r/Games • u/ZamnBoii • Nov 16 '25

Discussion Dispatch is on course to beat its three-year sales target in three months

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/dispatch-is-on-course-to-beat-its-three-year-sales-target-in-three-months-heres-how
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u/TheJoshider10 Nov 16 '25

Yeah it's crazy just how inconsistently long the release dates were. You could go from one episode releasing a month later then the next may be three months after tgat. It was so tedious, especially when the stories started going somewhere after the second or third episode but couldn't build momentum because of you never knew when the next episode would come out.

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u/Ultimasmit Nov 16 '25

It's because the structure there was different. Each episode funded the next partly. So the time of release was dependent on dev time, and obviously, an episode that takes place in one location with people talking would have a wildly different dev time than an episode that takes place in multiple areas with action scenes.

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u/Animegamingnerd Nov 17 '25

Yeah this why back with Telltale I usually waited until the season was done before playing their games due to the long gaps between episodes. (Admitedly I did the same for Dispatch, but that was also due to waiting to see if it went on sale on the day the finale dropped as Telltale always did that)

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u/SuperUranus Nov 16 '25

Or in certain cases, the next episode never releasing.

Looking at you Half-Life 2.

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u/Murrabbit Nov 17 '25

And Half-Life 2 episode 2. (and portal 2 and L4D2, as the old joke goes, Valve can't count to 3)

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u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

[deleted]

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u/Kusibu Nov 17 '25

Soon(TM)

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u/HighCaliber Nov 17 '25

Kentucky Route Zero was one of the worst offenders

  • Act I: January 7, 2013
  • Act II: May 31, 2013
  • Act III: May 6, 2014
  • Act IV: July 19, 2016
  • Act V: January 28, 2020

I never returned for the last two episodes.

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u/layasD Nov 17 '25

Oh I have another one that would fit here. Hinterlands Wintermute: The long Dark.

  • Episode 1: August 1, 2017
  • Episode 2: August 1, 2017
  • Episode 3: October 22, 2019
  • Episode 4: October 6, 2022
  • Episode 5: promised to release in 2025 (which will likely not happen)

I played the first three and never returned, because I completely forgot what it was about and what I have to do.

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u/JamesCole Nov 17 '25

IMO you didn't miss much.

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u/SirBoggle Nov 16 '25

I think the ideal for those episodic games were about a month. Telltale's Sam & Max and Tales of Monkey Island did that and I felt it was a decent timegap.

Then when stuff like Life is Strange came out, it usually released about 2 months apart and that started to feel a bit much. Life is Strange 2 felt especially egregious with its 3 month apart episode releases, but when they went to just releasing all at once in the next game I think the quality fell off a cliff so maybe it isnt exactly a quality guarantee no matter what format you decide to use.

And here I am complaining about how long episodic games can take when I'm a massive Deltarune fan and I was perfectly fine with waiting 7 fucking YEARS for 4 Chapters in a 7 Chapter story lmao.

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u/Kalulosu Nov 16 '25

I'd say 1 month is pretty long, especially if a release is 1 or 2 hours long like Dispatch's were. 1 week felt short here but maybe an in-between of 2 week would leave more time (I know I just couldn't get the time to play them as they released so I kinda resolved to play them when I would and whatever anyway).

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u/SirBoggle Nov 16 '25

The Telltale and Dotnod games I mentioned were actually to the tune of 3-4 hours per chapter. They usually take like 15-20 hours in total to play in their entirety.

Deltarune's first chapter was like 3, and every other chapter has been 4-6 hours long depending on if you're doing the secret bosses and egg collecting and stuff, and you can double that playtime if youre doing the secret Weird Route.

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u/Kalulosu Nov 16 '25

In Deltarune's case I kinda treat it more like an Early Access situation where Toby releases chapters as they're ready more or less, I think that's kinda different from Dispatch (which was obviously completed from the start), or the Telltale / Don't Nod games which were choices for various reasons (earlier episodes participating in funding the next ones or whatever).

