As we see here, for his own sake, he's willing to go back on his word with no regrets.
With the tests finally over and Christmas break coming closer and closer, I am now free to do some discussions, one of which is this, and I can't lie that I've waited to be part of the discussion for this game. I will start with the main villain, who I feel people most want to see being proposed, so won't take that away from anybody. For the record, I am planning on colaborating with other users who like Dispatch to do other proposals, as in total the game has 8/9 characters who are worth a discussion, and I myself plan on doing only three of them, which include this one.
That out of the way, this is an interesting villain since he has the tropes of a strategic magnificent, respectful villain with tons of aura, as well as traits of a petty, sadistic, purely evil one, and suprisingly he hits neither of those, although far more away on the former than the latter. Also, for those who don't know, Dispatch has additional comics added to deluxe version of the game, which give focus on several characters and events, two of which on the Brave Brigade members, those being Robert's father Robbie, a young Chase, and, of course, Elliot Connors, or as he would later call himself, Shroud.
So, let's talk about him.
What's the work?
Dispatch is a 2025 episodic adventure game made by AdHoc Studio. It follows Robert Robertson the Third, the third generation of the superhero Mecha Man, whom, after an explosion that destroyed his mech suit and left him in the coma for months, causes him to retire from his work as hero. However, he would later be given the offer to still be able to do hero work as a dispatcher for the Superhero Dispatching Network, or SDN, who sends people with powers to deal with tasks sent by the SDN's subscribers. This proposal will be about the main threat and antagonist of the game, as well as Robert's archenemy.
Who is Shroud and What has he done?
Elliot Connors, also known by his villain alias Shroud, is a former member of the Brave Brigade, as well as the leader of the crime syndicate known as the Red Ring. A former hero wannabe, Elliot wanted to join the Brave Brigade, using his genius intelect and inventive skills to create gadgets for the team, the biggest of which was the Astral Pulse, which he gave to Robbie, Robert's father, so he could use it to power his mech suit.
While several of the members, such as Chase and Vitalia, thought on bringing him to the team, Robbie, despite having been given the Astral Pulse by Elliot, refused to allow him to join, as Robbie didn't believe he was fit to be a hero. After nearly a decade of trying to join and Robbie refusing, Elliot's patience would reach its limit when he cancelled the voting to allow Elliot to join by the fifth time, leading to him confronting Robbie over it.
While he was fixing the mech suit, Elliot called Robbie out on his cancelling of the vote, and when the latter mockingly states he never promised to allow him to join, Elliot chalenges him to a fight in which if he won, he would get the Astral Pulse back and join the Brigade. Despite demanding Robbie to enter the suit for a fair fight, the former was actually able to beat Elliot by throwing a towel on him and proceding to brutally beat him, being stopped by Chase before things could get worse.
Following his injuries being treated by Vitalia, Elliot would steal Robbie's gun from his locker, and used it to shoot him in the chest, killing him, before leaving the building. He ended up getting the name of Shroud and became a villain, calling himself that due to Robert having used a shroud to beat Elliot in their fight.
Sometime after this, he ended up being caught and arrested, but in the next 15 years, he would start a crime syndicate known as the Red Ring, and used his expertise in technology and ingenuity to build augments that made the superpowered members of the ring even more powerful.
One of such people was a woman with invisibility powers called Courtney, known by her self-given alias, Invisibitch. Due to her having asthma, Shroud gave her an augment that enchanced her breathing capacity and thus make herseld invisible for longer. After years of working with them as a way to pay back her debt to Shroud, he told her that if she helped him in taking down Robbie's son Robert and get him the Astral Pulse, he would consider her debt clear.
He eventually broke out of jail, with plans of getting back to Astral Pulse from Robert. Getting him to attack his hideout in a steel mill, Shroud gets Robert into a trap, where he had Courtney implant a bomb on Robert's mech suit which led to an explosion that destroyed the suit and put Robert in a coma for months.
