Star Wars Meets XCOM in Star Wars Zero Company - IGN Live 2026

[00:00] We've been exploring the Star Wars Galaxy for video games almost as long as Star Wars has been around, and later this year we get to not only explore new corners of it, we can use those corners as cover while we plan our squad's next booth.

[00:24] Here to tell us about the upcoming turn-based tactic game, Star Wars Zero Company. Please welcome Greg Birch and Greg Raleigh from Git Reactor. Welcome. Thank you for coming.

[00:38] Okay, so can you set the stage for us? This is set during the twilight of the Clone Wars. We got a killer trailer that had a surprise appearance from one Anakin Skywalker at the very end there. Who are we playing as and sort of what part of this conflict are we in?

[00:52] Are we in the Clone Wars or are we doing something else? So you're in the backdrop of the Clone Wars, right? The Clone Wars is a great setting for the game because there's so many other things going on. Lots of sub-furchase.

[01:04] You know what I'm saying. Now, there's lots of different backroom dealing. There's all sorts of different agendas going on. There's a lot of politics at play. And so while the Clone Wars is happening,

[01:17] there's this other war happening beneath the war. And you're playing a talk. who's a former Republic officer and you're now working

[01:29] with a group of mercenary soldiers trying to prevent the spread of the Shadow Plague throughout Dallas. Okay, alright, so that's exciting to me

[01:41] like the Clone Wars setting is really cool, but like I feel like you could have done it straightforward you have a Kong group or send them to go do stuff against Shepard's armies. This gets a little bit gray, this gets kind of murky. I'm into that. Now this is obviously Zero Company Z-Com

[01:56] This has got a little bit of X-Com DNA in there One of the best parts of X-Com is permadeath Which is returning here, is that right? How do you balance that with telling a canonical story? If you've got characters who exist in this universe, in this galaxy

[02:10] And then they can die or not die? How does that work? Yeah, so the story is a canonical story, of course You start in one place, you end in one place as a player All the stuff that happens in the middle characters living and dying.

[02:23] Your experience is going to be different than mine, but at the end when the story wraps up, it starts tying escort funnels back in from Star Wars 10. So we can have very different experiences, how we play the game, how we level our characters,

[02:35] the characters that live and die. It could all be a little bit different, but at the end of the game, it all kind of funnels back. Right on. Well, we've got a brand new clip from the game. We've got a trailer. Let's queue it up and take a look.

[02:51] Do you want to find it?

[03:10] Intelligence with ship The intelligence will shift brief on reports of the speed. So we can make our move. You have to move.

[03:22] You're welcome back. You still got it, old man.

[03:39] What do you got from here? We're serious. Quill has been spotted meeting with local gangsters. Get down there and find out what they're up to. Please do it quietly.

[03:53] Christmas. Shelf in closer. I think he got contracted for an independence plan. I've been tracking Calvin for months. She's at the center of Italy.

[04:11] All right, let's get a thing together. I'm not in it for the credit.

[04:23] There we go! He's a good operator.

[04:39] You, Rick. I'm just thinking I must be proud of you.

[05:01] We work with all kinds of folks.

[05:16] Ex-deprecis. Ex-noble. Ex-con. And we're better for them. We're almost there. We just gotta finish this job.

[05:31] I think they like what they say.

[05:56] I think you might have something here. Yeah, we're talking about this backstage. This is chocolate and peanut butter This is tactical turn and Star Wars I feel like this should have been done a lot sooner Obviously we got a lot of cool combat there That the spicy exciting stuff you put in the trailer So much of these games is also what happening between missions and I want to talk a little bit about that

[06:18] Like in XCOM, you go back, you build your base, you know, you do your research and all that. In Midnight Suns, you do that, but then you also wind up in the hot stove with Doctor Strange for some reason and sort of book club with Blade. What are we doing in between missions here?

[06:30] What's going on kind of when zero companies are, right, I'd love to tell you about that. So, of course, the tactical missions themselves are the bread and butter of a lot of the gameplay. That's where all of the combat happens and such.

