#dispatch criticism

[tikiki05]

Invisigal in my eyes is literally a predator for the forced kiss she does on Robert in the locker room and literally everything else she does to him.

And I’m not saying you can’t still like Invisigal. I’m just saying I don’t comprehend why anyone would, and I truly have no interest in hearing any arguments in defense of her.

And with harassment being on her criminal record, yk what? Sure! Give us a story about someone with that kinda dark past truly learning from their mistakes and wanting to become better. But goddamn I don’t think that’s what the creators of the game really envisioned and certainly didn’t achieve with Invisigal.

[fibula-soup]

Finished Dispatch the other day. Fun game, loved it, even. I love the designs and the characters and the gameplay is fun.

HOWEVER

That was the most rancidly heterosexual game i have ever played. Gooner-ass game. Jesus christ I would rather drive a nail through my skull than have to spend a second more around those One dimensional Love interests whose only characteristic is Sex Appeal.

The game would be infinitely better if Robert got to romance Flambae.

robert deserves to kiss men

[darkfoxkirin]

I hate that you're forced to cut Sonar or Coupé and not anyone else. I mean, in a perfect world, we wouldn't have to cut anyone, but! In my understanding of the characters, Sonar needs this more than Coupé. Coup is the more competent character, but it feels like she can handle being cut better than Sonar. She has more job prospects than Sonar would. Sonar gets discriminated against because he's a hybrid and he has a coke addiction. Malevola had to urge him to join and he's really found an anchor in the Z-Team. He goes into a downward spiral if he gets cut. So yeah, I always cut Coup because she can handle it. Plus, her boss battle seems more fitting, feels more canon. It felt like she used her contacts to secure a place in Shroud's gang and is coldly calculating her revenge. Sonar's boss fight is just heartbreaking. It felt like he was drowning and was taken advantage of by Shroud in order to get at Robert.

Now, having said that... I would have cut Invisigal, if given the chance. Not only did she disobey orders, but she also got a civilian, the SDN subscriber that called for help, to get severely injured! Then she tries to say it was a success and then rocks your shit when you reprimand her?? Yeah no, I would have cut her then and there if I could. Everyone else listens to orders and is fairly competent. All Invisigal has going for her is that she's able to turn invisible. I really don't understand how she's able to go toe to toe with most of the villains she comes across, it just doesn't make any sense unless she's hiding some super strength and durability. All that talk to Robert about being a normie and Invisigal is literally the same except for her invisibility!? Plus (spoilers), she's the reason Robert nearly died and ruined his career in the first place. And then she nearly gets Chase, his brother/father figure, killed as well??

Now don't get me wrong, she can be charming at times. I don't hate her, but she is my least favorite character. I also have a bit of a bone to pick with Blonde Blazer for having the gall to force Robert to cut one of his team after only a day of working with them (setting him up for failure much??), and openly admitting to not letting Robert cut Invisigal because of bias? I think at that point, Robert should have been able to put his foot down and demand to keep both Sonar and Coupé if Blonde Blazer got to keep the liability that is Invisigal. (Plus, she dumped Phenomaman, one of the would's greatest heroes and resident cinnamon roll, because she couldn't be bothered to help him understand human social norms.)

[justmenoworries]

I think one thing that's missing from Visi's story that would have helped make her character a bit more tolerable is accountability.

As Visi-defenders love to point out, one of Dispatch's big themes is redemption. And a big part of redeeming yourself is acknowledging that you've done wrong and taking responsibility. Which Visi never does.

She messes up the donut shop robbery call as a result of not listening to Robert, then gets pissy, insults him and punches him in the face when he rightfully calls her out for this. And the game treats you telling Blonde Blazer that Visi got violent toward you as you ratting her out. Not once does she apologize or show any remorse for how she treated you or for how she caused the mission to utterly fail and the client to get injured. On the contrary, she goes on to vandalize Robert's work desk after the fact. But this is supposed to make Robert/us feel bad because she does it with a donut she stole for us as a nice gesture. Something which Robert didn't ask for and definitely wouldn't have approved of.

