In the era of online fandoms, audiences increasingly mistake emotional engagement for artistic depth, leading to a widespread erosion of media literacy. The cycle is predictable: a piece of media drops, gains momentum online, and is instantly crowned as “peak storytelling”; not because of its craftsmanship, but because it made people feel something. Enjoyment becomes synonymous with excellence, and criticism becomes a personal attack instead of a tool for understanding. Nothing illustrates this slide more clearly than Dispatch, gaming’s newest obsession: a recently released, choice-based superhero game that has taken over online fandom spaces.
Dispatch is everywhere in edits, cosplays, emotional breakdown posts, and declarations that it’s the best narrative game in years. Naturally, I was excited to play. Superheroes, stylised world-building, a choice-based narrative, and bold character design? I was convinced I was about to play something revolutionary. But once I finally did, stripped away of the hype, what I found was not groundbreaking, or revolutionary, or profound.
It was… fine. Sometimes clever, sometimes clumsy, and nowhere near the flawless masterpiece people had been insisting it was. The deeper I looked, the more the cracks widened. Predictable plot beats (actual teenagers on TikTok guessed the entire storyline two hours in), choices that pretend to matter but do not actually alter the narrative’s trajectory, and character arcs that gesture at emotional depth without ever actually committing to it.
the case of invisigal
Nowhere is this hollowness clearer than in Invisigal, a central supporting character and primary romance option in Dispatch, who functions as the gravitational centre of the game whether you choose her or not. She represents the worst kind of writing: the kind full of potential, but whose depth the narrative insists already exists rather than letting her earn it. She is both narratively privileged and overtly sexualised. Her relationship with Robert, the protagonist hinges not on the player’s choices, but on the writer’s unwavering desire to make her the default emotional endpoint. The result is a character defended passionately by male and female fans alike who insist she is “complex” simply because she is tragic, hot, or emotionally intense.
Complexity requires development, contradiction, and agency – not simply a hot, sad girl with a trauma-coded aesthetic. Once you examine her writing critically, the façade falls apart. Her entire arc hinges on Robert being the first person to believe in her, yet this is objectively untrue. Blonde Blazer, the other romance option, is canonically the first to defend her, mentor her, and refuse to cut her from the team. The game simply ignores its own setup. Instead, it bends reality to maintain the fantasy that your emotional bond with Invisigal is narratively profound even when the text contradicts it. That is not depth, but narrative manipulation. Furthermore, when a dev publicly describes a character concept as a “sexy demon lady”, I am comfortable saying my issues are not imaginary.
Moreover, if Invisigal was a man who watched you change invisibly, announced he was “wet” because of it, and immediately began having erotic dreams after one encouraging conversation TikTok would be on fire. HR departments would spontaneously combust. Yet, because she is a conventionally attractive sad girl, the fandom reframes the red flags as depth, layers, and “female empowerment”.
Worse still, Invisigal’s dominance suffocates the rest of the cast. Dispatch is full of vibrant, promising characters, yet 80% of them have practically no backstory, no personal arc, no meaningful presence. Why make Robert the protagonist when Invisigal equally drives every emotional and narrative beat? Why offer romance options when one character is given triple the screen time and emotional framing? People call her the best written character because she is, in practice, the only written character.
Emotional intensitY vs. good writing
This brings us back to the larger issue at hand. This collapse in media literacy is inseparable from algorithmic culture. We now consume narrative in hyper-emotional, algorithm-friendly fragments whether as edits, montages, or a tweet where the goal is not understanding the media, but reaction to it. Stories are judged by how quickly they spark parasocial attachment or aesthetic obsession. Characters become iconic because they are hot or tragic, not because they embody strong writing.
Emotional intensity becomes the only measure of quality. If something makes people cry, it becomes immune to critique. Fans begin ranking games and characters with the games and characters with the confidence of literary scholars while using buzzwords they do not understand. Flaws become invisible. Weaknesses are reframed as realism, subtlety, or intentional ambiguity. In this landscape, “I enjoyed this” mutates into “this is genius”.
If we want to see what real narrative depth looks like in a choice-driven RPG, a clear comparison Baldur’s Gate 3. BG3 benefitted from a longer production timeline and larger budget, but the comparison matters because BG3 executes emotional beats where Dispatch falls flat.
Both games rely on player choice, romance, and moral branching, and only one of them takes those elements seriously. Choices in BG3 genuinely alter character trajectories. Relationships develop through boundaries, conflicts, and growth, not because the developers want you funnelled toward one character.
Take Shadowheart: the closest analogue to Invisigal as a dark-haired, morally conflicted half-elf devoted to a goddess of darkness. Her arc can shift toward redemption or corruption, but those shifts come from vulnerability, quests, the player’s moral influence, trust, conflicting loyalties and choices shaped by understanding her, not vague compliments and a single “you did good” cutscene. Her arc is shaped through narrative logic, not wish fulfilment.
And no, I’m not a prude scandalised by nudity, BG3 literally lets you customise pubic hair. The difference is intentionality and narrative purpose. BG3’s sexuality has narrative weight, the intimacy feeling earned and character-driven with logical build-ups. Dispatch’s sexuality feels like an overcaffeinated teenage boy’s emo-girl fantasy designed to maximise appeal rather than tell a meaningful story.
Execution over potential
Ultimately, I do not hate dispatch. I liked the world, the cast is extremely fun, and the dialogue is snappy. The potential is massive, but potential is not execution. Currently, Dispatch exemplifies a growing trend where emotional reaction is misdiagnosed as narrative quality, where criticism is treated as betrayal, and where fandom weaponize their feelings to defends mediocrity.
That is the real issue, not that people enjoy the game, but that many seem unable or unwilling to distinguish feeling something and engaging with something well-written. Enjoyment is not evidence of excellence. You can love flawed media, you can find characters compelling without insisting they are deep, and you can be moved by stories that are not masterpieces. But, if we continue equating emotional reaction with artistic value, we stop expecting anything from the media we consume at all.
And that is ultimately why Dispatch matters. Not because it is a landmark game, but because the discourse surrounding it exposes a widening gap between how people experience media, and how they evaluate it. In an era of algorithms, emotional immediacy, and chronic misinterpretation, the ability to think critically about the stories is now more than a skill, but alternatively a form of cultural resistance. Maybe if we relearned how to separate feeling from judgement, we might finally start asking more from the stories that claim to move and meaning something to us.