Who is Mr. Whiskey? The finale of AdHoc’s hero game opens where Dispatch’s seventh episode left off: a towering orange cat mascot — true to his name — casually pours whiskey into Robert Robertson’s coffee as a gentle dose of comfort after the brutal beating he endured the night before. Without explanation, Mr. Whiskey drifts away, leaving questions about his identity. AdHoc’s creative leads told Polygon that Mr. Whiskey isn’t a specific character in the game’s present continuity — though in earlier drafts of Dispatch he once filled a more defined role.
Dispatch evolved a lot during development. Its earliest incarnation was conceived as a loose, episodic TV show: a “gag of the week” setup, Pierre Shorette explained in a video interview, where episodes could be watched out of order and still land as self-contained vignettes. That first draft didn’t accommodate a full team of heroes working alongside Robert.
“In the very original script, you basically picked your starter Pokémon,” creative director Nick Herman said — you didn’t assemble a team; you just chose one person to mentor.
Image: AdHoc Studio via PolygonIn that original build Mr. Whiskey was literally one of the “starter” choices, alongside characters like Waterboy and Invisigal. The one-on-one mentor setup briefly survived the transition from TV concept to interactive title, but the team increasingly found it limiting.
“At some point we realized the thing people respond to most in our work is storytelling that unfolds across a season — the kind of interactivity that deepens as episodes build on one another,” game director Dennis Lenart said. That realization pushed the team to rethink Dispatch as a game with a season-long arc rather than a string of isolated jokes.
The developers ultimately anchored the game around an emergency-response mechanic — an idea Herman took inspiration from in This Is The Police — which demanded a broader scope and far more characters than the original plan. The extra work was, in Herman’s words, “annoying,” but designing a web of relationships instead of single mentorships forced the writers to clarify the kinds of stories they wanted to tell.
Those stories needed to land on the hopeful side of things. Shorette cites shows like Ted Lasso and the experience of coming out of the pandemic as influences: during development the team often asked themselves whether they could avoid gratuitous suffering and instead aim for optimism and healing.
Image: AdHoc Studio via PolygonEarlier drafts leaned darker — Shorette originally planned for Chase to die in episode six, and the tone skewed grittier, more cynical, in step with contemporary deconstructions of superhero media. Ultimately the team steered Dispatch toward something more restorative: a tale about fractured people grappling with painful pasts and slowly learning to trust and rebuild.
That tonal shift naturally fit some of the starter characters better than others. Waterboy is a turbulent, insecure force; Invisigal carries enough baggage for a dozen therapy sessions; Mr. Whiskey, by contrast, radiates easygoing calm — perhaps hiding a terrible past, but choosing to keep it to himself and quietly do his work. Kitty, meanwhile, didn’t survive the transition into the final cast. At least Mr. Whiskey got one memorable moment of nostalgia: pouring whiskey for an old acquaintance.
Is Mr. Whiskey a teaser for a second season, as some Reddit threads have conjectured? Probably not — at least, AdHoc didn’t set him up that way in the game’s early designs. The team poured their hearts into the episode-eight finale thinking Dispatch might sell only a few thousand copies and that these characters might not return. Instead, the game has exceeded expectations, selling more than two million copies since launch, though AdHoc hasn’t announced concrete plans for a follow-up season yet. For the curious, one fan theory discussion can be found on Reddit: r/DispatchAdHoc.
Source: Polygon
