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When Telltale Games closed in 2018, it left a massive gap in the gaming market. Though the company was quickly reborn, it wouldn’t be until this year’s Dispatch that the adventure genre would find its footing again. The episodic release schedule might be frustrating to fans who want to binge the whole story as soon as they can, but it makes perfect sense when you remember that these are interactive TV shows that are meant to be enjoyed an hour at a time.

AdHoc Studio was formed from many of the creatives behind some of Telltale’s best games, such as The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and Tales from the Borderlands. So, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Dispatch, AdHoc’s first original game, takes the DNA of Telltale Games and makes very few changes to it. That includes being narrative-focused, light on traditional gameplay mechanics, and putting player choice paramount. And, of course, the episodic structure that has always been a trademark of Telltale Games.

Looking at the discourse around Dispatch, it seems that players have gotten a little out of practice at this whole “waiting for the next episode” business. Since 2018, streaming has become more prevalent, and binging your media, whether it is anime or games, has become more common, but that won’t be how you play Dispatch at release. The game is made up of eight episodes, with the first two being released on October 22, 2025 and two more episodes released each Wednesday until November 12, 2025.

It feels very much like playing through a really well-animated Marvel show. Dispatch follows Mecha Man as he is forced to hang up his supersuit in favor of becoming a dispatcher for the worst heroes imaginable. The gameplay consists of sending those heroes out to various emergencies while taking into account their personal preferences and strengths to try to ensure success on each mission. There are several points where the narrative branches, including romance options and cutting characters from your team.

There are plenty of reasons to criticise Dispatch; the actual gameplay feels disconnected from the story to the point that I can’t tell how it impacts anything, and, as is common in games that allow player choice, there are times when the text choices on screen don’t adequately tell you what the characters will do. I’m also so tired of snarky characters in superhero fiction that I would give anything for one heartfelt scene without a wry quip. There are legitimate issues with the structure and writing of Dispatch, but the release schedule isn’t something to complain about – it is something to celebrate.

Let me tell you about my experience playing Dispatch: I bought it after the third and fourth episodes had dropped. Each episode takes about an hour or so to play through, so I managed to finish it off by the end of the weekend. On Sunday night, I was chatting to a friend who was playing it, and we spent a bit of time going back and forth about what decisions we each made. Did you do X? Did you choose Y over Z? What did you think of the giant, green penis in Episode 1?

It was a discussion that evoked the feeling of when a TV show became a cultural touchstone. We repeated it after the next batch of episodes dropped, and I look forward to doing it yet again after the Dispatch finale is released on November 12. It brings a social element to the game that goes beyond joining a guild together or posting clips online for others to see. It turns the game into a shared experience that I’m loving. It wouldn’t be possible in a few weeks because we’d both be playing through at different speeds – we’d have to wait for the other to catch up before we talked about the latest spoilers. This schedule keeps us going together until the very end without worrying about spoiling things for each other.

From a business and marketing perspective, the episodic release schedule for Dispatch has worked for AdHoc. They’ve already sold a million copies of the game and proven that there is still a real market for the kind of games that Telltale used to deliver. Because the full story isn’t out yet, there is a chance for potential players to see streamers running through early episodes or people talking about it without getting hit in the face with full spoilers. There is hype around Dispatch without everyone’s social media feeds being filled with “hot takes” about the ending. This is probably the best that the discourse around this game is going to get.

Dispatch is a game that thrives when you think of it as an interactive TV show, which makes its weekly release schedule make sense. Some folks might want to binge it all at once, which they’ll be able to do once the final episode drops in a few days. For me, this has been the perfect way to play this game, and I hope more narrative games like this follow suit. If they’re going to make it feel like a TV show, it makes sense to release it like one.

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