Dispatch

Dispatch is an adventure game, where the player's choices affect the story via the use of dialogue trees in conversations with other characters. A large form of the gameplay consists of navigating a superhero team across the Superhero Dispatch Network (SDN) map to crimes and events, where the player must strategically decide which hero or heroes best fit the activity based on their stats and character traits, while also managing their cooldowns. In the hacking minigame, the player must navigate pathways and complete quick time events.

Dispatch is set in an alternate Los Angeles where superpowers, and consequently superheroes and supervillains, are commonplace, dividing society between "supers" (those born with powers such as flight and invisibility or born with a different appearance) and "normies" (those devoid of superpowers). While there are independent superheroes, most of them work for the Superhero Dispatch Network (SDN), which provides services and protection for their subscribers.

Robert Robertson III, who followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather to pilot the mech suit built by the latter and become the superhero Mecha Man, attempts to locate his father's killer, the supervillain Elliot Connors / Shroud, but is lured into a trap by Shroud's gang, the Red Ring. Robert narrowly escapes and realizes a bomb has been placed on his mech suit. He survives, but due to the suit being extensively damaged and having already heavily indebted himself trying to maintain it, he announces his retirement to the press. After failing to stop a robbery on his own, Robert is approached by the superhero Mandy / Blonde Blazer, who proposes he works at the local branch of the Superhero Dispatch Network (SDN) as a dispatcher in exchange for help repairing his suit, and Robert accepts.

After their time with Telltale Games, then Ubisoft and Night School Studio, AdHoc Studio was formed in 2018 by Michael Choung, Nick Herman, Dennis Lenart, and Pierre Shorette. All four began development on their first project, Dispatch. Originally it was envisioned to be live-action, inspired by This Is SportsCenter commercials from ESPN, and was initially planned to start production in March 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, development was shut down.

Around this time, the new incarnation of Telltale approached AdHoc to co-develop a sequel to The Wolf Among Us. Following the cancellation under the original Telltale, The Wolf Among Us 2 was announced in development in 2019. Both parties ran into creative differences; AdHoc in particular were frustrated of being treated like "work for hire" and lacking creative control over the project. Without direction from Telltale, AdHoc left and worked on a game idea for a few months before scrapping it and returned back to Dispatch. This time, they repurposed the project as animated instead of live-action, and shopped said project to multiple game studios until they landed a deal with an unnamed publisher for a year until they left mid-way development.

Dispatch received "generally favorable" reviews according to review aggregator website Metacritic. OpenCritic reported that 97% of critics recommended it.

Game Informer's Ben Reeves praised the narrative and choices. Gamekult's Kelmazad enjoyed the art, gameplay, writing, and cast, but noted the jokes were becoming tired. GameSpot's Jordan Ramée enjoyed the writing, visuals, acting, and challenge, but noted a lack of narrative consequence. IGN's Sarah Thwaites praised the writing and cast, but felt a lack of thrill with the hacking mini-games.