I've thoroughly enjoyed Dispatch—both the excellent story and the superhero radio dispatch simulator strapped to its underbelly. However, during my time playing those latter segments, I'd occasionally find myself wondering whether the game would've been a stronger TV show, and whether any of my choices made were actually factoring into the wider story.
Turns out, yes, yes they are, and not just in the obvious ways. I'm going to be getting into spoilers for Dispatch's ending, here. You've been warned.
As discovered on the game's subreddit by user zero-sumgames (who collated the info, alongside u/serversamwinchester and u/bog_waif), whether or not Invisigal stays a hero or becomes a villain is dependent on a modifier in the game's code called the "RobertMentorCounter" system, or RMC.
Essentially, this hidden value will have Invisigal become a hero and take a bullet for Robert if it's high, or have her become a villain and kill Shroud if it's low: "Your RMC is affected through story decisions, succeeding in story-related hacking events, and the barfight QTE's. All of which are detailed here. However, your RMC is also affected by Dispatching."
That is to say, while your choices as Robert on mentoring Invisigal are important, making sure she actually goes on missions where she can do well also matters, too: Successful missions bump it up by one, failed missions knock it down by one, and Dispatch upgrades via Blazer net you a whole five character development points for ol' Visi.
According to the thread, you need a RMC score of 45 or higher to have Invisigal go good guy: "36 points are available via story decisions/hacking/QTE's with a further six Points available if you go on the date with Visi in Episode 4," writes zero-sumgames. If you have a perfect, all-success, maxed-out run in the dispatch sim sections of the game across all episodes, you can get an extra 45, "though I expect the average person will gain far less (Probably low-mid 20s)."
If you want to see the full breakdown, I highly recommend you visit the thread linked above—but the short of it is, the ending of Dispatch isn't just informed by binary choices made in cutscenes, you've gotta actually be good at your job to reap the rewards.
The only downside being, for those expecting the story and dispatch sim to stay mostly separate, this whole thing might present as a glitch: The game doesn't exactly tell you about the RMC at any point, so if you suck at dispatching, and you're replaying the last two episodes to try and get Invisigal onto team good guy by making different choices, you might think the game's glitched.
On the AdHoc Discord (thanks, GamesRadar+), support staff Polly explains: "There was no glitch that caused Invisigal to always kill Shroud. Succeeding or failing as Invisigal's mentor is not solely tied to the choices you make as Robert, but also the decisions you make as her dispatcher across the season's shifts."
