who has already worked in three departments of the city administration and yet never tires of explaining everything to me again. A mentor without pathos, but with pragmatism.
And then there are the members of the Z-Team themselves: Sonar, Flambae, Invisigal, Coupé, Punch Up, Malevola, Prism and Golem. They are eccentric, contradictory, sometimes exhausting, but above all warmly written. Their dialogues are pointed, their reactions understandable, their conflicts credible. Some question my decisions, others seek reassurance, others test my patience. «Dispatch» uses these characters to show that team leadership has less to do with control and more to do with communication.
The longer I play, the more I realise:
The stakes are the frame.
The Z-Team is the content.
Their dynamics, their loyalties, their mistrust, their small victories and their big mistakes are what drives «Dispatch». And that makes my job as a dispatcher something that is much more complex than simply organising missions. I have to understand, motivate, weigh things up and sometimes simply accept that people are more complex than any sophisticated plan.
There are also a few other, no less interesting supporting characters such as Royd, Waterboy, Phenomaman and the villain Shroud.
Dispatcher's everyday life: stress, time pressure and responsibility
As a dispatcher, I don't work with fists, but with a map, timers and ability values. Each mission appears as a small orange icon, which immediately creates pressure: the timer is running and I have to decide quickly which hero or team is best suited. The cases range from minor disruptions to situations that escalate without the right ability.
My central task is to analyse missions according to their requirements. The game clearly shows which values are required: Combat, strength, agility, intellect, charisma or special abilities. Each hero in the Z-Team has their own radar chart that shows their strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes one person is enough, sometimes several heroes have to complement each other.
The workflow is simple but demanding: open the case → check the requirements → select suitable characters → hope for success. Because even if the values are right, there is still a residual risk. Some missions include stat checks where I have to rely on my luck. Others are supplemented by short mini-games, such as a hacking puzzle that takes place in a kind of 3D data room. These mechanics loosen up the gameplay without overloading it.
Resource management is also important: heroes have to recover from missions, some are only available to a limited extent and conflicts within the team affect their ability to deploy, as do injuries or failures. As a result, I can't just send out my favourites all the time, but have to think, plan and rotate.
At the end of the day, being a dispatcher feels like a mixture of a puzzle, team management and time pressure. I'm constantly working against the clock as I try to find the right combination. And although the mechanics remain straightforward, it creates enough tension to make every decision count. Especially when it has consequences for the Z-Team.
Atmosphere, sound & presentation
What makes «Dispatch» so effective is its precisely meshed audiovisual design. Precisely because the majority of the game takes place at a desk, sound and presentation play a significant part in the atmosphere. And they do so with surprising force.
The voices are the centrepiece. As a dispatcher, I live with and from voices, and «Dispatch» utilises this concept consistently. The voice actors deliver a quality usually seen in high-end animated series: Aaron Paul («Breaking Bad») gives Robert a raw, vulnerable depth, while Laura Bailey («Marvel's Spider-Man») brings Invisigal to life with a mix of irony and uncertainty.
The sound design is subtle but highly effective. The mixture of electronic and light orchestral elements remains largely in the background, leaving room for the essentials: the typing on the keyboard, the whirring of the terminal, the alarm tones of incoming missions. This soundscape creates a constant, quiet tension that feels just right: like in a real control centre, where routine and exception merge into one another. When music is used, it is targeted: to reinforce dramatic twists and turns or to add a touch of irony to absurd moments without ever going over the top.
Visually, «Dispatch» remains deliberately reduced, at least where I spend most of my time: at the SDN workstation. The game interface is reminiscent of a slightly flickering CRT monitor, with clear lines, simple icons and a functional design that never shows more than I really need. This restraint is not a flaw, but a stylistic device. It draws my attention to the essentials - the voices, the decisions, the constant pressure of work - and prevents anything that might get in the way. The game doesn't demand my visual attention, but my mental attention.
Parallel to this, «Dispatch» unfolds a second, much more opulent level. At certain moments, the perspective and style change: animated sequences, short fight scenes and cinematically staged story beats. These look almost like excerpts from a high-quality animated series: dynamic, colourful and dramaturgically pointed. They deliberately break with the sober office aesthetic and lend the game nuances that oscillate between comic flair and cinematic realism.
These two levels do not contradict each other, they complement each other. The minimalist UI at the desk ensures concentration and immersion in everyday working life, while the elaborately designed sequences mark the narrative highlights. Together, they create a visual structure that is both functional and atmospheric and reinforces the story exactly where it needs to be.
«Dispatch» was provided to me by AdHoc Studio for the PC. The game has been available for PC and Playstation 5 since 22 October.
In a nutshell
The silent art of heroism
"Dispatch is not a superhero game in the classic sense. It is a game about responsibility, about decisions, about the pressure that arises when you give others the tools that you no longer have yourself. From Robert Robertson's perspective, this concept becomes tangible: a fallen superhero who learns that heroism is possible even when you are no longer on the front line yourself.
What makes "Dispatch" so special is the combination of narrative depth and gameplay that not only accompanies this narrative, but structures it. The mechanics are deliberately reduced, but never banal. Every assignment, every value check, every timer is part of a larger story - and that is precisely where the effect lies. Decisions do not feel mechanical, but human. Mistakes have consequences, but never arbitrary ones. And the Z-Team is far more than a collection of playable characters: it's the emotional core that carries me through every episode.
Of course, there are moments when missions seem repetitive or the mechanics remain noticeably constricted. But the fast pace of the episodes reliably prevents any form of boredom. Before a routine can creep in, the next twist, the next conversation or the next mission is already underway. "Dispatch" knows exactly what it wants to be: a narrative management game with emotional precision, carried by strong characters and a main character who, for once, is not defined by superpowers but by self-doubt and responsibility.
Pro
- Strong, emotionally grounded storytelling with excellently written characters
- first-class speaker performances
- Successful mix of narrative and Management
- Strong atmospheric sound design
- Very good pacing thanks to eight short, compact episodes
Contra
- Some stat checks are difficult to assess and therefore seem unpredictable
Header image: Kim Muntinga
My interests are varied, I just like to enjoy life. Always on the lookout for news about darts, gaming, films and series.
Gaming
Follow topics and stay updated on your areas of interest
Review
Which films, shows, books, games or board games are genuinely great? Recommendations from our personal experience.
Show allThese articles might also interest you
3 comments
later