From former Telltale Games veterans, Dispatch is out and Steam Deck Verified

While only two episodes are currently live with the rest to follow soon, Dispatch from former Telltale Games veterans has arrived. All of the episodes are due to be out by November 12th which is an interesting way to do a release, to build up hype as more people discover it and play through it and talk about it. You're supposed to think of it more like a TV series in that way.

It's a star-stacked game too with voices from the likes of Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad), Laura Bailey (The Last of Us Part II), Erin Yvette (The Wolf Among Us), Jeffrey Wright (Westworld), Travis Willingham (The Legend of Vox Machina), Alanah Pearce (Cyberpunk 2077), Matthew Mercer (Critical Role), MoistCr1TiKaL, Jacksepticeye, Lance Cantstopolis, Joel Haver, and THOT SQUAD, a wild mix of actors, comedians, and creators from across games and entertainment.

Don't go into this expecting a traditional Telltale-like experience though, it's very different.

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"We built Dispatch to be something people can play, watch, and talk about together," said Nick Herman, Creative Director and co-founder at AdHoc Studio. "Some of our favorite gaming moments come from comparing choices with friends, and we hope this series sparks those same kinds of conversations."

Since it's based on episodes, and most aren't out yet, you can't properly review something like this just yet. So keep that in mind. But here's a few thoughts anyway…

Valve rated it Steam Deck Verified and it works perfectly on Desktop Linux with Proton 9. I've played through on Kubuntu 25.10 and haven't encountered a single problem. I'm genuinely extremely happy that thanks to all the work Valve puts into Proton, that we can experience episodic stuff like this from the day of release. Makes me think back to a good few years ago when this would have been near impossible without fiddling with Wine directly which often got messy.

I know some people probably have superhero fatigue, but not me. I'll soak up anything I can related to it. And what great timing, with Gen V Season 2 just finishing and now I get to play Dispatch. It's interesting for another two reasons: the first because you didn't have any powers to begin with. You were originally a hero in Dispatch but more like a Temu version of Iron Man in a mecha before it gets ruined whereas now you're one of the suits managing everyone which makes it quite a different experience; and also that you're not dealing directly with standard hero types, you're actually managing a team of misfits basically, a bunch of ex-supervillains going through rehabilitation to try and improve.

I especially liked the amount of options it has for accessibility. Subtitles with sizing and background and the option to add character names to each subtitle, the choice to have quick time events be cinematic (so events just happen) or be interactive, some effects can be disabled, nudity can be removed, there's colour blind modes and more.

What you get is a mixture of two rather different games. An interactive movie-like experience, blended with a choice-based management sim. In between all the animations, you'll be doing the actual work as a dispatching agent, choosing what heroes to send to each situation. Each of them have their own strengths and weaknesses, and you have to match them up to each problem as best you can. It also sprinkles in little mini-events, where you make more choices on how to handle each situation. I failed a few bits here and there, but it is easy enough to understand and thanks to all the chatter from the heroes, it keeps it really engaging. Still, it's quite odd to jump from full animations into a top-down management sim.

Showing off how your decisions stacked up against other players at the end of an episode was a nice touch too.

Going by what I've played so far, it's quite brilliant. Very much enjoying the writing, some quality moments in there really helped the the top-notch voice over making it thoroughly interesting to play. The animation is great too, reminds me a little of Invincible but perhaps actually even a little better. I could have happily just sat back and watched this, but the interactive elements help you feel like a part of it.

Seems like it will be relatively short overall though, with the first episode by itself only taking about an hour.

We'll see the next episodes land:

• October 29th - Episodes 3 and 4
• November 5th - Episodes 5 and 6
• November 12th - Episodes 7 and 8