I genuinely love Dispatch's art style, concept, character designs, and gameplay but oh my GOD does the story disappoint me. The gist of the game is that you play as Robert who works as a dispatcher for the Z-Team of "reformed" villains at a superhero agency, and throughout the game they become "better" people. The main theme of the game is redemption, however I believe the way that the game treats it is toxic and incredibly flawed.
Z-Team & Robert Torture Porn
Being in the Z-Team to begin with is a VERY GENEROUS second chance, as it saves the villain from going to prison just for the light fee of having to work as a superhero. Despite this the Z-Team still does literally everything they did as villains on the job and the game never makes them take accountability, which is one of the first steps to redemption.
Invisigal is the most obvious example of the game's flawed writing. AS A HERO Invisigal commits assault, assault on the elderly, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. If you choose to tell your boss that Invisigal assaulted you, the game will straight up say that you "ratted her out". If you choose too many negative options with Invisigal at the end of the game she will straight up murder the main antagonist and turn into a villain, and the game will say that you "neglected" her even though she's nearly 30. She never apologizes for anything she does to Robert as a hero and the game expects you to just hand wave it off.
The moral of the story is basically to never stand up for yourself and people will eventually be nicer to you, as Robert is repeatedly tortured by his coworkers mostly for laughs as Malevola sexually assaults him, Flambae attempts to burn him to death, and Invisigal does all what was mentioned before.
Forgive Me But Not Thee
During the climax of the game either Sonar or Coupe (Soupe for short) will join the Red Ring and be Shroud's sort of right hand man. The Red Ring will launch a massive terrorist attack on the city, almost certainly killing many people. After the final battle is said and done the Red Ring are in handcuffs and being escorted to prison, except you are given the option to forgive Soupe by lying to the officers. Keep in mind that this character is a whole terrorist at this point and by setting them free they once again never take accountability because apparently murdering people because you lost your job is just a case of the mondays. This doesn't stop the game from treating Shroud like the antichrist though since you can kill him and the game will just go "Erm.. you know I have to suspend you right :/" even though Soupe participated in the same exact attack.
The game also never gives you the opportunity to forgive any of the other Red Ring members even though they were likely also manipulated by Shroud in the same way Invisigal was. They just get sent straight to prison even though they likely participated less in the raid than Soupe did.
Counter-Arguments
"You are supposed to mentor them!"
Robert's job is literally just to dispatch the Z-Team and make them not suck ass. Helping them become better people is probably the fastest way to do it but it is not Robert's responsibility and it would be better fit for a Social Worker. This also again frees the Z-Team of any accountability by treating them like children who need guidance when they are almost all above 21.
"Being an asshole is the point, they're villains!"
Which is why it is dumb when the game wags its finger at you for trying to punish these behaviors. What's the point of the Phoenix Program if they're not going to cut villains who at the bare minimum assault people? It just gives villains immunity from crimes that they would've been in jail for.
"I don't think x was meant to be taken seriously"
It's literally a Telltale style game, the story is like 90% of the game. I can understand some things like Flambae's antics because admittedly they were very funny but I still think that it sort of discredits the main theme of the game if you are willing to taint the message for a joke.
Other Grievances
I think that Flambae could've been written a lot better. Him trying to murder you after revealing your identity and then showing up a day or two later forgiving you feels pointless and shows that he really didn't make any progress until he showed back up at the party. I think Robert find him and talking to him when he stormed off would've been a lot more effective for his growth.
Chase probably should've died but the reveal with Blonde Blazer giving him her amulet is a lot more dumb imo. If you didn't date Blonde Blazer it sort of just feels like an asspull since you didn't know about the amulet.
This is 100% one of those things that makes sense in the narrative at the time but then entirely collapses everything once you pause to think about it. I actually really enjoyed the game on the first playthrough until about a week later realising most of this stuff and my opinion on the writing took a nosedive.
Good summation though.
Actually why I made this post LOL If you asked me to rate Dispatch by the time I was on Episode 2 I would've said a 9/10 but now to me it's like a 6/10. I would definitely recommend people to check it out since it has a lot of cool things but ultimately feels like Hype Moments and Aura.
I'd like to point out my comment here:
The writing could have been improved, but I'd argue if you think they should've been more tougher on the Z-Team and treat them to the same standards as normal heroes, and you think that Robert shouldn't have had to help them become better people and if you think that's how the story should have been written, you completely missed the point of the narrative.
The point of the narrative is that when you have an institutional system deciding these things and prioritizing certain outcomes, it tends to devalue people and policing certain behaviors. Like, the system doesn't care if the Z-Team gets a little rowdy as long as they do they job as an asset.
I don't like when the Devs start moralising at me when the game is full of characters with words that THEY put in their mouths.
If anything, I'm just mildly prodding the character in one direction or the other. Robert is as much a fully formed person as any of the others. We can't know what exactly he's thinking when we pick snippets of his thoughts from a wheel. Nor can we be blamed for not knowing what will happen after.
It helps to think of the various outcomes not as "consequences of your choices", as in there is a direct causal relationship, but rather as simply what they are: the chaotic intersection of one person's words with another person's ears.
You think you are being unfairly punished for encouraging Robert to take the moral high ground? No, that's just how Imvisigal chose to take Robert's words. But the snarky, moralising achievements? That's just insulting.
This really goes to show that adding shallow "player choice" to a game doesn't make the game better. I honestly would have preferred if they just let him be a fully fleshed out character who makes their own choices. Basically, let a visual novel be a visual novel.
Don't pretty much all visual novels have tons of player choice and branching? I think what you want is a TV show.
Not the guy you were talking to, but there's some VNs that are called Kinetic Novels where there's no choices presented at all and is just one unbranching story.
It's basically a book with background music, voice acting, and well, visuals and some interaction.
The moment where the game really lost me is when the game took control of my player character to say that Invisigal being a hero was always going to be difficult because she has the power of invisibility, an inherently evil power.
Bro. Friendly Fire, the guy who can only shoot his allies, has an evil power. Dog Welder, the guy who has the compulsive need to weld puppies together, has an evil power. You can do so much good with invisibility it’s literally no excuse
I mean, that’s basically exactly what Robert tells Visi.
The idea invisibility is an inherently evil power is comedic to me. I guess Susan Storm has been fooling everyone into thinking she's a hero for decades.
I was wracking my brain on hearing that and I realized that not a single iconic villain in all of Marvel and DC has invisibility as their power while there are tons of heroes who do.
Batman’s rogues gallery has none, Spider-Man’s rogues gallery has none (the closest are Chameleon who does not become invisible and Mysterio who is more illusions as a whole), Superman has none, the Flash has none, the most notable villain who does have invisibility is Gentleman Ghost, who is a fucking Hawkman villain.
Meanwhile, on the hero side, there’s obviously Invisible Woman, Martian Manhunter, Miles Morales, all incredibly popular characters. Hell, if you want to extend the idea to being sneaky and stealthy as a whole, sure that would include some more villains, but it would also include fucking Batman.
Maybe the notion "invisibility is an evil power" is true in the Dispatch world... or Visi only thinks that because of her upbringing/what the criminals around her in her past might've told her.
We're not meant to actually agree with her. Robert sure as hell doesn't. Like you say, very few superpowers are "inherently evil".
That really should be the type of thing a writer needs to show the audience rather than just telling them.
