Only the first two episodes of Dispatch’s eventual eight have been released so far, but it’s safe to say I’m already quite invested in this unique narrative adventure, which feels like a spiritual successor to the Telltale Games of the 2010s. Half TV show, half puzzle game, this superpowered workplace comedy quickly captured my attention with its cavalcade of oddball characters, engaging minigames, and giggle-inducing dialogue. It’s too early to say where the story will lead across the next three weeks of its episodic release schedule (and we’ll have a final, scored review at the end), but the threads AdHoc Studio are pulling on are immediately compelling, and I’m cautiously optimistic.

Dispatch takes place in an alternative take on modern Los Angeles where superpowered beings, aliens, demons, and all manner of hyperpowered humanoids live amongst the regular folk. Naturally, some of these gifted beings use their powers for good, while others opt for a distinctly villainous approach. With so many supers roaming the streets, an organisation called the SDC has stepped in, launching an insurance-type racket that allows citizens to pay for the privilege of a powerful watchdog. One of the aforementioned good guys is the series’ protagonist, Robert Robertson — otherwise known as Mecha Man — whose heroic aspirations are quickly thwarted when a rogue explosive takes his suit out of commission and plops him into the role of a call centre worker at a small branch of the SDC. So far we’ve only experienced his first day on the job, but I’m already compelled by his predicament and curious to see how this desk job will impact his halcyon dreams of helping people.

Dispatch is split into two distinct parts: most of the time you’ll be chatting through beautifully animated scenes, picking amusing dialogue options, and doing quick-time events like those seen in The Wolf Among Us or the Life is Strange series. Certain decisions trigger a heart-pounding ‘X Person remembered that’ notification at the top of the screen, which feels like a refreshing jolt of nostalgia in 2025. Crucially, though, I often couldn’t feel the weight of my decisions until I had already committed to them. So far, my choices haven’t seemed false or meaningless — I was frequently surprised by how even the most nonchalant comment could impact the tale, and only time will tell how considerable these ripple effects may become.

The rest of your time in Dispatch is spent at work in the role of a titular Dispatcher, assigning superheroes to a variety of jobs. Unlike the animated sequences, these sections take place on a computer screen and resemble a point-and-click puzzle. Using your mouse and wits, you’ll monitor a city map where orange exclamation points periodically pop up with a timer, alerting you to various jobs SDC needs to handle efficiently. Each hero under your command has a stat matrix, similar to that seen in Pokémon, and as a job appears, you’ll receive a verbal description of the issue with aligned icons denoting the stats needed to successfully resolve it.

From here, your job is to match your best hero, or in some cases heroes, by their stats and personalities and then send them on their way. You’ll be told right away whether you’ve passed or failed, with success earning you a stat boost you can apply to your hero for future shifts. It’s a moreish feedback loop that works well with the tonal complexity of the context surrounding it. Dispatch carefully balances your team’s tongue-in-cheek banter with the stressful necessity of saving citizens on time, which is a blast.

That’s not all, though, as there’s a secondary hacking minigame folded into your workday. Here, you’ll roll a 3D object through a cybernetic maze as the clock ticks down, using arrow key inputs to forge a path towards the end goal. Given that these scenarios are often blended with an intense event happening across town, the stakes feel high, and it was easy to get absorbed in the fantasy. Dispatch’s ‘augmented episode’ approach is compelling so far — it helps that the script is so witty and satirically acerbic, and delivered well by its ensemble cast.

As well as the puzzles in play, your team is another complication to your success. Robert Robertson is new to the job, so naturally, he’s not exactly running a gold star operation. The group you’re trying to control is entirely comprised of former villains who, after a life of crime, are trying to reintegrate into society. As you can likely imagine, it’s not going well. The concept of ethically murky superhumans has been explored across film and TV before, but Dispatch often diverts expectations through a steady mix of dirty jokes and sincere interactions that keep you on your toes.

For example, in a meeting after my first shift, my boss, Blonde Blazer, asked why I had a bloody nose. Moments earlier, due to some potentially ill-advised decisions during a conversation, one of my ‘heroes’ promptly smacked me in the face. I had a choice here: I could snitch on her, or pretend everything was fine. Hoping not to get hit again, I chose not to fess up, which led to a warm interaction between myself and another member of the SDC. Dispatch could have chucked in another joke here for a cheap laugh, but it didn’t. This measured restraint imbues the world with a sense of realism that’s easy to get emotionally invested in.

