Dispatch's season finale is powerful enough to blow any recent Marvel movies out of the stale water they're floating on, but it asks players to make one choice that has caused many to go in a direction I find rather concerning.
Warning: Mild Dispatch spoilers ahead.
At the climax of the final episode, players will get to choose between sparing or killing the main villain, after he's already been defeated and is in a pretty much defenseless state. To the surprise of many, only 37 percent of players chose to spare the guy.
Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that the remaining 67 percent of players decided to kill him directly. As it stands, 37 percent of players spared him, and only 35 killed him in cold blood. That doesn't sound as bad, but then there's the other 28 percent who'd made mean or evil choices that culminated with having another character killing off the villain in pretty gruesome fashion. So yeah, most people are taking a bloodthirsty or callous approach to their hero career.
The villain that shall not be named to avoid majorly spoiling the game is definitely someone who's done some terrible things, but this just isn't right. Even if he were the most villainous guy to ever grace a superhero story, this would still be a superhero game, and I believe killing him is missing the point. And I don't think developer AdHoc is at fault here. All great stories in the genre will always require the main characters to balance out power and responsibility, after all.
This points out a problem I have with superhero media in general: when bestowed with great power, many people would act in brutal ways and walk away scot-free, as happens in Dispatch, should you do the deed. This has been the thesis at the core of Alan Moore's Watchmen, and it still seems to ring true, despite nearly twenty years of Marvel movies trying to depict the existence of superheroes as good.
Sad as it might be, randomly bestowing someone in the real world with superpowers—or the ability to command a squad of heroes—would more likely result in something much closer to Zack Snyder's Batman and Superman, than in the newest and much nicer iteration of the Man of Steel.
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