This post contains spoilers for Episodes 5 and 6 of Dispatch, now available on PlayStation 5 and Windows.
Whether it’s for superheroes or regular folks, life often boils down to a series of choices; big or small, seemingly consequential or not, the decisions people make will chart the paths they take. One can hope to be remembered as more than just the sum of those parts but, really, it’s what will define us. The best heroes are beloved because their choices — admirable, messy, or otherwise — are hard ones made in service of something greater.
Superman chooses to be benevolent when it’d be easier to rule as a god; Spider-Man stays broke and perpetually robbed of happiness because he puts other people first.
AdHoc’s playable TV show, Dispatch, is all about choices too — both internally for its characters and externally for the audience. Officially halfway through its first season, the series is looking to show at least some of its decisions will matter. Last week’s episodes forced players to both cut a member of the Z-Team (Sonar or Coupé), then subsequently add a new one (Phenomaman or Waterboy), leading to different variations of certain scenes, but also cutting entire characters out of the narrative at this juncture.
But the biggest choice to make arrived at the final moments of Episode Four, with Robert left with a real dilemma about which superheroine he’d like to meet for a date. After multiple sexually charged run-ins, Robert peeks at Invisigal’s locator to see she’s at the movies alone. Should he show up unexpectedly for some soft whisper-talk over Sour Patch Kids, or should he accept Blonde Blazer’s invitation for a dinner in the SDN courtyard?
Choosing Invisigal continues the pair’s flirtation as the former villain becomes even more cozy with Robert (and invested in herself). Meeting Blazer, however, has some bigger (although kind of disappointing) reveals. Turns out, Blazer’s “blondness” literally comes from the jewel that grants her superpowers. In an overly dramatic transformation sequence, Robert’s boss removes the necklace and is bathed in light — only to wind up a few inches shorter and brunette. Hardly an ugly duckling.
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Picking up on these threads, the third week’s installments show that even when the current is pulling too strongly, there’s still a choice to make.
Episode Five: ‘Team Building’
The first episode of the back half of the season begins with a scene that weaves between Robert’s workout and a flashback to a fight he had with his now-teammate, Flambae. In his early onboarding at SDN, it was alluded to that Robert (as Mecha Man) was the one who brought down the fire-powered criminal. Here, the dynamic is inverted, with Flambae helping Robert from crushing himself while bench-pressing without a spotter.
Their aggressive banter leads to a snarky little comment from Flambae that reinforces the fact that the Z-Team still don’t know Robert’s true identity (Waterboy aside); Flambae thinks Mecha Man was a “real” hero — something the “normie” Robert isn’t.
Robert’s getting along well enough, but being a “normie” among supers is wearing thin.
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The first shift after all the previous staff shakeups goes surprisingly well. The Z-Team has gotten into a groove, and players can easily find synergies between specific heroes that lead to funny bits and improved success rates. But there’s also a new hitch in the dispatch system, wherein choosing characters that are too powerful at any one attribute (like Strength or Charisma) can now cause an automatic failure. It doesn’t really make a ton of sense, but it does make the interactive elements more strategically challenging.
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During lunch, Malevola and Prism try to pry Robert’s secret identity out of him so that they can win the very specific pool of $936. Players can provide hints or hold fast but will end up pissing the duo off either way.
Over a couple of microwaved burritos, Chase (Jeffrey Wright) talks to Robert about the Z-Team’s recent run-ins with Shroud’s gang and prods his old friend about whether he’s willing to kill the man who murdered his father and stripped him of his mantle. It’s hard to say at this point if Robert would really go through with it — thus far he’s shown a strong moral compass; but never count out what vengeance will cause someone to do.
Second shift is a real mess after a blackout strikes the area, forcing Robert (by way of the player) to hack into the city’s electric grid and turn the lights back on one section at a time. In the darkness, L.A. erupts in chaos, with a litany of hard-to-solve issues cropping up.