During this, the Astral Pulse would be taken by low-level criminals throught Torrance, with Shroud wanting to find it but not knowing where it was. Shroud would eventually get Courtney into working with the SDN under the Phoenix Program, where former villains would work as heroes and be sent on missions to help people throught Torrance, knowing that Robert would eventually be hired and join as a dispatcher for the team, which would then lead to him either falling in love with or looking after Courtney.
While this was happening, Courtney was given a new alias, Invisigal, by the hero Blonde Blazer. Around a week after Robert joined the SDN, Robert and his friends were able to find where the Astral Pulse was, and Invisigal went to get it.
There, after getting the pulse, which Invisigal hid from Robert and Shroud to protect the former from the latter, he would appear and attack Invisigal, using a gas on her while taking away her inhaler. Before she could die, though, she is saved by Chase, although the latter was left at the brink of death. Following this event, Shroud, putting a front of a regular person, would go to the Sardine, a villain bar, where he encountered Robert while he and the bartender mocked Invisigal and/or Chase, even stating that someone getting into a trap so obvious just needed to die right there.
This infuriates Robert, not helped by the bartender making sexual comments on Blonde Blazer, in which he either hits the bartender with the glass from his drink, or holds back his anger, something that Shroud was suprised by as he didn't predict it. Either way, Shroud ends up shooting the bartender dead for disrespecting Blazer, as he sees her as one of the last true heroes.
Following this, he has Coupe or Sonar, the member of the Phoenix Program that was cut by Robert, torture him to know where the Astral Pulse was. After a while, he understood that Robert didn't know and both of them were tricked by Invisigal.
He also taunts Robert about how he killed his father, lying about how he killed him to make it look like he put him through a painful experience as he died, before trying to do russian roulette with Robbie's revolver. After this, Blonde Blazer would appear, knocking the guard that was protecting the entrance to the bar. She then tells Shroud and the others that several SDN heroes, police and every gang is Los Angeles would surround the building, so they should just leave and let Robert go.
After telling them that she knows she'll end up dying by the hands of the Red Ring, but will still fight till the end and take half of them with her, an impressed Shroud decides to leave, although not without smugly noting that it was closer to 32%, even if half sounds cooler, and that they would meet again, even sooner than she expects.
Turns out he was right, just a few minutes later, it's revealed that Shroud sent villains to attack places all across Torrance and cause countless destructions, with said villains being led by the cut member of the Phoenix Program. Getting back to the SDN, Robert dispatches the members of his team to help fight the Red Ring and defeat Coupe/Sonar, which they either succeed in stopping or the city is left in ruin. Following this, Shroud attacks the SDN building, where Robert, with the help of Invisigal who gets him the Astral Pulse, gets back his Mecha Man suit.
Following this, Shroud reveals himself, and the two begin fighting. Robert is then helped by the members of the Phoenix Program and Blonde Blazer, although they still have a hard time dealing with Shroud's giant mech, and even with his best efforts, Robert is still knocked down by Shroud. Before he could kill Robert, though, he is saved by Chase, who had been given Blonde Blazer's powers which came from her amulet. The group would then defeat Shroud's mech, leading to them briefly celebrating.
To many, Shroud was dead after he did this.
This quickly ends when they see Shroud, who is holding Beef, Robert's dog, hostage, threatening to kill him if the group doesn't surrender and Robert gives him the Astral Pulse, they end up reluctantly agreeing to do the former, and while Robert went to the rooftop to get to Shroud, he decides to grab the prototype made by Royd during the time he was trying to fix Robert's suit.
What happens to Shroud after depends on your choices. There's one where Robert gives him the Astral Pulse, which leads to him and the Red Ring becoming more powerful, and Shroud, being able to see that the chances of him surviving drop significantly if he lets Robert live, decides to shoot him.
