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It has been seven years since Telltale Games closed its doors and took the narrative games genre with it. In that time, few companies have tried to develop games like The Wolf Among Us or Tales from the Borderlands. It wasn’t until 2025, when AdHoc Studio, a studio made up of many former Telltale employees, released Dispatch that a big narrative game caught on with the mainstream. AdHoc Studio is hoping the rest of the industry notices.

“Getting something out in the world is the most exciting part,” AdHoc Studio executive Dennis Lenart told us in a recent interview when asked about the reception Dispatch has gotten. “It’s been a while since we’ve actually shipped something, and so to have it come out and get this type of reception is just the best thing we can imagine. So it's been super nice validating along the way as well, you know, trying to get these games made when you're not some, you know, when you're in more of a niche audience like people think narrative games are. And I think we're hopefully proving that there can be a larger audience for these types of experiences. But yeah, it's along the way, it's a lot of projections that, you know, you're trying to be very modest and kind of go, well, for this type of game, usually this is what you can expect.”

Lenart also thinks that the success of Dispatch shows an appetite for narrative games that is larger than most studios think. “And, you know, kind of all along, we've been saying, I think there's a lot more people that would be interested in this type of thing. So, it's great to see that they are.”

Does this mean that more studios will invest in narrative games? We certainly hope so. Telltale was always an innovator in the genre, so hopefully AdHoc Studio can continue that legacy with Dispatch and whatever comes next for them.

Continue the story with our deep dive into Dispatch with a conversation with AdHoc Studio's two main developers. If you're still confused after that, here's the Dispatch season 1 ending explained and how they changed it at the last minute.