It helps that the pool of characters I’ve met so far have wormed their way into my heart, even when their attitudes stink. No one is one-dimensional, and while it’s unclear what’s hiding in their layers, it already feels like there is a lot to unpack. There’s Invisigal – formerly Invisibitch – a bratty, quippy menace escaping a dubious past voiced by Laura Bailey; the SDC leader Blonde Blazer played by Erin Yvette, whose noble front hides a world of insecurity; and Jeffrey Wright’s Chase, a retired hero and potty-mouthed veteran of the game, just to name a few standouts. I would be remiss not to mention Robert here, too, who, thanks to Aaron Paul’s emotive and nuanced performance, feels deeply flawed but lovably human.

Just a quarter of the way through this story, it’s still too early to say where Dispatch might end up. It’s clear there’s lots still to come, from levelling up my heroes in the Dispatch minigame to living out Robert’s saviour fantasy after his accident. I’ll be back with a scored review shortly after the release of the final episodes on November 12 – but, as of right now, I’m totally enthralled in this world, and I’m keen to get tangled up in Robert’s fractured personal life.

The first Battlefield 6 Season 1 trailer is here, revealing a first look at the new Blackwell Fields and Eastwood maps, new weapons, and more.

EA and Battlefield Studios published the debut trailer for the Season 1 update ahead of its launch next week, October 28. The two-minute video shows off glimpse of the team’s plans to keep Battlefield 6 content flowing following its strong October 10 launch for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S.

“Blackwell Fields spans besieged facilities and homesteads under a burning horizon, supporting all combat sizes with land and air,” an official description for the new Battlefield 6 Season 1 maps says. “Eastwood turns a quiet villa and golf retreat into a frontline, with land vehicles and helicopters in play.”

Today’s Battlefield 6 Season 1 trailer shows off first gameplay on the Blackwell Fields map and Eastwood map, but it also serves as an update for content fans have already been told to expect. BF Studios previously shared a roadmap for its first seasonal content run earlier this month, revealing three waves of updates that are set to roll out from next week through December 9.

Things kick off with the Rogue Ops update next week, starting with highlights like Blackwell Fields, the Strikepoint mode, Traverser Mark 2 vehicle, GGH-22 pistol, SOR-300SC carbine, Mini Scout sniper rifle, rail cover & LPVO attachments, and more. California Resistance content then follows November 18, bringing the Eastwood map and Sabotage limited-time mode, as well as a trio of new weapons. Finally, Empire State gets the Ice Lock makeover with the Winter Offensive update December 9. We know it includes at least one new tool in the form of the Ice Climbing Axe melee weapon.

Hello Games has released yet another No Man’s Sky update, this time adding space wrecks to explore. The patch notes, courtesy of the No Man’s Sky website, are below.

Just over a month after the Voyagers update released for the long-running space game, and the highest player numbers since launch over nine years ago, the Breach update lets players salvage wrecks, unlocking new ship building parts along the way.

Hello Games has also improved and expanded ship building “in response to watching players spend so much time in the workshop designing their dream ships,” Hello Games chief Sean Murray said.

There’s also a new expedition where players will traverse a desolate and abandoned universe to discover what happened to a mysterious abandoned wreck. “Voyaging to the edge of space will be required if you are to salvage from the wreckage of the ill-fated ship and add unique parts and modules to your ship-building workshop,” Murray teased.

“The Breach expedition also brings players together to explore the strange and rare purple-star solar systems,” he continued. “The planets in these systems are particularly fun to explore with their deeper oceans, incredible terrains and volatile gas giants. It guides players towards the new space wrecks, is a great way to salvage some new rare ship parts, while uncovering a spooky story – suitable for the Halloween season!

“It has been a crazy year for the No Man’s Sky team and we’re so proud and pleased to be able to continue working on this game we all love so much nine years after launch.Seeing so many folks enjoying Voyagers has really inspired us, and we can’t wait for you to see what we have in store in future.”

No Man’s Sky continues to receive free updates even now, years after launch. And it’s clearly keeping players interested. No Man’s Sky launched in August 2016 on PS4 and PC to tens of thousands of negative reviews on Steam, with players complaining about broken promises and a lack of meaningful content, particularly on the multiplayer side. The game quickly settled on the dreaded ‘overwhelmingly negative’ Steam user review rating, a clear sign to anyone who visited its Steam page that something was very wrong.

