Dispatch Episodes 7 and 8 Finish Out the Season With a Bang (Review)

Dispatch’s debut season has had high highs and medium-high highs, but they have all been leading to this. A season finale has the opportunity to make up for past shortcomings and contain the payoffs that were set up in the stronger chapters. Dispatch Episodes 7 and 8 don’t magically undo some of the weaker moments in prior episodes, yet it still caps the season off with style.

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Episodes 7 and 8 benefit from the stakes being raised after Episode 6’s explosive cliffhanger ending. It’s a dour turn that gives these chapters a different tone that’s appropriate for a finale. Setups are finally paid off here and this mostly has to do with how the villain Shroud is given an appropriate amount of screentime.

Rating: 4/5

Pros	Cons
Solid ending with a palpable amount of tension	A couple strange plot-related contrivances
Worthy payoffs for a few threads	Dispatching seems to have stakes this time, but it’s mostly an illusion

Dispatch Episodes 7 and 8 Finally Show Off the Big Bad

Shroud’s appearances, for the most part, were locked to the first episode. While an appropriate tease then, Dispatch’s later installments failed to push this thread much further. It let the game focus on its main cast and there is plenty of value in building up these gifted misfits, but relegating the main antagonist to some off-screen nuisance (if that) meant those episodes lacked the sort of external pressure Dispatch was mostly missing. Shroud’s presence in Episodes 7 and 8 lead to some tense scenes and twists that make for some compelling drama; his very presence brings violence. Episodes 7 and 8 still have a handful of quality jokes, but the comedy takes a backseat to these more serious scenes, which the game has earned at this point thanks to the groundwork set by the aforementioned character development in the other episodes.

Even though it’s satisfying to finally see Shroud in action, his scenes are rushed. His backstory and beef with Robert is blazed through and he’s not as able to spew more than the surface-level summaries of his philosophy. He’s obviously evil — his Doctor Doom-esque mask makes that abundantly clear — but his motivations aren’t dwelled upon or explored much outside of a couple of lines here and there. It’s a disappointing symptom of how he was neglected in prior episodes, demonstrating once again how he should have played a more prevalent role in the entire season. Shroud fits pretty cleanly within the trope-laden archetype of a comic book villain, so not having time for more characterization hurts him even more.

Shroud could have been something greater, but at least its most important characters get more fleshed-out arcs. These episodes can splinter depending on past choices, but they touch on different sides of the redemption themes that have rippled through the whole season. Redemption works as a central theme in choice-based games like this because both paths can be equally engrossing. Relapse is a powerful subject, as is atonement. As such, it makes the other endings actually worth looking into, which is a compliment to a narrative adventure game like this. An odd contrivance or two pop up in the final act and add needless inconsistencies right at the finish line, but, while bothersome, they don’t diminish the finale’s impact and the action-heavy final showdown that precedes it.

Dispatch Episode 8‘s Dispatching Takes One Step Forward and One Step Back

Some of the chaos is intertwined with its dispatching scenes that highlight the best and worst parts of this system. Choosing who to send out has always been a novel gameplay mechanic since it requires thinking and not reflexes — making it a natural fit for the narrative adventure genre — but its lack of consequences sucked some air out these sequences. Neither failures nor successes were reflected elsewhere, leading to a disconnect this genre built around choice and consequences shouldn’t have.

Episode 8 injects tension into these gameplay segments by adding a health bar that chips away after each botched mission. It’s painful to screw up a raid but relieving to ace one and hints at what prior episodes should have tried to emulate more often. However, not everything goes smoothly and this final hurrah ends up exposing more of the Dispatch’s dispatching deficiencies. It’s a rather difficult and elongated bout of missions, which is conceptually acceptable but ends up just pointing out how easy it is to go on a losing streak. Failing a round means a character gets injured and lowered stats that, in turn, make them even weaker and more susceptible to losing before eventually being down for the count. This vicious cycle is demoralizing and points out how there’s not enough depth in these mechanics to bounce back; the one heal and resurrection isn’t enough.

The bigger issue, though, is how losing this climactic dispatch has seemingly little impact on the story. While the performance of every dispatch session should have been reflected in the game in some capacity through added scenes or even just small offhand dialogue, this should have been the dispatch mission to have more lasting ramifications. The health bar implied this would be the case, but it ended up being another ruse. Again, these sections are still engrossing in some capacity due to the light strategic thinking they require, but they could have been much more.

Dispatch Episodes 7 and 8 still, despite these bumps, close out this first season with enough panache and fulfill most of the promise of the introductory chapters. Even though it didn’t fully deliver with its big bad guy, Shroud’s menacing presence puts these two episodes in a pressure cooker that makes them hard to look away from. This stress translates to the final dispatch, which lacks consequences yet is still both a good and bad kind of headache. It was unclear if Episodes 7 and 8 would continue the slight downward trend established by the other episodes. And while they aren’t the highlight of the season, they still close out this game with a hearty, superpowered punch.

A PS5 copy of Dispatch was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.