The writing in this game is incredibly flawed, I agree 100%.
I was dumbfounded when Flambae literally tried to murder me, then showed up at my housewarming party like nothing happened.
I think Flambae suffered from cut content tbh, it really did seem like he was being built up to have a really interesting relationship with Robert because of their backstory, and the literal fucking attempted murder, and then it just kinda went nowhere.
I liked his singing at the bar tho, it was soooo fucking petty that it was hilarious lmao.
I’m 4/8 episodes in and wondering where the whole “GOTY contender” narrative is coming from
i know right? dispatch is certainly a fun game with very good animations and certain story beats, but its gameplay and writing doesn't even warrant a nomination imo, its definitely very overhyped. its a fun story but quality wise its definitely not that good of a game
crazy how the walking dead and wolf among us are so much older and so much better
Idk, has YouTubers in it I guess?
Oh so it is twilight for men
Swinging a bat at a hornet’s nest but god I respect it.
That fact that this got so many people riled up just means they can't deny it lmao
All that's missing is the unfunny people going "better X than Dispatch" ad infinitum
You're so real for this
Eh, I'd argue Twilight's real sin (and I say that as someone who was recently forced to watch all the movies because my friends hate me) is that its characters are really boring/shallow
You can argue shallowness for Dispatch's characters I guess, but the game isn't boring imo. The dialogue is well written and pretty funny and most of the characters at least feel competently realized, which is something I can't say for Twilight
But if the point is, they're both pandering hard to a specific kind of sexual/romantic straight fantasy, then yes, both do that
Im going to be for real, I haven’t read/watched twilight nor played dispatch, I just said it because I know it annoys people
Based
I try my best to
Yes. It is that poorly written.
You know what you’re damn right.
Not really relevant to the rant, but yes.
Bait used to be believable.
Nothing about this rant really says that you just saw it online and decided to use it here.
I love that you're being downvoted for something the guy literally admitted to.
Real. Total non sequitur.
Interesting take. Ultimately, I believe this just highlights some of the pitfalls you're going to run into when trying to attempt to rehab people like this.
You really can't expect them (not excusing them) to behave well when half the team are murderers and don't really have a proper sense of how to act.
The issue is that you can't hold them accountable or stand up for yourself.
This is an interesting rant for me because it's so far outside my personal views I can't even argue against it because we just see things on a fundamentally different level.
I figured it was something like this because almost all of my choices in Dispatch during the last episode were in the minority and even after thinking about it since it ended I still didn't think of anything different.
Dispatch writing is incredibly juvenile. These people are full grown adults but the narrative treats them like children. Not only should Visi be removed from the team, she should be arrested for interfering in an ongoing investigation.
Which ongoing investigation again?
To find the macguffin
I think a lot of this stems from the fact that sexual assault on Robert is played off as a joke.
If that was cut, Visi’s assault on him in the break room could incur a “last chance” type warning. She’d start behaving better but she won’t trust you as much, have to earn it back. If she didn’t rat you out, she realizes on her own that ah shit she didn’t get a reaction out of you. Seriously WHAT is up with people sexually harassing Robert he’s just a guy?!
Personally, I really like flambe’s attempted murder. You are the reason he got arrested and lost two of his fingers. Attempted murder isn’t good, but it is human. I just hate that they have a scene of you having to answer for the black eye BUT NOT ATTEMPTED MURDER????
This game would have been shat on so hard if the genders were reversed or it was gay men sexually harassing him
You’re so right. I don’t understand the male general audience, they whine and bitch that male sexual assault isn’t taken seriously, but any instance of male sexual assault being made into a joke, the male general audience loves it. I don’t get them. This might just be a result of the goomba fallacy but I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
I’m sure many of them aren’t the same but unfortunately because a certain audience loves to imagine a hot woman doing it to them they give it a pass.
But if women targeted media like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey have men doing the same behavior against the female leads and it gets any traction outside of its niche? Suddenly it’s regarded as the worst piece of media ever written and is subjected to far more scrutiny.
That about sums it up, yep. Sexual assault is totally fine, until a woman is reciprocating. Then it’s awful. I fucking hate American men.
If you think this is an American male thing, you don’t even wanna to know what goes on in the Middle East/ South Asia….
Oh don’t get me wrong I know about bacha bazi. I mean specifically about online culture and video games.
I could also say that same thing I just said for that.
Hey, fair enough on that point
because the ones on reddit that you see dont care about male sexual assault they only bring it up to whine about feminism
And somehow, instead of being a perfect example of male sexual assault not being taken seriously... this is proof that the people who say they don't like that are just lying..?
I mean yeah, most of the guy who play this game dont even see the stuffs with Robert as sexual assault, or else there will be a lot more uproar against the dev
Ding ding ding!
This reminds me of some very valid concerns people have raised about how FBI handled the mobsters it turns into informants. Some of the mobsters they flipped got flipped specifically because they were the easy ones to catch. They genuinely enjoyed being murderous gangsters so they killed so many people and had such a high profile it was trivial to pin them to a wall with an open and shut murder beef.
The FBI snatched these murderous gangsters up, told them they already have enough evidence to throw them in jail right now if they wanted, and then... just released them right back onto the street.
So what did these happy, gleeful, unrepentant murderers do as soon as they got out?
They acted like an unrepentant gangster murderer. But now, with federal sanction and protection from prosecution.
I'm not saying we should shed any tears for the "business" side of a crime family. The fraudsters, the grifters, the bookies, etc. But I get their point. The "business" side of the family saw the street level consequences of this and were understandably bewildered by it on a moral/ethical level. "Woah, that's kinda fucked up. Going to these lengths just to get me on a fraud beef is kinda scummy. Like, that guy's a psycho murderer, even we always thought he was a freak, and you let him back out on the street just to catch me? You wanted me that bad? I'm just a small bean. That guy's a mass murderer."
I don't think dispatch was intentionally trying to recreate the Whitey Bulger experience, but...
Same logic with Operation Paperclip.
Nazis and ordinary German soldiers killed without issue, civilians bombed without remorse... but the people who could be useful? Oh ho ho. What's a few war crimes between friends?
So they got forgiven completely and given unrestricted free lives in America with zero consequences.
The villain achievement for Invisigal, "failed as a mentor", kinda pissed me off. I treated her fairly and as an adult, just like everyone else on the team. The game treated her like a baby to be pampered. She should have been the one to leave the program, if anyone. And her "woe is me, destined to be a villain" routine would be more sympathetic if she was like 18.
They want to treat her like a kid but also want her to be romantic option, that why.
Genuinely one of my only major grievances with the game is how Invisigal is never truly punished or held responsible for her actions. Instead the game kinda just, like you said, waves it off. Even if you romance her, she never apologizes to Robert or Chase, where she 100% should have.
She literally risks her life for Robert (in the good ending she does it twice) because she felt bad about how she and the team treated him
[deleted]
While what she did was a step in the right direction, it doesn’t mean everything else she did earlier is negated. She still should have apologized for her recklessness that almost got chase killed and her actions throughout the game with Robert.
But I would say Flambae’s case is far worse considering he is nothing but abusive towards Robert and tries to burn him alive, and like OP said, it’s kind just ignored.
The fact that visi was almost 30 and acted how she did bugged me lmao idk man its just annoying, shes a grown adult... :/
I agree from a logical standpoint.
