Bit Reactor Leads Give New Story, Combat, and Gameplay Details for ‘Star Wars: Zero Company’
It was only last year when fans learned _Star Wars: Zero Company_ , a turn-based tactics game, was in the works from new development studio Bit Reactor. We didn’t hear much about the game for some time after that, but just a few days ago, _PC Gamer_ announced that the upcoming title would be the focus of their newest issue’s cover story.
Now, that story has dropped, and we know a lot more about Bit Reactor’s debut offering. From the look of things, fans of _Star Wars_ video games are in for a treat!
_PC Gamer_ spoke with several of the project’s senior developers, including Bit Reactor founder Greg Foertsch. Unsurprisingly, the new studio has more than a few veterans of the newer _XCOM_ games in its ranks. After all, many of its initial employees, Foertsch included, once worked at Firaxis. As Foertsch explains, he knew he wanted to keep making strategy games with his new studio. It was Respawn Entertainment co-founder Vince Zampella, though, who gave them a chance to work in the _Star Wars_ universe.
> “I’d left Firaxis after about 22 years of working there and making strategy games my whole career. I knew I wanted to stay in the strategy, the tactics space…
>
> I’m sitting in my office with the lights out and my computer on, my wife’s asleep, my kids are asleep, and the phone rings. It’s this number that I don’t recognize. For some reason I answered it, and the voice on the other end said, ‘Hey, Greg, this is Vince Zampella. I heard you have a game you want to make. Can you tell me about it?’…
>
> He eventually said, ‘Do you think you can make a _Star Wars_ game with this?’ And I said, ‘Sure, different game, but yeah, absolutely.’ Meanwhile, I’m thinking, ‘This is insane, right? Like, this is crazy. It’s Star Wars.’ And so I said, ‘Yeah, I can do that.’ And Vince was just like, ‘Pitch me.'”
Of course, Foertsch’s subsequent pitch was ultimately successful, and work on the game began. Zampella himself sadly died in a car accident a few months ago. However, his legacy in video games lives on, in part through titles like _Zero Company_ that he helped get greenlit.
Originally appeared in PC Gamer. Credit to Lucasfilm, EA, and Bit Reactor.
Given that _Zero Company_ is within the same genre as beloved turn-based, tactical games like _XCOM_ , fans rightly expect the upcoming release to have plenty of tense combat scenarios that require them to think carefully about how to achieve their objectives. According to the developers, their project absolutely includes plenty of combat, but they didn’t want to forget to provide players with a rewarding experience exploring the game’s levels.
Combining well-designed combat encounters with meaningful exploration presented a significant development challenge, but it was one Bit Reactor’s team knew it had to overcome. Animation lead and _XCOM_ veteran Hector Antunez explained:
> “We pick our battles. The heart of the game is in the tactical combat. But we really wanted to add an element that allowed players to spend even more time in the Star Wars environments and not have those spaces be limited by what would make for fun combat.”
As for the combat itself, the moment-to-moment gameplay bears many similarities to _XCOM_. The player’s squad consists of at most four characters, each with three action points (AP) per turn. APs are used for movement, attacks, and other abilities. The squad also has another resource, advantage points, which they share among themselves and can use on special abilities. Some of those abilities are unique to specific character classes.
Originally appeared in PC Gamer. Credit to Lucasfilm, EA, and Bit Reactor.
Story-wise, the Clone Wars-set game will feature a healthy mix of main story and side missions. The side missions, while shorter and simpler than the main story content, are still hand-crafted scenarios with only minimal procedurally-generated elements.
Between missions, players will get to spend some downtime at the Den, which is the game’s hub area, not unlike the underground headquarters in _XCOM_ or the Abbey from _Marvel’s Midnight Suns_. Here, you can talk to your squadmates and upgrade their equipment and abilities. You can even hire mercenaries to join your team.
The game has 12 character classes, consisting of 8 standard ones (Assault, Heavy, Sharpshooter, Scoundrel, Soldier, Gunslinger, Scout, and Medic) and 4 “exotic” ones that only specific characters can choose. As one would guess, only an astromech droid can be in the Astromech class. Similarly, only Jedi Padawan Tellia Trea and Mandalorian Clyde Clervo can pursue the Jedi Padawan and Mandalorian Warrior classes, respectively. There’s one last exclusive class that Bit Reactor doesn’t want to reveal just yet. They may even wait until the game is released for players to discover it!
