From the moment it’s mentioned in A New Hope, one of the most compelling parts of Star Wars has always been the era of the Clone Wars. As a galaxy-wide, years-long conflict, this period of the Star Wars timeline offers a deep well of storytelling opportunities. There’s a reason it’s been the basis for two excellent cartoons. Star Wars Zero Company isn’t just looking to carve out its own piece of the Clone Wars, but also allow fans to do the same.
Pretty often, Star Wars games are pulled between the franchise’s general resistance to shades of grey and the dynamic nature of the medium. Even at their best, most Star Wars games draw a strong line between the light side and the dark side in its nature. The need to fit nicely into canon also tends to leave the dark side options moot. After spending time with a preview build of Star Wars Zero Company, I think that might finally change.
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In what developer BitReactor calls an evolution of the tactics genre, Zero Company breaks away from traditional Star Wars dichotomies by narrowing its focus. The titular Zero Company operates on the fringes of the Clone Wars from the jump, lead by a disgraced Republic soldier named Hawks. Hawks’s species and appearance is customizable, but their history is not. Despite how it may sound, that limitation opens up a lot more interesting options for a Star Wars game.
Star Wars Zero Company breaks away from traditional story beats.
Each Hawks will lead Zero Company in their own way. But getting restored to full glory does not appear to be on the table based on my time with the game. Instead, I got to make more worthwhile individual decisions far more in line with the moment to moment intensity of a tactics game – even when not in battle.
To ease into this kind of decision-making, Star Wars Zero Company offers risk-free choices at the beginning. For example, I could extort a fleeing Separatist agent or tip off the Republic without any negative impacts. Instead, the choice came down to what reward to claim and what kind of person I wanted my Glup Hawks to be. By the time a bigger choice came up, I was able to be far more strategic without worrying about messing up the storyline.
The biggest decisions naturally come on the battlefield. BitReactor is made up of veteran developers from Firaxis Games, and the influence of modern XCOM and Marvel Midnight Suns is easy to see. Each recruit specializes in one of several classes (with multipsecs available later on) and can be customized with any gear, cosmetics, and training as Hawks sees fit.
BitReactor fine-tunes the levels of intensity throughout.
Shoring up the scripted members of Zero Company is the ability to recruit custom operators. Operators have their own backgrounds and histories and don’t just serve as placeholders. Hawks can interact with them just like any other character and they carry personality quirks and voices in line with their backstories.
In one instance, I recruited an operator with a long history. In her design and every conversation, she exuded the energy of a veteran. She gave my Hawks advice and complained about the changes in the job she’d experienced over the years. Not once did her dialogue come across as generic – or generated, for that matter.
While in the field, these recruits leverage their own skills both on their own and in support of each other. Leveraging characters together builds bonds that can open up additional buffs both in the field and in trainings back at base. Making the wrong choices bring the biggest specter of tactics games: permadeath.
There are genuine stakes as the game progresses and characters sustain injuries.
Permanent death is the big detail BitReactor is hammering on in regards to Star Wars Zero Company being an evolution of the tactics genre. As director Greg Foertsch put it: “death shouldn’t cost you elegance.” In practice, this means that any character besides Hawks can die in the field, and the game will compensate accordingly.
This game is designed to heavily encourage players to keep the option at its default, because it creates real consequences for decisions made in the field. On the recommended difficulty, a character properly dies when they sustain critical injuries when their health reaches zero three times.
In my time with Star Wars Zero Company, I found this way of handling things manageable. Even so, multiple characters sustained at least one injury, which definitely raised the stakes. Even after getting back to base and receiving treatment for my injured team, managing limited resources still took time.
Star Wars Zero Company makes the details count.
I ultimately had to bench my veteran for multiple missions, just to ensure her safety. My attachment wasn’t to anything specific in the narrative,, but Zero Company managed to convince me that she mattered to the Glup Hawks. That’s not something that could happen with permadeath off.
Star Wars Zero Company is making the little things count. There is a larger story at play that fits within the canon, but what is really compelling is the story I was able to tell in-between. The granular choice that tactical games inherently offer just might give some edge back to the franchise. It’s an opportunity that Star Wars rarely affords itself, and BitReactor is taking every advantage of it.
Star Wars Zero Company launches August 27th, 2026, on Playstation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