From a hopemaxxing standpoint however...
Dang, how do you link that one Superman meme while on the phone?
I haven’t played the game yet and probably never will (tell tale style games just aren’t interesting to me) but the Soupe section of the rant put me out a bit. I guess a part of my philosophy is if you want redemption the first step is to not hold secrets and confess. So lying to let someone go is counterintuitive in my view.
Superman throws his villains to jail, redemption is something they have to earn, literally NOT his job.
I mean idk if that’s a great characterization of Big Blue. He’s the first Superhero so his villains always go bad again just because of reboots and wanting to use them in a new arc.
But Metallo, Parasite, Major Disaster, Cyborg Superman… plenty have redeemed themselves directly because of Superman. But you don’t have to look far to see other heroes like Wonder Woman or Batman who seem to do it more than Supes (just because their villains tend to be more human and less a stand in for natural disasters).
Hell, half the X-men are former villains, chief of which is Magneto and Emma Frost!
Redemption at the hand of the hero is a huge theme in cape comics
Redemption arcs happening =/= The Hero making it their job
Its necessary to say that ironically, Robert's case IS his job, he has to handle their legal reintegration...which means failure gets punishment. Because, again, its a two-fold job.
Superman literally giving a hand up to one of his worst villains
Look, I did acknowledge that this is a little more rare for Superman than for Batman (or Wondy). Lex Luthor and Doomsday aren’t redeemable. But plenty of his other villains are!
And they become redeemed because of his actions. He didn’t throw Cyborg Superman in jail in the second example, he personally held him in his own house and offered him tools to help him recover. The Phantom Zone is his ‘jail.’ But that’s not for everyone
Not to be an asshole about what you just wrote, but why is trying to reintegrate someone depending on being "someone's job"? Like, that feels like a very narrow view of the issue
Like a major theme of Dispatch is that the difference between turning villain or good guy can be dependent on the people around you trusting you and supporting you when you're down or when you fuck up because improving after you've messed up is more important than any theoretical punishment
This the core of what I'm trying to say with hopemaxxing. Taking Supes as an example, you have this incredibly idealistic individual who sees the good in everyone. Superman is more than a hero, he's a good person who tries to uplift everyone around him regardless of the cape.
So the day job Robert has in Dispatch is secondary to this argument. He, a good person, is uplifting those around him because it is a moral good rather than his job.
Not only that. Robert sees that he could've easily turned into a lot of the people on the Z-team (because he's also an asocial weirdo) but that he had a support system, at least when growing up
The way the characters behave, Invisigal in particular, keeps reinforcing a personal theory of mine about the world and society in general.
My theory is that in the modern world people are starting to maturing later than expected and this is reflected in media and fiction, in the way "adult" characters behave.
Invisigal is in her late 20's almost 30 but she is not wiser than a 15 year old, in many aspects she is still a teenager psychologically, like some comment said before, "at what point is she responsible for her own actions?"
Well she can't, because people or us gamers (some) don't see her as a adult, we can forgive or even excuse her actions because a) she's cute, and b) "she doesn't know any better", I am guilty of this way of thinking too, at some point I forgot that everyone in the game is an adult and I started to infantilize Invisigal, the game seems to agree to this line of thinking too, because she cannot change out of her own free will, it's up to you to be the adult and guide her out of villany.
Befpre playing the game, I kept hearing people glaze invisigal like she was some great person but the whole game, I hated her. I tried to give her chances but insyead she acted spoilt and victim blaming. I was with the z team when they wanted to kick her out because at this point, she had enough chances. Somehow ended up with the good ending. Also, it baffles me no one says anything about how flambe tries to kill us and is allowed to work again no concequences.
Thank you, especially for calling out the SA. Like, yea, especially with malevola it’s a small tap, but it’s still played for laughs because, I’m sorry I’m going there, it’s female on male, but its still problematic asf. The only media I can think of that treats female on male SA or r@pe as the serious offense it is is Invincible, and even then Anissa gets off scott free (I wish Nolan tore her apart when he found out but different argument)
She literally dies. All of the viltrumites get off scot free for their many heinous crimes. It would be pretty hypocritical of Omniman to kill her for harming his son when she was still a bad person when he murdered thousands of people and even his close friends when he was a bad person.
Invincible spoilers
You can say "rape" here man, no one's going to report you
She literally died from being violently ripped open. If that's not a punishment, I don't know what is.
Sorry, dk how to tag spoilers
Eh, yea but ya never know.
Imma be honest I forgot about that
Yeah I actually agree. It’s comedic that Robert gets tortured and sexually assaulted, which is simply horrible.
Something that really rubs me the wrong way is that there’s an achievement for failing to redeem Invisigal. It makes it seem like we’re the ones who failed her, not that she failed herself.
It really seems like you fundamentally just wanted the story to have a different, more grounded tone, rather than certain events or aspects being handwaved for the sake of comedy or drama. I get that, but it seems like the tone worked a lot better for me than for you.
No. It sounds like the user wanted this story to be far more consistent. The morality discussion of "are you going to kill Shroud" is kinda shot in the knee-caps when we had Robert literally trying to kill Toxic in the first episode as a regular human and didn't know he had powers with his mech suit; and that was when Robert thought he was just a guy talking shit about his dad. It was literally luck that Toxic had super-durability.
And yes, the messaging in Dispatch is absolutely insane at some points. Let's not even get into how overused the "fuck" and dick jokes were to the point where it came across like a teenager writing a script who just watched George Carlin for the first time.
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He....set up the mattress for the guy he thought was going to die from the fall. How does that mean he knew he'd survive getting stomped on or punted by Mecha Man?
Because he captured the guy in the first place and got kicked in the face by him and saw his enhancement rings on his neck.
Also he beat Robert back to the steel plant despite leaving him tied up and Robert flying in the Mecha man suit. He clearly has powers.
He might have just set up the mattress so the guy didn't make a loud crash on landing. Like Robert said he has neighbors.
Except that means nothing. Visi had enhancements and all that meant was that she could be invisible for longer. She's seriously hurt by a bullet and Robert had no idea that Toxic would survive a robot stomping on him. Armstrong is seriously injured despite having Red Ring enhancements. If Robert did think he had durability, why would he put a mattress to soften Toxic's fall and then admit he's only now realizing during the steel mill that Toxic could have survived the fall?
That literally means nothing. You can make a bunch of different inferences, like one of his other co-horts freeing him and bringing him back. Not to mention, you can't exactly deduce from that that he has super durability.
No. Robert literally says "Starting to think I didn't need to waste a perfectly good mattress to break your fall." So....that's just wrong, and Robert literally didn't know Toxic was going to survive being punted or crushed.
He's talking about at the red ring base when you have the options to either crush the guy to death or pint him out the building. The reveal that he has powers only happens after you do one of these two things which would certainly kill a normal human.
Welcome to the world of being a fuckin' middle manager, my dude. You're a quarter manager, a quarter psychologist, a quarter parent and a quarter dictator. Honestly, this is probably the most realistic part of Dispatch, as someone who has managed a team, there were waaaay too many moments where the game just gave me flashbacks from my workplace.
I was actually lowkey harsh to Invisigal in my playthrough, but encouraged her when she wanted to improve, no bad ending and I stood up for myself.
