Star Wars Zero Company Stands Out by Mixing XCOM Combat with Cinematic Storytelling

Star Wars Zero Company may look like an obvious combination at first, but after spending several hours with the game, it becomes clear that Bit Reactor is trying to do more than simply put a Star Wars skin over an XCOM-style strategy game. The studio is bringing together tactical combat, character-driven storytelling, exploration, and a much stronger focus on presentation. 

The game is being developed by Bit Reactor, a studio with several former Firaxis developers among its team, including people who formerly worked on the XCOM series and Marvel's Midnight Suns. That experience is immediately noticeable once you get into combat, but the developers are clearly not stopping there. 

Bit Reactor has discussed the idea that "depth shouldn't cost you elegance," and that philosophy seems to influence almost every part of Zero Company. Instead of forcing you to choose between strong gameplay, presentation, and storytelling, the studio is attempting to deliver all three together.

Star Wars Zero Company takes place during the Clone Wars and follows a conflict happening underneath the larger war spreading across the galaxy. 

While major events continue elsewhere, your group becomes involved in covert operations that can quietly influence the situation. This gives the developers room to tell an original story without constantly interfering with established Star Wars events. 

You play as Hawks, a former Republic military operative who has fallen from grace and now works simply to survive. The character creation system gives you plenty of control over Hawks, including their species, appearance, clothing, and class. 

It’s more detailed than you’d expect from this type of game, and the customization makes your version of Hawks feel more personal. There is one major limitation, however, as the game only offers male and female voices, with both built around the personality of a weary and cynical veteran.

That decision does reduce some of the role-playing possibilities, but it also gives Bit Reactor something that XCOM-style games do not always have: a clearly defined protagonist who can carry a voiced story. Instead of controlling a mostly silent commander, you get a character with an established personality and a specific outlook on the world. 

Your class also affects how Hawks plays, with the gunslinger, for example, focusing on quick, low-damage shots that can refund ability points after securing a kill. The system gives each class its identity while keeping the tactical foundation intact.

The story itself starts with Star Wars Zero Company being pulled into a situation involving a shadowy organization causing problems throughout the Republic and helping fuel a separatist movement. The Republic wants the threat dealt with quietly, keeping the operation away from the attention of the wider galaxy.

The Republic military wants the problem dealt with quietly, while a wealthy aristocrat has her own reasons for wanting the situation resolved without attracting attention. 

That gives an independent group a reason to handle the work quietly. Star Wars Zero Company is then introduced as a collection of outcasts and mercenaries who are already struggling financially and owe a considerable debt to the Hutts.

The writing is one of the areas where the game immediately makes an impression. The dialogue feels tight, the characters have distinct personalities, and even smaller conversations are used to establish relationships and add context to the wider story. 

Narrative director Aaron Contreras brings experience from Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and the Star Wars Jedi games, and that background appears to be reflected in the way Star Zero Company handles its characters and Star Wars setting. New characters quickly become compelling, while even minor interactions can make your crew feel like an actual group rather than a collection of units.

The most significant difference comes when you consider what happens if your characters die. Star Wars Zero Company follows the XCOM tradition of allowing important characters to be permanently lost if you use the appropriate setting, but here those deaths can have a much larger impact on the story. 

These aren't just soldiers with statistics attached to them, because many of them are connected directly to the narrative. Losing someone can change how later events unfold, giving your decisions on the battlefield consequences beyond simply winning or losing a mission.

Your choices outside combat can matter just as much. 

You choose who joins you on missions, who you spend time with at the base, and which conversations you have with crew members. A character can become your closest companion if you consistently bring them along and make choices they agree with, but they could also leave the team if you repeatedly push them in the wrong direction. 

The overall tone also appears to be carefully balanced. Star Wars Zero Company is still recognizably Star Wars, but it leans more toward a spy thriller than the swashbuckling adventure found in the Jedi games. Bit Reactor has drawn inspiration from The Clone Wars and Andor, and you can see that in the combination of political tension, covert operations, and personal stakes. 

Presentation is another area where Star Wars Zero Company is trying to push beyond the usual expectations of the genre. The visual style inspired The Clone Wars while developing its own look, and the team worked with concept artist Terrell Whitlatch, who formerly worked on The Phantom Menace, to capture the feel of the era. 

They feel authentic to Star Wars, but they don’t merely mirror what we’ve already seen. Characters also get detailed animation in cutscenes, with facial expressions and body language adding another dimension to their performances.

The voice acting works in tandem with those animations to add weight to conversations. Hawks' delivery, in particular, suggests someone who has spent years dealing with war and has little patience for empty promises. 

Small changes in his tone and expression can communicate frustration, exhaustion, or distrust without requiring the dialogue to spell everything out. That attention to acting helps Star Wars Zero Company feel closer to a cinematic Star Wars production than the more functional presentation often associated with tactical strategy games.

Bit Reactor is also adding some exploration between battles. 

Instead of selecting a mission and immediately being dropped onto the battlefield, you can sometimes move through parts of the environment before, during, and after an encounter. A mission can begin at a location such as the docks, where you talk to people, look for a route forward, and deal with obstacles before eventually being spotted and pulled into combat. 

When you finally get into combat, the foundation is very familiar to anyone who has played XCOM. You have different weapon types, half and full cover, explosives, Overwatch, percentage-based accuracy, and the occasional frustrating miss when the game tells you that you have a 95% chance to hit. 

Bit Reactor is not trying to reinvent tactical combat completely, and considering how long it has been since the last numbered XCOM game, that familiarity may actually work in Zero Company's favor. The familiar mechanics also give the developers more room to focus on how the Star Wars setting can change the way you approach each encounter.

There are still some additions that give the combat its own identity. Environmental objects can be destroyed, certain pieces of cover can disappear and leave your characters exposed, and a shared super-ability meter lets you choose powerful attacks depending on the situation. 

You can also call on teammates to attack the same target, giving you another way to coordinate your squad. The bigger question for the finished game will be how creatively these systems interact with the Star Wars universe.

That is where the game's biggest potential may eventually come from. 

Controlling a Jedi on a tactical grid, managing a Mandalorian's jetpack, figuring out how much firepower it takes to bring down different droids, and building unusual squads could give Star Wars Zero Company plenty of opportunities to separate itself from traditional XCOM-style games. 

The developers have even discussed the possibility of running a squad made entirely of astromechs. After only a few hours with the game, there is still plenty left to discover, but the basic systems already suggest that the Star Wars license is being used for more than decoration.

The game's origins also help explain why the project has such a strong connection to the XCOM formula. Bit Reactor co-founder and game director Greg Foertsch spent 20 years at Firaxis before leaving to pursue his idea for a new strategy game. 

He eventually received a call from Vince Zampella, who had heard about the project and asked whether it could become a Star Wars game. Several years later, Star Wars Zero Company is the result of that conversation, combining the experience of former Firaxis developers with the storytelling background associated with Respawn's Star Wars work.

Based on the preview, Star Wars Zero Company is shaping up as more than a straightforward Star Wars version of XCOM. The tactical foundation is familiar, but the combination of meaningful character deaths, relationship systems, exploration, cinematic presentation, and a story built around the Clone Wars gives the game its own identity. 

If Bit Reactor can maintain that balance across the full campaign, you could be looking at a strategy game that finally manages to give gameplay, storytelling, and presentation equal importance. Star Wars Zero Company is scheduled to launch on August 27 for PC, PS5, and XBOX Series consoles.