But Guildford, England-based developer Hello Games has continued to update No Man’s Sky over the years, improving player sentiment to the point where it is now considered superb. It took two years to hit ‘mixed,’ then another three to hit ‘mostly positive.’ At the time, five years after launch, Tim Woodley, Head of Publishing at Hello Games, explained how hard it was to claw back Steam user reviews from such a low base.

As Hello Games continues to work on No Man’s Sky, it’s developing its next game, Light No Fire. It’s about adventure, building, survival and exploration together, set on a fantasy planet the size of Earth.

No Man’s Sky Breach update 6.10 patch notes:

BUG FIXES AND QOL

• Fixed an issue that could cause the player to be ejected into space if on an internal stair in a corvette while the pulse drive was active.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the corvette “current flightpath” autopilot from cancelling when the ship came into proximity of a large object such as a Space Station.
• Fixed an issue that prevented exiting the corvette pilot seat in the Space Station and Space Anomaly when using the Quick Menu in VR.
• Fixed an issue that prevented stairs in corvettes from being traversable using VR teleport movement.
• Fixed an issue that caused weapons to be misaligned with the crosshair when flying a corvette in first person.
• Fixed an issue that caused the corvette teleporter to persist after the corvette had landed on a planetary surface.
• Fixed an issue that could cause water to behave erratically when teleporting from a corvette into water.
• Fixed an issue that caused newly-assembled corvettes to appear at the wrong scale if another owned Corvette was docked nearby.
• Fixed an issue that could cause corvette interior doorways to become blocked.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the corvette Torpedo Launcher module from correctly installing the Rocket Launcher weapon.
• Fixed some corvette structural modules appearing under the exterior decoration category of the build menu.
• Fixed a rare issue that could cause corvette assembly data to be replaced with planetary base data.
• Improved the placement of corvette-class ships when teleporting to a Settlement with a corvette as the primary ship.
• Improved the behaviour of floating exotic creatures, especially in response to being offered Creature Pellets.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent biological monstrosities on derelict freighters from reacting aggressively to nearby Travellers.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent some varieties of hazardous flora appearing on planets.
• Fixed a timing-specific issue that could cause the player’s wanted level to get stuck when using the pulse drive to exit planetary atmosphere.
• Fixed an issue that caused the current primary ship’s thrusters to be used for launch fuel calculations when attempting to summon other ships from the Quick Menu.
• Fixed an issue that caused refiners to reset their requested output value to the maximum when refining was started.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the Personal Refiner from automatically starting when an input substance was inserted from the Inventory screen.
• Improved the error messaging when attempting to install duplicate technology in the inventory.
• Fixed an issue that caused rain to be audible when standing inside a corvette.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent the Corvette Assembly tutorial from starting in abandoned star systems.
• Fixed an issue that could cause Exosuit upgrade stations to lose their interaction prompt after a single use, especially in Abandoned Mode.
• Fixed an issue that could cause misleading instructional text during missions requiring planets with extreme weather conditions.
• Fixed an issue that caused some markers to persist unnecessarily in excavation and flora extermination missions from the Corvette Mission Radar.
• Fixed a number of minor messaging inconsistencies in missions requiring the player to prepare ingredients in the Nutrient Processor.

ART AND VISUALS

• Fixed an issue that could cause large waves to abruptly appear and disappear on the surface of water.
• Improved lighting transitions when changing environments – notably when warping between solar systems, when entering or exiting planetary atmosphere, or when moving between interior and exterior locations.
• Fixed a number of minor visual “seams” in lighting.
• Improved the appearance of holographic previews of corvette modules during corvette assembly.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Boundary Herald starship to render incorrectly.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the jetpack from displaying on the Inventory screen when using first-person camera view.
• Fixed an issue that prevented some varieties of aquatic creature from rendering in the Discoveries page.
• Fixed a number of minor visual and collision issues with corvette modules.
• Improved the appearance of corvette modules when viewed from a distance.
• Improved the icons on a number of corvette modules.
• Improved the collision of several planetary curiosities, such as large mushrooms.
• Fixed missing collision that allowed you to walk through the back of some freighter hangars.
• Fixed a number of issues that could prevent decals from being placed on Corvette modules.

INPUT

• Enabled Steam Input on Mac.
• Fixed a Steam-only issue that could cause controller bindings to shuffle or not respond on the first boot after the game was updated.
• Fixed an issue that prevented jetpacking while the Terrain Manipulator was in Create mode.