So, something that gives you an incentive to see the Blazer route is an asspull? Or would you rather it be something locked only for her route?
EDIT: Dammit, I pressed send too quickly.
I actually agree about the whole Sonar and Coupé thing, though for different reasons. The whole 'cut someone out' works, but seeing Invisigal being given an extra chance, the other don't get it and having to cut, especially someone like Coupé, who genuinely believes in the program despite her misgivings, feels very dumb, especially because she got her 'last chance' after sabotaging Malevola and letting that specific criminal go TWICE.
Which ties to my main criticism of the storytelling, it's too Invisigal-centric, not in terms of plot importance, but how the morality of the story warps around her.
Like, it's weird that in the case above she lets go relatively easily, but with the Chase situation people scream for her suspension when she was actually right in practice and hindsight, but that's the point of the story where she has to be beaten down so people suddenly remember the weight of consequences.
This game's story is the high-school action-ecchi (or in modern words, goonerbait) anime equivalent for 20-30s white men. Except everyone is already an adult and not a horny teenager anymore, which makes it very jarring if you just sit down and think about it. I liked the game as I somewhat vibed with the humour and the animation is very well made, but that's about it. All characters except Robert, Invisigal and Blue Blonde are only explored at a surface level, and the entire Z-team "redemption arc" feels rushed and forced. It has some highs but the rest of the game are lows covered with quirky jokes so the players don't think about it too much, as thinking will reveal a bunch of the game's writing problems.
Are you trying to imply that adults can’t be horny anymore?
No. I'm implying that adults should be less horny and more mature than whatever the main characters are in the game. It feels like everyone in team Z mental age is stunted in college.
Twilight for men
LOLLLLL YES
All good points. I have hardly played the game but from what i see and what you noted, this story seems suffer from stuff that is common in things like anime or super hero films
Basically, where characters or the story just don't have grounded reactions to things
I tried playing this recently and I was really annoyed at how none of the reviews and storefront indicated to me that it would be so heavily focused on romance/dating aspects and how sexual harassment towards the male lead gets really brushed off. If it was gay men or genders were reversed people would have lost their mind. Also bad dialogue
If the gender is reverse it will just be twilight.
The Twilight comparisons are funny to me. I know it was originally intended to be a funny jab but really there’s a lot more stories out there involving an “average” MC whose easy to self insert into where they get chased by 2+ hot women who inexplicably fall in love for him.
Not disagreeing, but I’ll tell you why a lot of what you’re saying doesn’t bug me as much as it does you.
First: the whole thing is going on Saturday Morning Cartoon logic. You know, Superhero Movie Logic. Like, if you wanna get really granular about it, Tony Stark commits so many small crimes and aggressions over the course of the first Iron Man movie. Pepper is sitting on so much sexual assault evidence! But the movie isn’t interested in that, so that’s not the wavelength we’re operating on. Same idea.
Also, not for nothing, but we’re talking about Superheroes, which already operate on baseline shaky legal ground at best. That’s just the nature of superhero stories.
I would agree with you that the game takes a weird moral stance about “ratting out” Visi, but Robert also admits he let his temper get the better of him and takes culpability, even after Blazer insists that that’s not okay, so I don’t really count it as the biggest issue ever.
You’re not the first person to make the character age complaint, and that’s something I flat don’t get, though. You can be morally disillusioned at any age. So what if they’re all pushing 30?
At what point is Visi responsible for her own choices? At what point does the harm she causes become her fault? She's consistently abrasive, rude, and unempathetic, but people defend her actions and words as 'she doesn't know any better'. Yes, she does. She has a great deal of life experience, enough to know that what she does is wrong and that the people around her are off put by her words and actions.
I'm all for the redemption idea, but it just doesn't work for me when the game itself tries to ensure she faces no backlash or consequences for anything she does. 10 year old children are held more accountable than her. Her age matters because infantilising a grown woman's actions is absurd.
It's objective truth that none of her scenes, or her character in general, would work if she was unattractive. She gets away with all of her creepy advances in the exact same way that Edward from Twilight gets away with it. Dispatch really is just Twilight for guys.
Did we play the same game? The game generally, and Robert specifically, calls Visi on her bullshit on a near constant basis. Literally since scene one
When your story is about redemption, you can't just spotlight certain bad behaviors but not others.
And when the story focuses on the relationship between two people, and one of them sexually assaulted, harassed and abused the other, you can't just ignore that with the excuse "that's not what we're interested in."
You can use this horrible logic for any story at all. According to you people can't criticize sexual assault or violations of consent if bodily autonomy isn't what the story is focusing on. Even though those actions are significant to the interpersonal relationships between characters.
You most certainly can! Han Solo goes through a redemption arc in A New Hope. He’s still a smuggler and a scoundrel by the end of it. Redemption is not the same as absolution.
So firstly, does Robert lose bodily autonomy to Visi at any point in the story? I would argue no, so by your own definitions, Visi isn’t wronging Robert in any serious way.
Secondly, fictional characters are not beholden to our real-life morality. They just aren’t. Batman is constantly committing reckless endangerment of a minor. Hell, in one very famous story, he’s indirectly responsible for the death of said minor. But A Killing Joke isn’t a worse story because Bruce Wayne gets away with not standing trial for any of this. The first Indiana Jones movie starts with Indy stealing a priceless artifact from a still-living native population. We completely forget about it one scene later. These things don’t make those stories bad.
Now, if a real person were to do those things, then yeah, throw the book at them, no excuse! If you wanted to write a story specifically about those moral failings, then more power to you! (In fact, the moral repercussions of colonistic plundering of native cultures is literally what three of the four Uncharted games are about). But stories don’t have to address every potential moral failing of every character at all times, and it’s not a flaw of the story if it doesn’t.
I actually think a lot about this
What sexual assault evidence?
I mean, they’re all a work in progress. They’ve done far worse things before joining the SDN than they’ve done while with them. But also Robert for the most part is just exceptionally chill compared to other people. He’s not meant to be a self insert so that might be where some people’s grievances lie, since he’ll hand wave things many others wouldn’t.
Some of it is just raunchy humor that many people clearly are a bit sensitive too, I don’t mean that as an insult but just the reality of it. Other parts of it is genuinely just about trying to forgive the extreme, if you prevent coupe and sonar from destroying the whole city you’re given the opportunity to give them another chance. Robert knew what would happen if he told flambé his identity and flambés reaction was accurate to Robert’s thoughts but we still push forward with him.
I’ve said it before but there’s a difference between disliking something, and something being inherently flawed.
It's not really an "in character" thing for me with Robert but the game directly punishing the player for standing up for yourself ("ratting" out invisigal). It's not about Robert hand waving things but rather the game itself doing it.
I think we just fundamentally disagree with the rest of it though.
of course it punishes you, your job is to lead them on the right path despite their villainess tendencies, which does inevitably come with having to hand away shit you wouldn't for others.
there's a reason why there are trophies for succeeding as a mentor and failing as one. These guys are villains, and if you read their profiles they have done some pretty fucked up shit. If it was rainbows and dandelions they wouldn't need robert in the first place.