Then there's her constant sexual harassment of Robert, from watching him change even when he obviously feels weird about it, to telling him she dreamed about them fucking (all kinds of gross) to stalking him throughout the office and following him into the men's room. That's not to mention her forcing a kiss on Robert after dropping the bombshell on him that she's the reason he lost both the Mecha Man-suit and the Astral Pulse. There is something potentially intrguing here about Visi getting unhealthily attached to the first guy she's met that treated her with any decency, but the game never treats it as that. It's just portrayed as a typical romance with a troubled punk girl. Robert doesn't get to tell her off for how extremely creepy she's being and if he sets boundaries they get ignored, which is played for laughs. Rejecting Visi after she forces a kiss on you has the game straight-up guilt trip you, by having the camera focus on Visi's hurt expression as if Robert doesn't have every right to say 'no' to a kiss he did not consent to.

Even outside of Robert, Visi is completely above all reproach in- and out of universe. By episode 3 she's the worst performing member of the Phoenix Program and seeing how she acted in episode 2 it's not hard to see why. Even she knows she sucks as a hero, but instead of working on improving herself she decides to throw in the towel and just wanders off while still on the clock. Girl, you're this world's equivalent of a first responder, what the actual fuck??? Robert has to call after her and give her a peptalk so she'll do her goddamn job. And when she actually listens to him and doesn't fuck up, the entire Z-Team cheers for her, like she didn't just manage to do the bare minimum of what's required in their line of work and as if the perp she managed to catch wasn't only still a problem because she let him get away the first time and sabotaged another team member who was trying to arrest him after. To put the cherry on top, due to her managing to jump ranks at the last second you now have to decide between cutting Coupé or Sonar, both of which take the program much more seriously than Visi. And Blazer even says that even if Visi was still at the bottom of the leaderboard, she would have interfered if Robert cut her, meaning she would've been willing to screw over either Sonar or Coupé in favor of Visi. Why? The two of them deserve this chance much more than Visi does at this point!

When Visi's bullshit leads to Chase putting himself in the hospital to save her dumb ass, the entire Z-Team is rightfully pissed at her and almost unanimously votes to cut her. Even Blazer concedes that Visi is poison to the program at this point. But the game rather obviously signals to you that cutting her would be the wrong choice. After you decide to either keep or cut Visi, it's revealed that she was in the room the whole time, using her powers to stay unnoticed and no matter what you choose, she storms out. If you chose to follow the rest of the Z-Team's wishes and cut her, this is an obvious 'You monster!' moment, because how dare you hurt Visi like this when she's trying so hard? (Except she isn't.) The favoritism is so blatant in this chapter it's frustrating. The Z-Team's arguments for why Visi should get the fuck out are extremely valid. She went out on her own, in my playthrough's case when everyone decided we should wait to retrieve the Pulse, punched Chase before doing so for mouthing off to her, caused Chase to use his super-speed so he could save her which put him in a coma and the most she's gotten for all of this is a temporary suspension. Chase is basically the only family Robert has left and he's on death's door because of Visi and her selfishness. Yet if Robert's not being a forgiving saint about all of this he is painted as being the asshole here. No one is allowed to make Visi face any consequences for anything. Even though, as the Z-Team points out, Coupé/Sonar was cut for way less than what Visi's pulled.

Visi never actually takes responsibility for any of her fuck-ups. Her go to response for being called out is to insult and/or physically attack whoever does it. Her quest for forgiveness is extremely self-centered and that never changes throughout the plot. The words 'I'm sorry' never leave her mouth. She never changes her behavior or even acknowledges it beyond the obvious fishing for validation via sob-stories or self-deprecating remarks. The game really wants the player to believe she's trying to redeem herself, but what she's really doing is looking for shortcuts to make herself feel better.

Which would be an interesting character flaw if it was actually treated as such.

But the writers were obviously too enamored with Visi to do that.

[echosofthedamned]

I feel the "Invisigal SA'ed Robert" discourse that floated around on tiktok and twitter stems from a very watsonian reading of characters' actions and really unfairly acts as if the many brushed over moments of crossed boundaries and lowkey sexual harassment & assault in the game are actual features instead of bugs of the game from a writing team that has questionable view on sexual harassment as a writing device.

I've seen so many people say they dislike Invisigal because she sexually assaulted Robert in that locker scene, which is what happened, but I feel like that misses the crucial part of how what she did was not and never was intended to be that. It supposed to romantic, the crescendo of her ongoing character arc, a show of how Courtney is still conflicted, jaded, and bad at emotions but still wants to show she cares about Robert and therefore redemption despite being kicked off. She wanted her love to be known but not judged, and honestly it's quite impactful to see Courtney taking the cautious first steps of being vulnerable.

