Games Want You to Play Forever, But Dispatch Tells You When to Stop

"With the rise of live-service games, it's been a struggle to know when to put the controller down, especially when games like Fortnite release seasonal content like The Simpsons season pass that ask you to play long enough to unlock stupid sexy Flanders. Luckily, for us, episodic games, perfectly portioned into bite-sized morsels, have come back to rescue us from the endless grind."

"If the name is unfamiliar to you, AdHoc is a new game company founded by former members of Ubisoft, Night School, and perhaps most notably, Telltale Games, who blew up the episodic gaming scene with 2012's The Walking Dead. The studio would later close due to a variety of factors internal and external, some of which I covered previously as a reporter."

Live-service games have extended playtime expectations and made it harder to stop playing, prompting renewed interest in episodic experiences. Episodic games return as compact, satisfying offerings that avoid endless grind. Dispatch is an episodic superhero game from AdHoc Studio, a company founded by industry veterans from Ubisoft, Night School, and Telltale Games. AdHoc draws on episodic traditions while responding to shifts toward single-player completeness and live-service models. Dispatch models itself after classic cable TV structure, presenting each episode as a contained chapter. The game is set in a modern Los Angeles where superheroes work at a private security firm and players make choices as Robert Robertson III.

Read at GameSpot