Wouldn’t helping them go down the right path be calling them out on their bullshit? “Ratting out” is just making them have consequences for their actions
Not always. Like I said these guys are clearly temperamental and sometimes doing that shit will like I said force people to shut down and close you out. There’s no umbrella method that works for everyone, not sure why so many others can’t get that. Showing them that you have their back even when/if they disrespect you is an easy way to earn their trust and get them to open up to you. If a stern fist was all it took, then chase would have whipped them into shape but he clearly wouldn’t tolerate that shit.
Counter-Arguments
"You are supposed to mentor them!"
Robert's job is literally just to dispatch the Z-Team and make them not suck ass. Helping them become better people is probably the fastest way to do it but it is not Robert's responsibility and it would be better fit for a Social Worker. This also again frees the Z-Team of any accountability by treating them like children who need guidance when they are almost all above 21.
"Being an asshole is the point, they're villains!"
Which is why it is dumb when the game wags its finger at you for trying to punish these behaviors. What's the point of the Phoenix Program if they're not going to cut villains who at the bare minimum assault people? It just gives villains immunity from crimes that they would've been in jail for.
I'll say a few things. "Forgive Soupe but not others" is probably your strongest argument.
Now onto your other points:
This is technically true… but irrelevant inside the fiction.
Robert’s role is clearly: "emotional labor under institutional negligence"
The point is that the system offloads moral responsibility onto him unfairly.
The game fails not because Robert shouldn’t be mentoring - but because it punishes him for refusing to accept abuse while mentoring.
That’s a crucial distinction. The whole damn point of a lot of the events in Dispatch is to show how bad the system is and how the system doesn't actually value people. This is shown when you have to make a cut the first time, and then the Invisgal decision. With Invisgal, one decision feels logically correct and in line with the team, but feels morally wrong.
Almost, but not quite
I’d phrase it more precisely:
The game conflates empathy with unlimited tolerance.
Standing up for yourself isn’t forbidden - it’s just consistently reframed as cruelty WHEN done against characters the narrative protects.
That’s not intentional malice - it’s immature writing about trauma and reform.
I don't remember Malevola sexually assaulting him. In the first place she likes Sonar. I feel like if it were that bad Robert would have said something.
As for Flambae, his was mad and lashing out (rightfully) but Z-Team protected Robert so no harm done. After what Mecha Man did I'd be mad too. This actually suggests Z-Team isn't as bad as you're making them out to be. Sure, he targeted Robert with his flames but rock guy shielded Robert and Flambae didn't keep trying to kill him after that. It was an outburst due to anger. It actually shows restraint that he doesn't keep trying to do it later in the story but opts to punch Robert.
As far as I know, Z-Team didn't purposefully assault civilians on the job.
Invisgal's flirting is "boundary-crossing + “villain antics” + comedy" as framed by the game, not sexual assault.
Assault on elderly is the biggest reach.. There is no scene where Invisigal deliberately attacks an elderly civilian in a grounded, realistic sense.
As for assault, it's mostly
The game never treats Invisigal as “a hero who is secretly beating civilians”.
But even with the way they act as villains, one could argue it's the system optimizing certain things. So the fact they don't act like normal superheroes is probably kind of the point.
Not gonna lie a lot of your reply is just semantics and excusing the character's actions or misremembering the game.
What Malevola does is Sexual Assault as she grabs his crotch and Robert does voice his discomfort immediately after. Nowhere is it confirmed she likes Sonar like that and romantic intent isn't needed for sexual assault anyway, she grabbed his crotch and he didn't like it.
Flambae still attempted to fry Robert to death and him failing to do that doesn't make him a better guy.
Invisigal also commits Sexual Assault, the game not treating either scene as what they are is the issue. Invisigal also punches the shit out of Chase who is an old ass dude in a grounded, realistic sense.
Flambae sets civilian houses on fire so much that there is a gap between him and the rest of the Z-Team because he gets the credit for putting them out. Also I would consider Robert a civilian at this point since he literally retired from superhero work episode 1 and doesn't have any powers, same with Chase.
You're cataloging individual acts without engaging with the actual argument: that the game's failure is systemic, not about whether Z-Team members are "bad people." The whole point of the story is that the system is flawed. That's the damn POINT.
The civilian definition is doing heavy lifting here. Robert isn't a bystander - he's employed in a state program managing dangerous offenders. Calling him a civilian because he lacks powers is like calling a prison counselor a civilian when an inmate threatens them. Technically true, functionally misleading.
More importantly: you're applying real-world criminal standards to a comic-book reformation story, then getting mad when the game doesn't. That's a genre mismatch, not a plot hole. You can dislike that tonal choice, but "Flambae attempted murder" only works if we're pretending superhero media operates on real-world physics and consequences - which it demonstrably doesn't.
Your strongest point remains Soupe's inconsistent treatment. The rest assumes the game should be a gritty workplace drama about assault, when it's clearly trying (and often failing) to be a darkly comedic critique of carceral systems offloading impossible emotional labor onto individuals.
You're critiquing the game for not being what it never tried to be.
It's also to mentor them. Robert was a former superhero, helping people and trying to calm down villains was literally part of his job, that's how it goes in most superhero media. It just doesn't often work that well cause they're in the process of blowing up a city block, but here robert is in their ear and able to actually have discussions with them in a calmer environment.
So no one above 21 needs that type of guidance? The fact that they were former villains disregards this point entirely.
Cause it's a swift way for them to shut down and close you out. Different people need to be handled differently, there's no one size fits all with these types of things.
I agree whole heartedly. If punishment worked for the Z team, they’d be in jail. The whole point of the program is to try a better way.
The game is subtly anti-prison. Though doesn’t let all villains off the hook (see Shroud).
Less punishment, moresoe accountability. If a person murders a bunch of people and receive absolutely no consequences, or are shielded from consequences that's enabling, not redemption.
Edit: he got offended and blocked me.
Reddit in a nutshell
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This is missing the point entirely. I'm not getting into an argument about what accountability means, accountability is just a word that defines an idea or meaning. When I said accountability, I meant "the willingness for one to accept responsibility for one's actions."
When a person is not held responsible for their own actions, and their actions are forgiven with no recourse, that's textbook enabling, which I shouldn't have to explain why is bad.
Characters should have to reflect on their past actions and acknowledge that they've done immoral things and have harmed other people. They should have to take responsibility by working to reverse the harm they've caused and taking blame. And instead of nothing happening to them, and them continuing to freely harm others and benefit from the privileges they've been given, some kind of boundary or rule needs to be set to make sure they're not rewarded for bad actions.
I never said anything about harshly punishing them or kicking them back into the system. But doing absolutely nothing when they do horrible things, and shielding them from the consequences of their own actions is horrible mentoring and not the way to rehabilitate someone. Nor is it the way to redeem them.
Letting a person continually do bad things, while protecting them from the consequences of their own actions, shifting responsibility away from them, all the while granting them privileges, is textbook enabling. This story is horrible when it comes to writing Redemption.
with that logic in this world, they should just scrap the whole project and execute all these murderous villains to remove any chance of them breaking out and causing anymore harm. It's made quite clear that if punishment alone was such a simple solution, they wouldn't even need robert, chase was more than happy to do so, and yet there was no change.
Z team clearly needed a different approach which is why robert was so effective. He got close enough to them and saw them as people rather than nuisances and was able to level with them enough for some of them to eventually respect and listen to him and treat him as one of their own, that was the main one for these types of problem people to actually get their shit together. It's easy to just say "punish them, that'll whip them into shape" because it literally is just the easiest thing to do compared to being more patient with them then many might think they deserve.