But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this scene actually is romantic and that the writers succeeded in conveying this. The big red flag that goes off when you see this is unignorable and it weakens, if not destroys, the original reading of the scene. but still the take away from this scene was obviously not supposed to be 'Invisigal is predator' and her coming off as that is an consequence of a writing team who plays extremely fast and lose with sexual assault and doesn't give it the respect it deserves.

Same thing with Malevola, I've seen some many say 'I like her and she's pretty cool, but she sexually assaulted Robert in that one scene so idk,' ignoring the fact that scene is so obviously not intended as that and the flaw here is not the character but the author who is puppeting them to act out their sexual harassment comedy. Obligatory characters are not real and autonomous and it's just as important to understand doylistically why that act as they do as watsonian as to not end up misnterpreting the authors purpose and therefore the story.

(also mandatory disclaimer, you can still dislike these characters even if you know these scene aren't supposed to be characterization moments. Unintended flaws are still flaws and still will rightfully impact your understanding of a character. Truly if your icked out by these characters it's the fault of the writers for forgetting that their characters' actions characterize them and you probably shouldn't make characters you're supposed to like grope their coworkers)

Ultimately, It's frustrating that these conversations have never went past heated rants directed at pixels instead of truly digging deep on why this happened. Nobody really wants to have an earnest conversation about (male) sexual assault, and it's depictions in media. We just all hate invisigal. That's the only point here and it is so frustratingly surface level and stupid.

and ngl? it's very telling that people have preferred to direct all their criticisms at the fictional women who can't defend herself instead of even an ounce of it at ADHOC who wrote her to be that way.

[junkdrawerfan]

Making the second MechaMan an asshole and a “fake hero” who doesn’t give a shit about his friends and family kind of sucks. It’s honestly the most boring choice they could have made. And given that we get all of Robert Robinson II’s personality is through the comics, they could have given us a more nuanced characterization that would have led to all the same results.

For example, instead of making Robbie a generic asshole, he could have been a loving father, decent friend, and kind person who resents the fact that he doesn’t have powers. As a superhero without powers, he feels he constantly has to prove himself, putting in 6x the effort compared to other people.

It would have tied into Robert’s speech about “potential.” Whenever Robbie sees a villain, he sees a waste of potential, something he taught Robert was the worst thing someone can do. But Robert is dedicated to helping people realize their potential while Robbie is just disgusted by it.

It would allow Robbie to stay an asshole to Shroud — because he sees Shroud’s hero persona as a waste of Shroud’s potential when he’s so much better as support leading to him being dismissive of Shroud’s dreams — and make him an absent father — because he’s so dedicated to utilizing his potential to assure himself he deserves the title of superhero — but allows for a more interesting look into what “being a superhero without powers can do to someone.”

After all, people in universe judge people off of the powers they have — Invisigal tells us she feels her powers are “villian powers” which I doubt she got from nowhere — and a lack of powers isn’t judgment free either. People use “a lack of powers” as an insult towards Robert/Mechaman a lot. For the most part, people are okay with it, but Mechaman is a legacy title. Bobbie and Robbie have laid the groundwork to get the public to accept Robert. And people are still dismissive at times or downright rude (well the super rude ones are bad guys but ya know they wouldn’t say it if they didn’t think it’d hurt!) about the fact that Robert doesn’t have powers (to quote Robert “according to fate he should be an accountant.)

TLDR: Making the second Mechaman an insecure but well intentioned person would have been much more interesting. It would show how good people can uphold a system that creates villains. This would allow Shroud to remain sympathetic so the mercy option still feels like the breaking of a generational cycle, but provide a more nuanced look into the societal normals that shape villains into becoming villains.

[dispatcher9000]

Dispatch is really bad at handling harassment like fundamentally bad. I think it’s meant to ground itself further into like, online locker-room adult “I say fuck and bitch a lot” humor, which it does, but that humor sucks. Mostly because of the sexual harassment. Malevola grabbing Robert’s crotch just cause is sexual harassment and their relationship is not portrayed or built to be something where it can be perceived as, like, a woman smacking her friends ass and both of them being in on the joke. We kind of just have to Assume it is. I’m not against the portrayal of sexual assault in media but for dispatch to portray it in such a way, treating it as normal and funny, makes me worry for the young people viewing the game, who now have another piece of media portraying assault as something to be light hearted about as long as it’s Funny. I worry even more about like the grown adults who play and watch it and think calling it assault is like, somehow over dramatic.

[velichorus-k]

Man I got weird vibes with how they were writing Blonde Blazer in episode 1+2 and it's just confirmed for me in ep3+4 that superhero writers don't know how to write women without sexualizing them