The Red Ring is tearing L.A. apart despite the Z-Team’s best efforts.
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With all of Episode Five’s action being frontloaded, the back end of the installment sees the Z-Team hitting up their local supervillain bar to blow off some steam, dragging Robert in tow. While the superhero bar from the pilot was a dive, this joint is a real shithole, filled all manner of scum and villainy. Assuming players previously went to the movies with Invisigal, they continue their courtship here as she tells Robert to get her a whiskey for their second date.
The rest of the gang shows up to pilfer drinks from Robert’s tab before he bumps into a very big reptilian guy who ominously stares down the diminutive human. A rapid-fire sequence of jokes shows the team’s in (mostly) good spirits.
Despite the revelry, Robert’s feeling a negative aura from the former villains, all of whom are wondering if he’s actually the hero who took any one of them down. Invisigal encourages him to just come clean — it’s not like he actually did, right?
Cue the next part of the flashback to that fateful night with Flambae. The flame-wielder is a tough match for Mecha Man, necessitating some extrajudicial aggression as Robert lops off two of his opponent’s fingers with a beam saber. In the present, Flambae (minus his missing digits) is tightly gripping the karaoke mic while belting out his own made-up lyrics for Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch,” directed at Robert.
Even bonding over a drunken bar fight can’t keep the secrets at bay.
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But his discomfort is about to accelerate to full-blown pain as a mechanized villain goads Robert into a confrontation that leads to the whole Z-Team getting in a brawl. Left to lick their wounds in the parking lot of a Mexican takeout spot, the gang chows down and ribs each other, while Robert recalls all the hyper violent dick-punching, finger-biting, and eyeball-blinding from the evening. But the real bad news is that the goons they brutalized were members of the Red Ring, the crime syndicate helmed by Shroud.
Bonding over their fast food, the Z-Team (but mainly Flambae) eggs Robert on again to tell them his true identity — and exactly why the Red Ring was so keen to fight with him. The decision is up to the players: being honest leads to Flambae trying to kill Robert before Golem intervenes, followed by everyone revealing their real names; hiding the truth has the same result, sans the attempted murder. Although, the truth is bound to come out.
Episode Six: ‘Moving Parts’
The impact of Robert’s choice is apparent from the opening seconds of Episode Six, which sees the soon-to-be risen Mecha Man preparing for a test of the reconstructed suit and retro-engineered Astral Pulse. If Robert came clean to his co-workers, everyone but Flambae is hanging out in the hanger to support his first test run of the equipment. If not, it’s just those who know the truth: Invisigal, Chase, and Royd.
Regardless of who is there to support him, Robert’s test of the new “Proto Pulse” goes sideways almost immediately, with the power source failing and causing a near-fatal explosion.
Robert’s dating life has two tracks, but neither is substantially different for now.
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Waking up in the infirmary, Robert is in shockingly decent shape; it’s Royd who’s most banged up — both physically and emotionally. The big man is taking hard the fact that he can’t seem to reproduce the Astral Pulse despite his earlier confidence, an overzealousness that nearly got Robert killed.
In Robert’s stead, Blazer has been covering the workload, and it’s not going well. Like the Red Ring goons at the bar, villains all over the city are more juiced up than ever, made stronger by enhancements provided by Shroud. Everyone is on their back heels at this point.
After his shift, Robert heads home to wallow in a bottle of liquor gifted by the Z-Team, pondering if he should just dedicate his life to dispatching. That is, before a portal tears through his door and Malevola, Invisigal, and Royd walk in to catch him in his skivvies.
The trio has a surprisingly good theory about the implosion of the makeshift Astral Pulse; seems like Shroud never found the original, and someone has been outfitting low-level criminals with bootlegs that are going awry like Robert’s. Tracking those down could lead to the missing source.
But first, it’s time to party.
The Z-Team solves most issues with booze, but not everything is going to work out.