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Let them take accountability for their actions. Stop giving them passes for doing horrible things with no rules or boundaries or consequences. You can't just let someone who murdered a bunch of people back on the job the next day like nothing happened.
W rant W points
Keep cooking king
I think all your points are extremely fair but some of these especially the flambae point might be because of the troubled development the game had and all the stuff that got cut, hopefully they take their time with the sequel and make it even better
Although still flawed, I think flambae was actually a good look at what they should’ve been going for for invisigsl and the various things the Z-team does, because after acting like a villain, after almost killing him, instead of the game making you go to flambae and force Robert again to guide them through what wasn’t just a temper tantrum or a whoopsies but something serious, Flambae actually admits his mistake himself, says he’s sorry, and in his way says that while he may harbor some anger, he’ll try to move on and ACT LIKE A RESPONSIBLE ADULT, unlike visi who always needs Robert holding her hand for everything
Agree 100%
I think this is a pretty well considered POV and you’ve articulated your points well.
What I don’t see in your little list of preemptive rebuttals is any concessions to genre. Dispatch is Superhero fiction, and is constrained by and embraces genre.
Consider how none of the Z-team ever actually get hurt, and don’t seem to kill anyone in the final battle even with fire or explosive powers. Why is that? Well that’s just how Superhero stuff works.
A regular human punches a guy and he can end up killing him, but Superman, even with Super-dexterity always holds back just enough to never seriously harm anyone, even when he is unclear on a villain’s powerset? Shouldn’t he be accidentally killing people all the time? What about the Hulk?
This doesn’t actually matter! Superhero stories are fables. They’re about interrogating good and evil, not enforcing strict verisimilitude.
In this way, of course you can redeem Coupe or Sonar. You stopped them from hurting people. No harm (or less harm) no foul. Of course Robert is okay being punched by Visi! He got punched and punched people all the time! That’s just part of being a hero or villain!
Also, do you think it’s realistic for Jim from the office to prank Dwight all the time and not face disciplinary action for it?
The game is an office comedy AND a Superhero story. The elements of drama are meant to enhance the comedy or the themes of redemption, not actually put it in a different genre
I actually agree with you that I think I didn't receive the comedy aspect of the game as well but I still think that the impact of the Z-Team being redeemed is a lot less meaningful if literally every crime is treated as a joke.
I don’t know if “every crime committed by the Z-team is a joke.” But some crimes are. I think it’s a matter of taste whether it is able to navigate that line, but it’s certainly there.
At risk of rehashing the ‘Sexual Assault’ discourse (but you did mention it): Malevola’s one nut tap is played for laughs (and it’s only once; the second time is a feigned grab). Visi’s non consensual kiss an episode later is very much not played for laughs — it’s the culmination of her romance arc and deeply tied to how she approaches relationships and her own trauma. It’s a serious emotional scene.
When Flambae tries to fry Robert, it’s treated as a serious attack (though a thwarted one). Later, when he shows up with a lamp for his housewarming party, the punch is a comedic bit.
Is it a mistake to have this kind of variable approach to violence in the game? Maybe… but I of course disagree. After all, not all violence is the same in the real world.
If a stranger punched you on the arm, you may take it very differently from if your friend of 10 years did.
Dispatch just exists in a world of heightened violence. Ie the world of Superheroes
It's not played for laughs but it's not acknowledged as sexual assault in the game, and this leaning in, in this scene is literally required to enter a relationship with Invisigal by the end of the game.
The Malevola part is just missing the point and downplaying it unnecessarily.
Edit: he got offended and blocked me.
In Mal’s case, I’d put a distinction between ‘downplaying’ and ‘skipping over.’ It doesn’t stop to acknowledge it, but it doesn’t diminish it either.
Robert is visibly uncomfortable by her behavior. If they wanted to downplay it, they’d have him brush it off, or another character shame Robert for his response. They do neither. Edit: and I’d even go so far as to say the fact that Mal only pretends to grab him in the second instance is to show her adapting to Robert’s discomfort.
I’d say in that specific case it’s a ‘depiction is not endorsement’ situation.
As for Visi… yeah I’d rather not get into it. It’s too involved a conversation for OP’s complaint about tone and I’d rather not derail.
Yeah, I feel OP is applying "real-world" ethics and ignoring the genre conventions and tone of the work.
But those ethics matter for a reason. In the real world we care about bodily autonomy and consent. Why would murder and sexual assault not be wrong or have negative consequences in the world of Dispatch.
When a character murders a bunch of innocent people, you can't just go "don't apply real world ethics," when a person points out how ridiculous it is for a person to be completely forgiven and be shielded from consequences from an action that is inherently harmful and immoral.
By that same logic, if we saw Phenomenon man beat Blonde Blazer to a pulp, we can't point it out as abuse or that it has significant moral consequences.
But Phenomaman didn’t do that. The violence in Dispatch is stylized Superhero violence, and fairly bloodless until Shroud’s well earned beat down. All of the villain behavior of the Z-team happens off screen. In the same mythical land of most of Harley Quinn’s crimes.
No Z-team member murders innocent civilians on screen. The exception is maybe Sonar and Coupe but it’s not clear how many people were actually hurt if you manage to defeat them in the gameplay.
And even Coupe is one of the few that caught a murder charge. Uh, 68 in fact, since she was a mob enforcer. But she’s clearly the outlier. They collared Sonar for extortion and cyber bullying! Punch up and Mal caught second degree murder charges as a result of deaths caused by Mayhem.
Invisigal has an assault record, but that’s the worst of her crimes. She’s a thief.
If you think Coupe can’t be redeemed the game gives you a clear path to putting her back in jail. It’s not a lovey dovey game unless you want it to be.
The dialogue is so bad, it sounds like it’s from 10-15 years ago when “quippy” was popular, only with (a lot) more dickjokes. One of my first thoughts was “tumblr would’ve loved this”
Flambae is so consistently funny though he's my GOAT
I haven’t played the game, I only know vaguely about it, but that sounds pretty messed up. Nice post.
I would still recommend you play it if you can. It's probably the most enjoyable Telltale style game since the gameplay is actually fun and I still liked a lot of other things about it.
Oh, I’ve wanted to get it, just haven’t had the time or money. As for the messed up choices presented and the rather absurd consequences of them, it’s not like the TT games didn’t have that issue, so it’s just kind expected, if tragic in a way.
I mean it just highlights how the super hero rhetoric can be toxic in ways comics and movies don't really explore.
Still, it's a super hero game so it makes sense it expects you to play it as a super hero for the good ending. That means you first presume people are inherently good, and then act accordingly no matter the situation. If people made sense, if decisions could just be made with hard, cold logic, there wouldn't be any super nor heroic in the super hero dating sim.
Of course super hero rhetoric also assumes some people are inherently evil, but that plus the self sacrificing paragon are a whole other can of worms which Dispatch isn't really interested in exploring. You are an out of commission super hero who still seeks to inspire people even though you aren't punching bad guys in the face.
I think the thing about Dispatch is, it's basically a game about being a social worker at a rehab program. It's no good to point at the people in your rehab program and say, "You're an adult! Leave me alone and seek help." They sought help. You're help.
