Dispatch is the first Telltale-style game I've played that's delivering on the promise of playing a TV show, and it's even got a compelling management sim tucked inside, too

Dispatch is the first game out of AdHoc—a studio that contains several directors and developers from Telltale Games' height of popularity. Featured in our own PC Gaming Show, Dispatch also has a demo out for Steam Next Fest, and after playing it, my only complaint is that I want to see more.

I've always had a soft spot for the golden age of Telltale: The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us were both supremely compelling dramas that came out at a time where "your choices matter" was still novel. Whether they actually delivered on that promise is a touch debatable, but I was still very much enthralled.

There was always one problem, though—their animation was, uh, just okay. This isn't meant as a slight, mind. Good animation is both extremely expensive and difficult, and likely outside of the budget of most studios: But they didn't quite deliver on the promise of a playable movie or TV show.

Well, if the demo is to be believed, Dispatch hasn't just nailed it, it's also got a really compelling dispatch management sim inside it—an actual proper game wrapped up in a bundle of genuinely excellent animation. This isn't just aping Telltale's golden age, it's making an active effort to improve on it.

In Dispatch, you play washed-up superhero Robert, formerly known as Mecha-Man. His power suit broke and he can't replace it, so he's been brought into the SDN, a company that dispatches squads of super-powered convicts to help deal with crimes around the city.

When it comes to the Telltale-y-ness of it all, Dispatch is pretty much best-in-class. This thing looks gorgeous, like an honest-to-Superman TV original animated with a solid heft of budget and skill. Characters are expressive and vibrant, the environments are colourful, and the facial expressions could be lifted from comic book stills.

The voice-acting's top-notch, as well. There's a mix of seasoned videogame acting talent like Laura Bailey mixed with TV stars like Aaron Paul—mind, the latter's already proven he can handle voice acting just fine, starring in shows like Invincible. There's also a couple of fun streamer cameos: JackSepticeye and MoistCr1TiKaL make some solid appearances, too.

I don't know what sorcery AdHoc uses to sell it, but Dispatch makes dialogue choices buttery-smooth. In your normal Telltale game, there's always the slightly-awkward jilt between choosing a dialogue option and the resulting impact. So far, Dispatch simply flows right into the next line of script—to the point where if you stripped back the UI elements, you wouldn't notice someone'd made a choice at all.

Dispatch's demo, however, also shows off the other half of its game structure. When it's not charming your pants off with quips and washed-up superheroes, it's putting you in the role of a dispatcher. Robert's thrown into a call that feels like stumbling into the wrong Discord channel in a gaming server—with a fleet of funny ne'er-do-wells who immediately start riffing you about your probably-fake appellation, Robert Robertson.

What follows is a surprisingly great dispatch management sim. Each member in your band of screw-ups—who'll distract you from your administrative duties with banter—has a different array of stats. Some are smarter, some are more charismatic, some are more agile, and so on.

This isn't just your Telltale-style minigame to try and keep things flowing, it's genuinely quite involved. Each member of your squad comes with their own passives. Some work better as lone wolves, some have team-up perks. The funniest one by far is arsonist jerk Flambe's "Hot Streak"—if he succeeds on a mission, he gets a stacking bonus that vanishes into thin air if he messes up. You can also level up these characters to increase their individual stats.

You need to match your zeroes' stat arrays to the mission's—the catch being, you have to guess what a mission requires based on vibes. If a kid's cat needs to be rescued from a tree, and you don't want to make that kid cry, you need to send someone with good mobility and charisma.

Once you complete a mission, the hidden stat array is revealed to you, and serves as the walls to contain a victory ping-pong ball that bounces around. The array you sent out becomes a sort of "victory zone". If it lands in the zone your array created, you win—it's kind of like a roulette wheel.

Other complications can arise. Your heroes might wander off on their own to start a fire somewhere, or they might insist they get put on certain jobs to peddle crypto to your clients. Occasionally, you'll be interrupted by dialogue choices, and if you put a particularly suitable hero on the job—say, Invisigal on a mission where you need to sneak past some art thieves—you'll be given an auto-success.

It's surprisingly mechanically dense, and it shows that Dispatch is more than just a highly polished Telltale-style game from seasoned developers—it's promising to be a very competent emergency dispatch sim with a cinematic, choose-your-own adventure wrapped around it.

I can't say whether Dispatch will stick the landing in its full version, and its demo is sadly quite bite-sized, but AdHoc well and truly has my attention. Dispatch doesn't have a full release date yet, but it's angling for a 2025 release.