AdHoc Studio Eyes Dispatch 2 Following Weekly Episodic Hit

If you've been wondering what AdHoc Studio has planned after the breakout success of its first game, the latest comments paint a clear picture. The team says it will keep an episodic release model for future projects, and it admits the original game became too big to walk away from.

That makes Dispatch 2 feel far more likely than earlier plans suggested. The studio put it bluntly, saying it screwed itself because the game is so large you can't ignore it. It still wants to focus on original IP, but with so many options, narrowing them down is hard.

A decision and an announcement are coming soon.

Those comments are a few weeks old, so revealing Dispatch 2 at The Game Awards wouldn't be shocking, since the first game was announced at a big event too. The studio had other plans before the hit happened, including a project with Critical Role.

As each episode of the first game grew bigger, that project seemed to fade from view. That doesn't mean it's dead. The team can handle more than one thing at once, and it helped write Until Dawn 2, so the Critical Role game is probably still in progress.

Still, everything else looks like it got cleared out a year ago, and Dispatch 2 likely jumped the queue. Think about what you'd do when a franchise blows up past expectations. You don't make two other games first, which would put Dispatch 2 roughly seven years away. Gaps like that hurt.

Kingdom Hearts gets away with long waits, but that's rare, and Gears of War: E-Day didn't sell all that well after about seven years. A quick turnaround looks possible. The team has said it wants to move faster, and the first game took closer to two or three years.

One year is probably too fast, but 2028 instead of 2027 seems realistic for Dispatch 2.

On the episodic side, AdHoc Studio says concurrent players doubled with every new episode. Because the game was weekly and popular, Steam kept it in the recommended section in front of millions. Even with a low click rate, that adds up.

Streamers helped too. Viewers replayed episodes or watched streamers make the choices they skipped. Growth wasn't instant, but by episodes four and five the buzz picked up, with more theories and fan art of characters like Invisigal and Blonde Blazer each week.

For Dispatch 2 to repeat that, you need memorable characters, memorable moments, and a sense that the story builds each week. The starting audience is bigger now, so episode one of Dispatch 2 will reach more people, though it's also easier to lose them if the next week doesn't hold their attention.

Consistency matters most. Many at the studio came from Telltale, which had messy release schedules. Telltale's The Wolf Among Us waited four or five months between episodes one and two, which can nearly sink a game. Life is Strange stretched episodes over about nine months. That helped Life is Strange 1 but hurt Life is Strange 2.

If the full game is finished and episodic releases land weekly over four to eight weeks, Dispatch 2 should be fine. So AdHoc Studio is staying episodic, Dispatch 2 looks like the next move, and the Critical Role project may still follow. If the studio avoids Telltale-style delays, Dispatch 2 could be playable in a year or two.