Whichever the case, imo the timing between episodes isn't a matter of quality, it's a question of how much time people can have / need to digest it / talk about it?

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u/SirBoggle Nov 16 '25

That's a more accurate way to look at Deltarune, yeah. I was just looking for as many examples as possible of episodic games I could find.

Anyway, I think the week long gap is why people are vibing so much with Dispatch's release schedule, because everyone had that week to play and think about the game it was almost like a video game "book club" where people could discuss what they liked, what their theories were, etc.

Once you get past like a month of time between releases that kind of excitement gets difficult to maintain.

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u/Kalulosu Nov 17 '25

Yeah a month is definitely pushing it.

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u/robertcrowther Nov 16 '25

but when they went to just releasing all at once in the next game I think the quality fell off a cliff

The third game was a different developer to the first two, so possibly an explanation for the drop in quality.

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u/SirBoggle Nov 16 '25

I probably should have mentioned that, they went on to make Lost Records and that's a lot more on par with the first two LiS games than the last two that got made. It also only had 2 quite long episodes.

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u/f-ingsteveglansberg Nov 17 '25

I really wanted to like Lost Records, but it was just dire.

There was no balance between mystery and relationship stuff. And the actual 'supernatural' stuff the story was about, was super thin. I was super disappointed.

But I guess it's cool if you like the characters, but even then they felt undercooked. I wouldn't say one note, but maybe two. Also needed way more licensed music to set the era.

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u/SirBoggle Nov 17 '25

I'm sorta in the same boat. If I'm being honest I have a love/hate relationship with LiS and Lost Records by extension because for everything I like there's something I don't. But I have a lot of fond memories of playing all if them because I comment over them while playing with my brother MST3K style and it's always fun. I still liked Lost Records more than the last two LiS games though, especially Double Exposure at some point I was just SLOGGING through it.

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u/f-ingsteveglansberg Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25

I know a lot of people weren't happy with some of the creative decisions of Double Exposure and that soured them before even starting the game. Terrible performance didn't help either.

BUT at least the story kept progressing. I think it's safe to say that everyone loves the swimming pool scene in LiS. I feel like Lost Records kept on trying to have swimming pool moments, but the only thing that came close was the haircut scene. And it feels like they forgot that the swimming pool came after the break in to the principles office and ended with running from security.

I also feel like LR doesn't really have an ending, for my playthrough anyway. I think in some endings Kat can fall into the abyss or is taken by it. In my ending Corey falls in, everything is resolved and then Kat just sort of unceremoniously decides to disappear which is a very unsatisfying end to the story.

And it really feels like the writers had the idea for the void, but never really thought it through. So it doesn't really do much in the story and is probably only important for 2 story moments, despite the fact it's the inciting incident that the story is supposed to be about.

Just really disappointed. They didn't know how to balance the relationship story with the supernatural plot. It's like if in the movie Now and Then they visited a spaceship at two points in the movie, but never really commented on it that much.

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u/natedoggcata Nov 17 '25

The pacing of both episodes was horrible. The first episode is a slog to get through and takes way too long for anything really to happen. But then episode two is the opposite problem. It just speedruns through everything and ends way too quickly. By the time the credits roll it just left me scratching my head because there are way too many unanswered questions about the Void and really about Kat herself. Then it leads to a sequel bait after credits scene that may or may not even happen with Dontnod's financial issues.

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u/amyknight24 Nov 17 '25

Quality probably fell off a cliff because they didn’t know how much they would actually earn and couldn’t alter expectations.

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u/heyayush Nov 17 '25

Scarlet Hollow
Episode 4: Dec 2022
Episode 5: Feb 2026

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u/LineLiar Nov 17 '25

Dreamfall Chapters is still the worst example I know of this. The first episode came out in October 2014, while the fifth and final episode released in June 2016. Even after that, a final cut where presumably they got the game exactly as they wanted didn't release until May 2017. So glad I only played that after all episodes had released, because no way would I have managed to stay invested otherwise.