Originally appeared in PC Gamer. Credit to Lucasfilm, EA, and Bit Reactor.
The centerpiece of the Den, however, is the galaxy map where players choose which combat missions and non-combat operations their team will undertake. The ops being presented will change every time a cycle passes, and they focus on intelligence gathering and other activities that could help or hinder your squad later in the game.
For instance, one type of operation involves preventing a specific enemy type from getting a permanent combat upgrade. The game will sometimes present two such missions at the same time, and you can only choose one, meaning one of your foes will be harder to face going forward, no matter what you do. If you don’t do either operation, two enemy types will earn upgrades.
The operations don’t just have gameplay consequences, either. The writing team also wanted the optional missions to have their own long-term stories. As lead designer Grayson Scantlebury says:
> “I helped this guy. And then 10 cycles from now, he comes back with some information or an item or something that’s useful to me. Versus, I shot him, and he comes back, and now I’ve got a thing on the map that is not great for me…
>
> I’ve spent a lot of time poring through books or going on Wookieepedia and going, ‘OK, I have a story I want to tell. What’s a planet that makes sense during the Clone Wars era that I could tell that story. Or vice versa: I’m just browsing through and going, ‘Well, what happened on Bespin at this time, or Lothal at this time?'”
Speaking of the story, we finally have some more concrete details on what the game will be about. _Jedi: Fallen Order_ and _Jedi: Survivor_ narrative lead Aaron Contreras is taking charge of _Zero Company_ ‘s story as well. The main character, Hawks, is a Republic officer who lands in hot water after being involved in a failed military operation. Hawks is a fully-voiced, customizable main character, with their gender and species determined by player choice. Hawks teams up with their clone friend, Trick, to form Zero Company as a means of bouncing back from their defeat. The story kicks into gear when Hawks is asked to investigate a dark-side cult working with the Separatists. With that, Zero Company has its mission.
Players will have to worry about more than just winning fights against enemies, however. As the developers have discussed previously, Zero Company is made up of an eclectic mix of characters, and they don’t always get along. A key example of inter-character conflict is the one between Trick and Luco Bronc, an Umbaran sniper. Given that the Battle of Umbara was a particularly costly engagement for both the clones and the local resistance, those two characters hold a strong grudge against each other.
Character conflicts aren’t just part of the narrative, either. The game includes a bond system that measures squad members’ opinions of Hawks and each other. Undertaking missions with specific squadmates and making certain choices during the story will affect bonds between characters.
All that being said, players might not want to get too attached to any one character. You see, Zero Company brings back one of XCOM’s most-noted mechanics: permadeath. That’s right, your favorite character could permanently die during the game if you make the wrong choices during combat, and the story will simply continue. Only Hawks is exempt from potentially suffering this fate. The worst their death will bring about is a “Game Over” screen.
To be clear, characters won’t immediately die the first time they’re knocked out of combat. The game includes an “injury” system in which defeated characters incur certain penalties until you get them treated. You can revive a downed character during a mission if you want, but then they might get more injuries. And at some point, their injuries will take them permanently out of the game.
Permadeath wasn’t always part of the plan for _Zero Company_. Its inclusion was the result of a debate among the developers during production, but the project leads now agree that it was the right choice. Said Foertsch:
> “ _Star Wars_ is about loss. I mean, four years old, watching Obi-Wan Kenobi die, right? It’s about loss, and then also, as a developer, wanting people to not save scum, but to push through the loss, to what’s on the other side of the experience, to feel it.”
Eager _Star Wars_ fans may not have to wait much longer to experience what Bit Reactor has been cooking up, either. _Zero Company_ doesn’t have a release date, but _PC Gamer_ says it should be ready to hit later this year. We’ll keep you posted on all news relating to upcoming _Star Wars_ games as we hear it.
Head over to _PC Gamer_ ‘s coverage for more details this article doesn’t cover.
##### Eric Lentz
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Eric has been a fan of Star Wars ever since the age of five (or so) when his parents sat him down in front of a TV with pizza and a Sprite and showed him the original trilogy. He keeps trying to convince more fans to read the amazing 1980s Star Wars newspaper comics by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson. When he's not reading, watching or playing Star Wars media, he's often enjoying other great fantasy and science fiction sagas or playing roleplaying games with his friends.
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Bit Reactor Leads Give New Story, Combat, and Gameplay Details for ‘Star Wars: Zero Company’ It was only last year when fans learned Star Wars: Zero Company, a turn-based tactics game, was in t...
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