Giving him both the Astral Pulse and the prototype will lead to Robert putting him in a situation where he has to rely on mere luck rather than predict a possibility, but due to his pride, he decides to just put the one he thinks is the real pulse and ignores Armstrong's advice that they should wait and get back to their lair to figure out which one was the real one, leading to him actually taking the fake one and beginning to throw up, something that then happens to the rest of the members of the Red Ring, and following this, Shroud attempts to shoot Robert out of spite. Trying to give him the prototype will lead to him guessing it was the fake one and forcing Robert to give him the real one, leading to the same event as the first option.
What happens next also depends on your choices, with here being on how you've treated Invisigal throught the game. If you put your trust in her throught, she will take a bullet for Robert, although she survives as she is hit on the left shoulder. Robert then severely beats Shroud, with the latter being left beging Robert not to kill him, in which you either spare him and he gets arrested, or you strangle him to death.
If you didn't focus on Invisigal or didn't trust her, she will betray Shroud, fatally stab him, and leave while giving the Astral Pulse back to Robert, with implications that she plans to take over what's left of the Red Ring now that he's dead. Regardless of your choices, though, the Red Ring is still defeated, and Robert seemingly continues to be Mecha Man and is now helped by his fellow heroes and dispatchers.
Mitigating Factors
While Shroud has one redeeming quality that prevents him from being Pure Evil, there are a few things worth discussing with his character that I feel would be better to bring up.
Is He Tragic?
First, I want to talk about the debate of wheter or not he's a tragic character. He wanted to join the Brave Brigade, but for years Robbie refused to allow him, even after he built the Astral Pulse for him, to the point that nearly a decade after trying to get on the team, when Robbie canceled the vote to allow Elliot to join, Robert mocked him for thinking he had promised him anything.
This leads to him demanding Robbie to fight him, which ends up leading to Robbie beating Elliot to an inch of his life, an act that eventually leads to Elliot killing Robbie and taking the identity of Shroud. His own alias is also a reference to his brutal beating, as Robbie put a shroud on his face when they started fighting. So, what makes Shroud not a tragic character since this is what leads to him turning into evil?
Here's the thing, the comics, which showed these events, also show something about Shroud that he had in his past as he had now, and that is his entitlement. Even when working to get to the Brave Brigade, Elliot refused to see how Robbie didn't think he was fit to be a hero and thought that a voting that was put to get him to join the team of heroes made him such, and he was already agressive as shown by him pushing Chase away when he accidentaly spit a drink on Elliot's head implant, and when he got into a fight imediately after he was mocked by Robbie.
The thing is that after all of this, Robbie admited that had Elliot been able to swallow his pride and anger and return to the team's place the next day, Robbie would have allowed him to finally join the team as he would have proven himself to have the traits of a true hero, which he was imediately proven wrong when Elliot appeared and shot Robbie dead. The fact that the work states that if he wasn't violent and spiteful he would have become a hero, shows that the work isn't treating the eventual murder of Robbie as a comupance caused by Robbie's mistreatment of him, but instead as the solidification of the negative traits Elliot previously had, shows that he was more driven by personal pride than the events that happened to him.
In addition, no one in-universe feels sympathy for him, Robert can note him as being pathetic and arrogant, and Chase, someone who genuinely cared for Elliot, will state that he deserved to die for everything he did if he ends up being killed by either Robert or Invisigal. He also makes up details about how humiliating and painful Robbie's death was to both mock Robbie and make himself look better, instead of the truth that he shot him once and left the building right after.
Is he "a man of his word"?
So, when he holds Beef hostage, Shroud tells Robert that if he gives him the Astral Pulse, he would let Beef go as he is a "man of his word", something that he does when Robert gives it to him. This was the biggest debatable trait of his character outside of his one redeeming quality I'll eventually get to, and the thing I want to use as a counterargument for it is this. When he either finds out his chances of survival decrease if Robert stays alive or after using the prototype and humiliating him, Shroud attempts to kill Robert even while Beef was in his hands, which would put Beef's life in danger and he doesn't seem to care about it due to being far more focused on his own survival/spite.