Many of the people in rehab are not going to be able to get their act together on their own. They will often be unpleasant to be around. They will have lots of awful habits and coping mechanisms. They will spiral and hurt the people around them. They will be socially maladjusted. They will not always be grateful or gracious. They will respond poorly to criticism. They will almost certainly fall off the wagon more than once. They will not "deserve" your help. They still need it.
Like, yes, from an objective standpoint, Invisigal is a massive asshole to Robert and he'd be fully within his rights if he told her to fuck off and threw her out of the rehab program. If he does this, it is very unlikely that she will ever get the help she needs. Is that his problem? Maybe not. It certainly doesn't have to be his problem.
Invisigal is someone who desperately needs help, who wants help, but who makes helping her very hard. There's a pretty cool person buried underneath all that, but it would take someone extremely patient to help her through her shit and not cut her off every time she does something that fully justifies cutting her off. She needs a hero. You don't have to be that hero. But you could be.
If that doesn't sound compelling to you, then yeah, you probably won't vibe with Dispatch.
Nobody is against bad people being bad. What's being critsized is the lack of accountability when said bad people do bad things. When not only are they forgiven with no accountability whatsoever, but the narrative itself doesn't acknowledge that what they did was wrong.
It's like if a villain murdered 100 kids, but is forgiven by the protagonist the next day, and gets a job at McDonald's with no reflection on how he's harmed others and how to atone for it.
Literally everyone does ream her out constantly, though? Blonde Blazer recommends cutting her from the team. Chase actively hates her and repeatedly tells both Robert and Invisigal that she will never be a hero. Royd tells her that he'll never trust her again and handcuffs her to a wall. Even if you pick all the nicest options, Robert yells at her a lot early on. I genuinely don't know what people who claim this doesn't happen are talking about. There are so many scenes on the "redeem Invisigal" route where people tell you "Invisigal is trash and I would get rid of her."
An example is when Robert calls Invisigal out, gets punched by her, then blames himself for it.
Give me a specific example where Invisigal accepts responsibility for her actions or is held accountable? How many times does Robert defend Invisigal or shield her from responsibility of the consequences of her own actions?
People not liking her for doing bad things doesn't count.
Invisigal: "They're right. I don't deserve anyone's forgiveness, anyone's help, anyone's love... because I can never repay it. Nothing I can do will ever make up for what I've done to you. I'd hoped getting the Astral Pulse back would help, but... I couldn't even do that."
She then confesses to having planted the bomb on Robert's suit for Shroud and says she's managed to fuck up Robert's life twice. This is when she's being held accountable by being suspended from the program.
Now tell me, what other time does this happen? And I promise this is the last time I'll ask for an example.
The next time you see her is an active combat scenario, at the end of which she literally jumps in front of a bullet for you. Then the game's over. Sorry there isn't a second scene where she calls herself unforgivable and says she can never make up for the ways in which she's wronged you, dawg. I guess you're right and she never takes responsibility for her actions.
Eating a bullet doesn't mean she's been held accountable or accepts responsibility for her actions. It just shows she cares about Robert and decides to not become a villain.
I don't need another dialogue option like that. Just something that shows she understands the harm she's caused or is held accountable. Particularly without self-loathing or victimizing herself.
You see the issue here man? You're scraping for examples but could only find one, and another that doesn't even qualify. And can't find anything other than that.
But you know what? That's not even the issue. Invisigal is a flawed person so it makes sense that she's deflective and doesn't take responsibility for her actions.
The issue is that the game doesn't acknowledge this. Her self-victimization and avoidance of responsibility.
And most of all, the fact that you can't redeem her without her enabling her. The game simply doesn't give you the option if you want the hero ending.
I could give you a whole list of examples of Robert shielding Invisigal and protecting her from responsibility.
Circling back to the point of my original comment, I feel that this focus on "the bad person should have an appropriate number of scenes where she is held accountable or apologizes to us, but like not in a self-loathing way, she needs to express her contrition in the correct tone of voice", and tallying up the number of held-accountable scenes versus the number of not-held-accountable scenes to determine how accountable she is, are counter to the theme of the story being told. This isn't a story about determining who deserves what penance, it's about helping people who don't necessarily deserve it and forgiving people who don't believe they can be forgiven and loving people who are unlovable because that's how the world heals. I also personally thought the ending was pretty solid about showing Invisigal taking responsibility for her actions by helping to fix the things she broke, and that inserting another verbal apology scene after that would have been emotionally redundant.
That said, I don't think we'll reach an agreement here. Have a nice night.
That's why I said particularly. It's not essential but it's even better if she can accept responsibility without victimizing herself or deflecting responsibility by guilt tripping.
And I also said that the fact that she's flawed isn't the problem.
You're not understanding what I'm saying. I'm not saying you can't forgive in the story, or you can't help bad people, or you can't redeem them;
I'm saying that the only way through which Dispatch allows you to redeem Invisigal is through enabling.
How accountable she is, is important because forgiveness without accountability is not redemption, it's enabling.
And continuing to let others harm people, and protect them and sheild them when they've done horrible things, is not how the world heals. It's how it's harmed.
The fact that the story does this brings down its own messaging and redemption narrative. By ignoring how she's harmed others and her flaw of avoiding responsibility for her actions.
You can redeem someone and help them become a better person while simultaneously holding them responsible for their actions. Trying to help another person become a better person by protecting them when they do horrible things is enabling them and ultimately, is actually worse for their growth. Not to mention how it's unfair to the people that have been harmed by them.
I'm not saying she should be punished or thrown in jail, or not be given the ability to improve or redeem herself.
I'm saying she shouldn't be coddled and protected when she harms others. And that accountability should not be deflected from her when she is responsible for a horrible act.
... They are not at rehab though. Robert is NOT a social worker.
Isn’t the entire point of the Phoenix program to rehabilitate supervillains?
While i agree with most of your points, they didn't bother me as much because most of it operates with cartoon logic in which you can be enemies and then friends in the next episode or even int he same episode. So i didn't really care that much.
I will say that while i do get that invisigal is a criminal in rehab, i really did not see any reason to persue her as a romantic interest after the break room scene. In real life i would stay the fk away from her and get more people involved, but since this gamey cartoon logic i did support her without caring for her apology. But not even with that outlandish logic would i consider someone like that a posible partner, it weirds me out that no one cares except the best love interest.
I do totally agree 100% with the sexual harrasment. All the peeking, entering the mens room, the touching it was all really uncomfortable. I try to repeat in my head that these people doing that are criminals but even then it's never adressed as a bad thing. Imagine if robert was a woman and invisiguy crashed the women's room while the mc has her shirt off, or being slapped on the cooch by malevola. Wtf where those moments jesus christ....
I don't think you can just handwave this point. Dispatch is a comedy. You're putting more weight on these things than the story itself does, because in a comedy, these things don't have the same consequences they do in the real world.
Do you watch The Hangover and say "It's preposterous that the story treats being attacked by a tiger like a joke, they're literally in mortal danger and will have trauma for life." Do you watch Talladega Nights and call it bad writing when they're playing Ricky Bobby's PTSD for laughs, yet we're supposed to like these characters?
Maybe you just can't suspend your disbelief in this particular fashion, but nothing about Dispatch's writing is atypical for a comedy.
