Dispatch’s Mecha Man Makes Fashionable Superheroes Look Utterly Out of Contact

AdHoc Studio’s choose-your-own journey sport Dispatch has arrived throughout an fascinating time — when the superhero style feels prefer it’s working on fumes. Caped, supernatural power-wielding icons maintain getting louder, stronger, and extra cinematic, and any makes an attempt to humanize them are fleeting earlier than they’re flying via the sky once more doing what no human on Earth can do. They’re entertaining to look at, however there’s solely a lot shoppers can relate to. That hole has solely grown in recent times, and it units the proper stage for what Dispatch brings to the desk.

On the finish of the day, fashionable superheroes are largely out of contact with the fact that defines regular human existence. Their greatest issues are cosmic threats, world-ending supervillains, and multiversal anomalies, and even after they lose one thing or somebody vital to them (as they typically do), their talents and/or riches permit them to cope with these issues in methods the typical particular person can not. That is what makes Dispatch‘s Robert “Mecha Man” Robertson such a breath of recent air within the superhero style, as he reveals what it means to be an on a regular basis hero versus these one would possibly see saving the world in a Marvel movie.

Dispatch’s Mecha Man Is What True Heroes Are Made Of

The Significance of Being Common

As Mecha Man, Dispatch‘s Robert Robertson was as soon as extra like Batman or Iron Man, in that he did not have any inherent powers and as an alternative “purchased” his energy with the cash he possessed. The one downside with Robert’s state of affairs by the point Dispatch‘s story begins is that he has already spent the vast majority of his inheritance (his father and grandfather earlier than him have been Mecha Man) making an attempt to maintain his Mecha Man swimsuit maintained. To make issues worse, the sport’s premise sees Robert’s superhero swimsuit destroyed, and with no cash left to restore it, he’s considerably cornered into taking a job on the Superhero Dispatch Community, the place he would fill the function of dispatcher for an unruly crew of supervillains.

Right here, Robert turns into entrenched within the each day lifetime of a standard human being, working an 8 to five ad infinitum, though his hopes are that his Mecha Man swimsuit will finally be repaired and his life as a superhero restored. Throughout his time as a dispatcher for SDN, he makes a number of makes an attempt at being a superhero with out his swimsuit, solely to typically discover himself injured and worse for put on. In different phrases, he struggles to adapt to his new regular, because it contrasts the will in him to serve the better good.

Nonetheless, over time, he leans into his function as dispatcher, and the job begins altering him in methods his Mecha Man swimsuit by no means might. He begins to grasp the individuals he works with, learns the best way to lead with out counting on his swimsuit to do the heavy lifting, and discovers that true heroism typically occurs in locations and positions much less celebrated and acknowledged. Within the course of, Robert turns into one thing the world of modern superheroes has grown more and more out of contact with.

Working With the Unworkable

A giant a part of that transformation comes from the crew he’s assigned to. Dispatch‘s Z-Team is a gaggle of former villains who’re making an attempt to earn a second probability, and they’re about as unpredictable as one would possibly count on. They bicker, they ignore directions, they usually make Robert’s job more durable than it ever ought to be, however additionally they give him a firsthand have a look at the individuals he by no means actually understood when he was sporting the swimsuit. Working with them forces him to decelerate and pay attention till he figures out the best way to information a crew that does not at all times wish to be guided, which is one thing fashionable superheroes typically rise above.

At the same time as a superhero office comedy, Dispatch is clearly difficult the tropes and archetypes the superhero style often depends on. Most fashionable superheroes (actually) fly above actuality, however Robert is compelled to stay in it and be topic to it. He cannot escape the load of regular life in the intervening time, and he does not have the posh of fixing the whole lot with cash anymore. As an alternative, Robert’s story in Dispatch reveals how true heroism is borne via selections, effort, and the willingness to maintain going even when it is powerful — “not all heroes put on capes,” because it have been.

Programs

Launched

October 22, 2025

ESRB

Mature 17+ / Blood, Crude Humor, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Content material, Robust Language, Use of Medication and Alcohol

Developer(s)

AdHoc Studio

Writer(s)

AdHoc Studio