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The rest of the crew arrives to throw Robert a “housewarming” party, which is really an excuse to get drunk and drop off some junky gifts. But the night’s still productive, with the smartest of the bunch sussing out where the pulse’s signature originates. Invisigal wants to lead a drunken raid on the heavily armed warehouse; the player gets an opinion, but Blazer isn’t having it either way.
Once again, the good times only last so long, and a heavily inebriated Chase starts an argument with Invisigal. He’s got a chip on his shoulder for how cozy she’s got with Robert, but there’s more to it. She’s young and thriving despite being (in his eyes) a real piece of shit; Chase dedicated his life to heroism and has sacrificed everything, left with a thirty-something’s mind in weak old body.
The incident ends with Invisigal punching someone and storming out, she she’s wont to do. If Robert has kept his identity a secret up to this point, the cat’s out the bag now after Chase spills that he’s Mecha Man in the drunken rant. Blazer warns everyone that this night needs to remain a secret.
While taking out the trash, Robert finds Chase sitting on the corner. The senior hero alludes to how his accelerated aging has ruined everything — he’s got a young man’s mind, but he can’t even have sex — but is convinced to reevaluate his position on the Z-Team. Maybe people can change.
Chase has (valid) feelings of animosity about how much he’s needed to sacrifice.
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But interrupting the kumbaya moment is buzzing from Robert’s computer; it looks like Invisigal has ignored common sense and decided to investigate the warehouse herself — but she’s not the only one. Suddenly, there’s dozens of supervillains tearing the place (and each other) apart. Robert will need to complete series of increasingly complicated hacks to help keep her alive and locate the power source that everyone is now after.
After an action-packed heist, Invisigal gets her hands on the real Astral Pulse, but she’s ambushed by Shroud, who snatches the power source from Invisigal while she suffers an asthma attack. Left to die, breathless and alone, Invisigal chokes while Robert screams from the other end of the comms.
But there’s one last hope: a retired speedster who can cross town in the blink of an eye. Chase gives Robert a knowing glance that conveys goodbye; his body just isn’t strong enough to withstand superspeed anymore. Yet off he goes. That’s what heroes do.
The (dis)illusion of choice
The prevalent theme of Dispatch thus far has been that, even when people make poor decisions, there’s still an opportunity to set things right. It’s in knowing and seizing those chances that anyone ends up growing. It’s not particularly deep or novel, and in many ways brushes against the guardrails that the scripted serial nature of the series sets in place to keep the video game aspect in check.
Although engaging as TV, Dispatch will need to stick the landing on its choice-driven structure.
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If you’re a normal person, you may be playing Dispatch and simply letting the branching structure of its narrative take root organically. Make a choice, see how it plays out, and let the experience wash over you. But if you’re a completionist or just undeniably curious about what could’ve been, the broadcast TV length of each episode invites revisiting the weekly entries and reapproaching the scenarios. That’s where the series’ big themes and the corkboard of its possible outcomes begin to seem more finite than they should.
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While the early episodes teed up a handful of major forks in the road to be paid off later, as Dispatch barrels toward its endgame, most of the player’s choices seem to double back to familiar results regardless of how they seemingly could go. Choosing to date Blazer doesn’t quell Invisigal’s crush on Robert, instead leaving her with many of the same flirtatious lines with added scenes of her longing from afar. Even withholding earthshattering truths like Robert’s identity doesn’t really blow up in his face; he’s going to be accepted either sooner or later.
With a relatively clear golden path always pulling the tangents back on track, Dispatch is hueing closer to a TV show than the true interactive hybrid it initially let on to be. Just as its characters have become disillusioned by their choices, so too the player may be. Fortunately, its moving parts are working cleanly enough to keep the magic trick afloat — for now. It falls to next week’s final two episodes to prove just how ambitious the series aims to be. Will it be a meaningful world audiences want to keep living in, or just a spry good time coasting on vibes?