Okay but Invisigal's SA and assault, Soupe's terrorism, and Flambae's attempted murder weren't played for laughs, those are actually part of the story and characters.
Yes, the story includes both elements that are meant to be taken seriously, and elements that aren't. It trusts the viewer to intuit which is which based on context and tone, and in my opinion handles it well for the most part.
We have a serious moment where a character sexually assaulted another but it's not acknowledged by the narrative as sexual assault or a harmful act.
Flambae attempts to murder Robert and we're supposed to care about that, but not the multiple people Sonar killed.
Maybe you can't forgive them, but my GOAT Robert Robertson the Third can.
You're playing a Superhero. You don't think the Superhero would do their best to help people? Especially when it only benefits them to do so? The whole point of being a Superhero is you're putting your ass out on the line to do good when it isn't your job.
They're literally in a program to rehabilitate them. They are there to receive guidance.
For Dispatch I agree the writing is flawed but not really in the way you are talking about it. I think the key issue with the Z team is that even though they are supposedly given a second chance nobody treats them any better than when they were villains until Robert comes around. It's an underdog story cliche that many sports movies have where a coach takes charge of a group of delinquents and they act better because he believes in them. In that sense, completely rejecting Invisigal causing her to turn into the villain makes sense because it's going against the direction of this type of story in a "the child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel it's warmth." Kind of way. The flaws with Dispatch is it feels a need to make a joke every 5 seconds which means a terrible joke miss rate and that it undercuts the more serious moments with quirky humor.
I feel like she kinda does once but is like there are more important things to deal with, which is true.
You're not an ex-villain. It's expected from them. Different standards.
If I were in Robert's shoes I wouldn't go and talk to him. Remember his words? "F you all!" I think it played alright with Flambae needing to punch Robert once a week or something.
I ultimately didn’t enjoy how the game handled its last two acts, so while I can agree with your thesis some of the points totally escape me.
The whole point is what they are supposed to be bad people originally. Or “not good” at maximum Their age or maturity don’t matter, their bad acts during the game don’t matter - all of it feeds into the main idea of these characters being “not good” originally. That’s why redemption as a theme even exists. If you are put off by them clearly acting negatively - that should be expected by the nature of the explored subject. So I don’t get that part of the rant. Like you discuss how it’s not Robert’s responsibility or how in-universe the system should punish them. But that’s really not relevant at all to the subject. It’s not Robert’s responsibility as office worker to mentor them. It’s a theme of the narrative you can either follow through with or not.
Now how it handles that theme is more relevant to the topic and that’s with what I think Dispatch struggles with at times.
Problem is the lack of accountability. It handles it's redemption narrative extremely poorly.
If you didn't seen explanation put in story, amulet seems like asspull.
Man, you literaly said yourself that there is explanation in [alternative if you date Visi] story.
And some other points:
- While nobody takes job seriously, and have problems, it is showed that aside from Visi they at least trying. Flambe have anger issues, but whole super hero rant in first episode shows that he takes it seriously. As much as he can be serious. Only Coupe can be said to not really doing superhero work. But she is doing work they pay for. Just not superhero one. [aka resolve problem in fastest way. Probably with murder] Also murder by hero seems to be ok in this universe.
- Actually no. If you are shitty and Coupe/Sonar destroy half of city you don't get option to bait them out.
But ye, game force Visi onto you as fuck, and guiltyplay you for any critic you give her.
Having a key part of the ending for ALL ROUTES be determined by something only explained beforehand in ONE route is just a bad choice.
I don't think any of them are serious about superhero work, only that some of them are serious about keeping their jobs, which is shown by the Z-Team sabotaging each other episode 2.
Lowkey didn't know that about Soupe but they're still a terrorist and right hand man to Shroud.
Dispatch: romance visi. romance visi. romance visi. If you don't romance visi it's harder to get the good ending.
Also dispatch: if you want to understand the finale you need to romance blond blazer this one specific time and then get back to romancing visi.
I like all the designs but felt Blonde Blazer was very uninspired design wise. I could probably name 20 superheroes with blonde hair and blue eyes wearing a white and blue suit off the top of my head.
I like your take on this. I'm usually in the minority on choices too.
This game really is a litmus test for whether people believe in redemption huh.
You need to meet these people where they're at. Villainy is what they're used to. It'll take time and effort to change that. That means you're going to need to be patient, give a lot of grace, and let some stuff go. If you just kick them out of the program for not being perfect right off the hop then nothing is ever going to get better.
The entire point behind the Sonar/Coup plotline is that by kicking them off the team, you pushed them back into a life of villainy. Because of course you did. This job was their chance for a better life and you took that away from them. The message the company is going for, "We mean business!" is completely vapid and superficial. Just like "tough on crime" policies are in real life. They literally just make everything worse. From Sonar and Coup's perspective, the message is, "You're a failure. You'll never be a hero. A villain is what you were meant to be." This idea is also conveyed through Invisigal initially having the exact same mindset. I don't know how the game could have been any more clear about this. Whichever member you keep stays on the heroic path. Whichever member you kick out returns to a life of crime. Your decision literally shapes their future.
I'm majoring in Social Work and I very much have more in common with you based on your bio than anyone of the "tough on crime" crowd. Generalizing people based on their takes on video games is rude.
You know what? You're right. I didn't need to negatively characterize you. I could express my own opinion without doing that. I'm sorry.
I just disagree with most of your interpretations. I thought the game handled the theme of redemption really well, and I was happy with both my choices and the results they brought. It spoke to me in a way that I understand and appreciate.
I had no problem putting up with most of the characters' toxic behaviors, they felt realistic and understandable to me. Not saying what they did was okay, but like I said, to me it was just meeting the people where they were at. It's alright if you didn't feel the same way.
Meh, very nit picky tbh
Woah
Its a hopeful villain-based story and it plays out well.
For example, if Sonar/Coupe fails to do any damage when being a terrorist, you literally cannot forgive them. Similar to Invisigal, if you fail to trust her, she will turn to villainy, but still remember that you tried.
A lot of people are dealt bad hands and go that route, but are willing to change (just bad at it cause they never did it). A lot of things imply even villainous characters didn't want to be villains (Coupe/Sonar specifically, and Visi says that outright) and sometimes heroes are kinda bad too (Mecha Man 2 is implied as a bad father). Funnily enough, your newest hero recruit (Waterboy/Phenomeman) are full good guys, but suffer major flaws as well, exactly like your villains. Just that they are less crimey about that.
I have to agree with the other commenters on the "this is just a case of us having completely different expectations of the work"
Robert's job as a dispatcher is just that, but I like how he develops a fondness for the Z-team and they become sort of a found family. Robert himself is a bit of a fuck-up and a loner so he recognizes that without Chase and others looking out for him at times and giving him trust to do the right thing, he might've turned out like the rest of the Z-team.
Now clearly, the whole thing is very idealistic, but I feel like it holds up well in the context of its story where second chances and not giving up on people for acting out (without trying to understand them at least) seems to be the major theme. It's very hopemaxxed "everyone deserves kindness" naive, but I dunno, it felt cheesy and fun enough that I bought into it np
No, it's pointing out bad writing, contradiction and lack of consistency.
But I basically said the same thing as half of the other upvoted commenters, so clearly I'm not spouting random stuff here. A lot of people didn't perceive that contradiction because they were invested in the narrative