// KOTAKU — GAMING
Star Wars Zero Company: The Kotaku Review
Let’s just get this out of the way right at the beginning. Yes, EA and Bit Reactor’s new tactical Star Wars game, Star Wars Zero Company, plays and looks a lot like a modern XCOM game. It’s impossible to ignore the similarities, and considering the studio was founded by XCOM art director Greg Foertsch, it isn’t a mistake. There’s no debate about it: This is a team building an XCOM game but set in the Star Wars universe.
The question really is: Does Star Wars Zero Company feel like its own thing inspired by the past, or is it just a lesser reskin of a popular tactical strategy game? Thankfully, after playing nearly 30 hours of Zero Company and finishing the game, I can confirm Bit Reactor has made something special that takes advantage of the Star Wars universe to create a game far more impressive than a simple imposter.
Just be prepared for some janky cameras, weird pauses during combat, and graphical oddities.
Star Wars Zero Company, out now on consoles and PC, is set during the final months of the Clone Wars. This is a time period seen during the prequel films as well as the Clone Wars TV series, both of which get referenced many, many times during the game. In Zero Company, you take on the role of Hawks, a former Republic captain who was kicked out after a mission during the war went bad. Now he runs a small mercenary outfit with his Togruta second-in-command Runa, injured Clone soldier Trick, old friend and former alien boxer Kabbney Uppercut, and Lesat smuggler Neesh. (Hawks can also be a woman, and can belong to an assortment of Star Wars species.)
Things aren’t going well for them at the start of the game, so Hawks and Zero Company end up agreeing to work with the Republic covertly to take on a growing cult of creepy people led by a woman named Fathom who seems to have an unnatural ability to control her followers and others.
Over the next 20+ hours, Zero Company tells one heck of a good Star Wars story, one which rivals most of the recent live-action productions in terms of writing, pacing, and just feeling like good ol’ Star Wars. You got twists, turns, meaningful cameos from characters like Anakin Skywalker, and so much more that I won’t spoil here because I truly don’t want to ruin it for anyone.
What I will say is that by the end of Zero Company, I was sad it was ending even though its finale felt perfect.
What made it so hard to stop playing Zero Company were the interactions between my crew and the relationships that developed over the course of the game. By the end, Hawks ends up recruiting former Separatists, Republic clones, criminals, Jedi, and bounty hunters. How they interact with each other between missions made returning to base so much fun. And there’s a ton of dialogue in this game. I rarely heard the same line twice and learned so much about each operator. Zero Company even rewards you for chatting with your crew and includes a mechanic dedicated to tracking how well everyone is getting along or how much they hate each other, which might sway your choice when forced into a tricky situation.
A great example of this is the relationship between Trick and an Umbaran sniper named Luco. These are two people who fought each other in the Clone Wars on a planet with some of the worst, bloodiest battles in the war. Watching that relationship play out, knowing that any character in the game can be permanently killed, really blew me away.
A lot of work went into cutscenes and writing that some players won’t see simply because they fucked up during a battle and lost a good soldier or friend.