It's not a direct subversion, but I feel it's enough to not mitigate him further, especially since it's made clear prior that he didn't care about Beef and was perfectly willing to kill him.
Everything else worth noting
So, Shroud states that he wants to use the Astral Pulse to change the world and believes heroes are in the past. While this could have hinted at a greater goal Shroud could be aiming for, said goal is never really focused on, and his motivation to get the pulse is personal entitlement to it and wanting to ruin Mecha Man's legacy, with him being more focused on his ego when dealing with Mecha Man than whatever unknown achievement he planned to do with the pulse.
Shroud also does not care about any of the members of the Red Ring, while he is never really shown interacting with the main evil members like Toxic and Armstrong outside of the former revealing to Robert that Shroud told him that Robbie pissed himself when he died, something that is another lie he made up to make himself look better and his killing of Robbie more humiliating on the latter's part. He's also not above mocking the cut member of the Phoenix Program, and if it's Sonar he'll outright pistolwhip him for mocking Blazer.
It's also all but stated that Invisigal's breathing enhancement not working after she left Shroud that was intentionally done by him to make her keep working for him even after his plan was over. Outside of that, there's nothing else to discuss, as he has no respect for any hero except one, as shown by his repeated mockery of Chase and Robert, and referring to the Phoenix Program as helpless losers.
Heinous Standards
No question, he sets it. The only two characters that pass the baseline are Coupé and Sonar if the latter ends up cut from the main team and joining the Red Ring, and the two are only able to stand out due to being pivotal in Shroud's own plan, which involves endangering the entirety of Torrance, a place that in real life has around 140 thousand people, by causing chaos and destruction throught the city. In addition to this, he also has acts like killing Robbie, putting Robert in a coma for months, torturing Robert to get him to say where the Astral Pulse was, and finally, and definetely the worst one, threatening to kill Beef to get Robert to give him the pulse, before eventually attempting to kill him while Beef is still in his hands, either to lower his chances of dying or just simply out of spite depending on the player's choice.
So, overall, he definetely passes the heinous standards, and he definetely is bad enough to pass the minimum baseline.
What Prevents Him From Pure Evil?
| â | I respect her... Blazer. A real fuckin superhero. I know we're in a villain bar but, have some class, ya know? | â |
| ~ He admits it, not much need for me to explain it. |
Despite the spitefulness and cold-hearted nature of Shroud, as well as his desire to get rid of heroes, he does have a hero he genuinely admires and respects, that being Blonde Blazer. Hearing the bartender of the Sardine making sexual comments about her leads to Shroud shooting him dead, and when the cut member of the Phoenix Program mocks her, he'll be offended, especially in the case of Sonar, whom he'll hit and tell to not disrespect one of the last true heroes. Blazer being willing to die to take down the members of the Red Ring with her so she can protect Robert outright leads to him complementing her, even clapping his hands, and allowing her to take Robert with her. If Robert accepts Invisigal's advances while dating Blazer, Shroud will call out Robert for being the only person to be able to be with her yet still want more.
While he does mockingly refer to her care for the Phoenix Program as a soft spot, and finding out about her identity as Mandy can lead to him to jokingly state that he prefers her as blond, "but to each their own", the amount of affirmation to his respect for Blazer during his time in the game still prevents this from being an outright subversion due to how he asserts and admits to how he respects her.
This of course, is nowhere enough to be a serious issue that knocks him off this wiki, but still enough to prevent him from being Pure Evil.
Final Verdict?
Solid yes, more than heinous enough, being characterized as a spiteful and ego-driven dick (the game's artbook even calls him a dick so I'm not exagerating), that is stopped by a prevention that while the game anknowledge isn't something that is fully pivotal to his character and he is fully portrayed as an unsympathetic character.