UI

• Improved the readability of several UI elements.
• Fixed a UI overlap issue on the Corvette trade menu, which could cause the “Make Offer” button to be activated when selecting a part to trade.
• Fixed an issue that caused markers for other players in a multiplayer session to appear at their feet instead of above their head.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the display of additional recipes in the Catalogue.
• Fixed a rare issue that could cause an incorrect UI to appear when absorbing a Memory Fragment to expand inventory slots.

STABILITY AND PERFORMANCE

• Fixed a crash that could occur on Corvettes with a large number of attached weapons.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a hang when opening the airlock door of a derelict freighter.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a hang when jumping through the centre of a galaxy in a freighter.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a softlock if opening the corvette parts menu while a dialog box was open.
• Implemented a number of engine optimisations to improve performance, especially when rendering complex objects such as corvettes.
• Implemented a number of lighting optimisations to improve performance.
• Implemented a number of optimisations and performance improvements on Nintendo Switch.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Former Bethesda developer Bruce Nesmith has offered his thoughts on the divisive Starfield, insisting if it has been released by any other studio “it would have been received differently.”

Speaking to FRVR, the former Starfield systems designer admitted that the sci-fi RPG is “not in the same calibre” as Bethesda’s much-loved The Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises, but insisted it was still “a great game.”

“I think it’s a good game,” Nesmith, who left Bethesda around a year before Starfield came out, said. “I don’t think it’s in the same calibre as the other two, you know, Fallout or Skyrim, or Elder Scrolls rather, but I think it’s a good game. I worked on it, I’m proud of the work I did. I’m proud of the work that the people I knew did on it. I think they made a great game.”

When “the studio that gave you Skyrim and Fallout makes a space game,” Nesmith said, there are certain “expectations,” and these weren’t met. “If the same game had been released by not Bethesda, it would have been received differently,” Nesmith insisted.

Starfield launched in September 2023 as Bethesda’s first brand new IP in 25 years, but it was not as well received as the studio’s previous games in the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls franchises, and the Shattered Space expansion, released a year later in September 2024, has a ‘mostly negative’ user review rating on Steam.

Starfield went on to reach 15 million players, but the question of whether Bethesda might walk away from the game to focus on its other franchises has been a running theme since release. In June 2024, Bethesda insisted it remained committed to supporting Starfield, and confirmed at least one other story expansion would come out following Shattered Space. And in an interview with YouTube channel MrMattyPlays, Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard said the developer was aiming to release an annual story expansion for “hopefully a very long time.”

That, obviously, hasn’t happened. In August, it was reported that Starfield’s second expansion and much-anticipated PlayStation 5 port would now arrive in 2026, following the poor reception to Shattered Space.

So, what went wrong? Nesmith pointed to Starfield’s reliance on procedural generation as a problem, as opposed to the lack of real-time space travel, which he described as “inherently boring.”

“But when the planets start to feel very samey and you don’t start to feel the excitement on the planets, that’s to me where it falls apart,” he continued. “I was also disappointed when, pretty much, the only serious enemy you fought were people… there’s lots of cool alien creatures, but they’re like the wolves in Skyrim. They’re just there, they don’t contribute, you don’t have the variety of serious opponents that are story generators.”

Bethesda has confirmed plans to improve Starfield space gameplay “to make the travels there more rewarding” after datamined fragments of code suggested the developer had a more streamlined space travel experience in the works. Based on this datamine, while you may be able to travel between planets within the same system, you won’t be able to fly all the way between systems, nor fly directly from a planet’s surface into orbit, like No Man’s Sky.

In a new video discussing his career, veteran Bethesda developer Tim Lamb confirmed that the studio had been working on Starfield’s space gameplay, and that a new DLC story was still coming at some point.

“I think as it comes to Starfield, I’m really excited for players to see what the teams have been working on,” he said. “We have some cool stuff coming, including free updates and features the players have been asking for, as well as a new DLC story.

“I can’t go into all the details just yet, but I will say part of the team has been focused on space gameplay to make the travels there more rewarding. We’re also adding some new game systems, and a few other smaller delights. There’s also some really interesting stuff coming down the pipe from our verified creators. There’s some fun stuff.

“I just want to say thanks. We really appreciate the support and the enthusiasm. We can’t wait to get it into the hands of our players.”

Last month, Bethesda teased new content for Starfield — at least that’s what fans thought after they spotted a hidden message in a social media video released to celebrate the game’s two-year anniversary.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.