Perspective
Spoilers Ahead
Even in fictional worlds, not everyone gets the same opportunities. Such is the case in “Dispatch,” a video game developed by AdHoc Studio in collaboration with Critical Role.
The events of the game follow Robert Robertson III—yes, that is his real name—as he enters a forced hiatus from being a famous superhero, Mecha Man, before another well-renowned hero, Blonde Blazer, approaches him with a proposal that could get his mech suit fixed.
The catch? In exchange for the repairs to his suit, Robert has to take up a job at the local branch of an emergency service company called Superhero Dispatch Network (SDN) as a dispatcher for a team of former villains being trained to become heroes. This team, called the Z-Team, was recruited for a rehabilitation program, the Phoenix Program, that SDN started to help villains make better life choices.
Since its release in late 2025, the indie game took off in popularity, but a lot of fans had a gripe with one plot point that takes place during “Episode 3: Turnover,” in which Robert is forced to cut one of the lowest ranking members from the team.
Complaints rose about the writing appearing lazy and the cut team member’s eventual return to the dark side being an obvious turn of events, but there’s one thing these criticisms didn’t consider: That’s the point.
The first time I was faced with the gut-wrenching decision to choose between cutting Harvard graduate half-bat hybrid, Sonar, or umbrakinetic former assassin, Coupé, I knew deep-down that for whoever I chose to let go, their story wouldn’t end there.
Sure enough, it didn’t, because it obviously wouldn’t.
Seeing the cut team member return to villainy in “Episode 8: Synergy” isn’t by any means supposed to be a surprising plot twist. It’s a “duh!” moment. Well, duh, when you take away a villain’s opportunity to do good, they’re going to go back to being evil, because that’s what they know how to do!
That logic doesn’t end within the code of the game, but in the world around us. When rehabilitation is selective with who it does and doesn’t consider to be worthy of redemption, what does that mean for the people it leaves behind?
In a Medium article titled “Why You Repeat the Same Mistakes,” the author makes the claim that, “We repeat the same mistakes because we fear making new ones.”
It’s human nature to return to the devil that we know as opposed to the one that we don’t. That’s why it’s not surprising when the member that gets cut from the team immediately returns to being evil. They’re not inherently evil or bad, they’re just scared of doing something different than what they’re used to, even if they know that what they’re used to isn’t right.
Whether it’s something as severe as the failure of our world’s prison systems to the less intense social media witch hunt dubbed “cancel culture,” the fact is that the world around us is largely unforgiving. It’s in this world that “Dispatch” asks us to entertain the power of forgiveness.
Greater Good Magazine defines forgiveness as “a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you.”
Robert, though shown to be a sarcastic wit, has such a large capacity for forgiveness depending on the player’s choices.
When one team member, Invisigal, confesses that she took part in the event that forced Robert to step down from being a hero, he’s given the option to forgive her. After the events of Episode 8 (depending on the player’s performance throughout), Robert is given the option to forgive the cut team member and allow them to return to the Phoenix Program.
As if to add an extra layer to this idea, the player has to consciously and deliberately make these decisions for him, allowing them to take the front seat in Robert’s process of forgiveness. Furthermore, the Phoenix Program itself operates on the idea of redemption, as it gives formerly imprisoned villains the opportunity to do something good with the lives they were given.
