Dispatch, the upcoming superhero comedy game made by AdHoc Studio, will release on an episodic basis on PlayStation 5 and PC, with the first two episodes available to play starting on October 22. The standard edition costs $30, with the deluxe jumping up to $40 and coming with a digital art book and comic.
AdHoc Studio is made up of former Telltale developers, so it looks like old habits die hard, though it was explained in a preview we attended that the team wants to fix the mistakes of Telltale’s past.
Where Dispatch will be acting differently is that you won’t have to wait a very long time to get the rest of the game. After the initial bump, two episodes will be released every Wednesday for the next three weeks, resulting in a total of eight episodes in the game.
Why is Dispatch Doing Episodic Releases?
In our early preview of Dispatch, it was revealed that the game would be episodic. It set off some alarm bells for many people at the preview. When talking about why it is going episodic, co-founder Nick Herman explained that the team is going for that “watercooler” kind of discussion with the game as it launches. Essentially, they want to be the talk of the internet as they release, like various big-time shows like Succession or Game of Thrones are.
While Telltale had some great games during the 2010s, the way it handled its releases was not great. Going into a new release, players could expect one or two episodes, and then sometimes would have to wait several months before the next one came out. This often resulted in players saying they had forgotten about the events and the choices they made in the previous episodes. With a more television series-like release structure, that shouldn’t be a problem with Dispatch.
We’re not so sure that Dispatch will have the focus of the gaming community releasing in the lead-up to the holiday season with some big games to contend with, but from what we’ve seen of the game, it brings back a lot of the stuff people loved about Telltale games, but with a little more packed in. It might not spark that watercooler conversation that AdHoc wants, but it looks to be an enjoyable game nonetheless.
