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Chennai / The New Indian Express

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Dispatch: 'My favourite TV show this year is actually a video game'

When Robert Robertson the IIIrd loses the spark that made him Mechaman, he becomes an emergency dispatcher for superheroes at a Los Angeles-based superhero company. I immediately felt sympathetic to his very sad story, and was rooting for him to be good at his new job. It should have been a piece of cake for him. He can hack into systems and cameras to help out the superheroes that are dispatched to locations, and has the sense and understanding to send out the right hero for the situation. But hes been assigned to manage the worst possible team of heroes. Theyre a group of rehabilitated minor villains who were lumped together for being bottom-of-the-table performers. They dont want to listen to Robert. In fact, they actively want Robert to fail. They arent concerned about LAs suffering citizens, and the last thing on their mind is doing a good days work. All of this is about Dispatch, an episodic videogame about Roberts life post Mechaman. Dispatch is a dialogue and story-centric game, very reminiscent of TellTale games before the studio closed. If you arent familiar with those games, the easiest way to explain Dispatch is by saying that you could easily confuse this for being a slightly more interactive version of a TV show. But theres far more that this does that a show wouldnt bother with. For starters, it allows a deeper exploration of relationships in the game. I loved how the game navigated Roberts approach towards gaining the respect and loyalty of his team. I also liked how much it allowed Robert to get closer to certain characters, a level of autonomy which isnt very typical of dialogue-based games. I also found the tiny story arc with Waterboy quite interesting. While technically having competent hero skills (i.e., he can vomit water at will), Waterboy is uncharismatic and is a kind of loser through the first few episodes. Eventually, through Robert, I made the decision to hire Waterboy into the team, to give him a shot at success. You see, decisions and relationships play a huge role in this story. Every single conversation with a character influences the plot. Its insane to think of how many micro choices and different outcomes have been coded and animated into these eight short episodes. It makes you overthink the smallest decisions to make in the game, like choosing whether or not to fist-bump a person. But remember theres very little time to make these decisions. The infinite number of outcomes also makes the game super fresh even on a replay. Obviously, thats nothing like Baldurs Gate, but it does well within the constraints of being an episodic game. Also, not to mention that this game is not just about its timed and important dialogue choices, because theres also actual dispatching involved. As someone who works at her desk, Ive often wondered about the most fabulous behind-the-desk jobs. Like air traffic controllers and emergency service dispatchers. I think the work they do is important and cool. I also think hackers are cool. The unfortunate fact is that almost everything I know about these jobs is from movies. Dispatch is nowhere close to reality, but its still a step nearer to opening a very small window into their lives. Robert is assigned a fragile old computer and headphones on his first day at the job. It gives him access to the locations and a skill tree for each of the heroes on the roster. The day brings with it multiple calls from citizens who need a helping hand. It could be as basic as an old lady asking for help to cross the road, a request for the presence of a superhero to do an inauguration of an event, to something more convoluted like breaking up and fighting with the Red Ring a supervillain group thats out to destroy the city. Calls are frequent and never-ending. Heres where the game turns into a management simulator. Assigning heroes to tasks and ensuring frequent skill upgrades are critical to doing a good job through the episodes. Even if you arent replaying the game to get to different possible endings, its almost worth replaying it just to get perfect dispatch scores every day. All 8 episodes of Dispatch Season 1 are now out. The game is currently available for the PC and PlayStation. Highly recommended if youre a fan of grounded superhero stories and love a good management simulator.

2 Dec 2025 6:00 am