[06:43] But between those missions, you're going to return to the DIN, which is a place where you and all of your operators are operating between missions. You'll have the opportunity to not only talk to the different members of the team

[06:56] and see how they're doing and check out with them and see if they have anything that they're hoping you're going to help them take care of. but you'll also be able to perform a lot of the management tasks. You can go and you can buy items from the black market.

[07:08] You can choose how to modify your character's loadout, what weapons they're using, what utility items they're using, and then to customize and level up their skills how you choose to do so. After you're done doing those things, you then move to the galaxy map.

[07:23] And on the galaxy map, you're going to send your guys out to complete non-combat operations that help them gather intelligence, gather resources, make new contacts, earn new opportunities for combat missions.

[07:37] And each time you return to the den, we call that a cycle. And the cycle concludes with going to the holocaust table to accept and execute a mission. Then you'll select the squad members you want to send on that mission,

[07:49] and then you'll get to see cool sequences where you depart the den on your ship, and then you head to those places and engage the enemy. I love these. These are all, like, bespoke characters? No, not all of them.

[08:01] We have a cast of bespoke characters, which are many of the characters that you've seen there in the preview. But the player can also create as many custom characters as they want, and they can perform the same level of combat interactions

[08:15] as any of the other characters. Okay, I'm into that. Because I feel like having, you know, being limited to the scripted characters you've got, it's going to be rough if they get killed off. It might be good to have some maybe more disposable people around, some cannon fodder.

[08:29] It's not even just disposable, but it's a matter of who you, the player, want to embrace as your team. If you really like the bespoke characters, you can use them.

[08:41] If you're not so interested in some of them, you can create your own and rotate them into the team. You can use ten guys and rotate between them if you want. You can focus on an A team. It's up to you how you want to approach the game. How many bespoke characters are there?

[08:54] I believe it's sick. Okay. And they all, I mean, I'm getting a little bit of like a kind of, kind of a Mass Effect 2 vibe from this, where you're getting the gang together, and you've got to make sure they're all happy, right?

[09:06] Right, there's a little bit of that effect. It's kind of like a happy medium between the Mass Effect 2 model and the XCOM model. Coming to that Are there romance options I guess we just have to I guess this is have to play the game and find out

[09:24] Okay, might get weird, but we'll see. Can you tell us a little bit about what's going on in the combat? Are there any particular mechanics or features that you're really particularly proud of that you want to showcase? One of our most important features in the game is the bond system,

[09:37] where actions in combat can improve the relationships between two of the characters on the team. team, and that's really kind of the backbone of how our characters progress. As the relationships develop,

[09:49] they gain more and more focus points to spend on leveling up their skills. Okay, so there's a... I like that that kind of permeates the whole game. You've got to juggle that.

[10:01] Is there going to be sort of like a recruitment period early on where you've got to go out and find people, or you kind of start out with your crew at the game? I mean... Go ahead. Like, we get you started with a starter kit, and then you can go about it however you want,

[10:17] and then you will recruit new characters, new droids. On top of it, you can, where all your characters are not set, like, there's a lot you can do with their abilities and spec them out in a different way,

[10:31] so, like, your alternate hero is not exactly the same as mine, and how they bond together also makes them different. So, there's a lot more flexibility than people may think, and how some of the altered characters really work.

[10:45] Tell me more about Hawks. Can you say who's playing him? I think as a player, you can have it. Hawks. Okay. And Hawks can be anything you want Hawks to be.

[10:58] Hawks is, for the box, is a guy. Okay. A human. But, like, you can make it a Tweris. You can make Hawks a Zabrak. Okay. Male, female.

[11:10] It should be your, however you were as a player. Cool, I'm into that. I mean, I know like one thing, we're talking about this with the canon, one thing with Star Wars Outlaws where like K-Vex is the protagonist because she's part of this universe.

[11:22] It sounds like you're getting a little bit more freedom and more kind of modular here and really let players take it on while still tackling stuff that fits into the canon. Yeah, exactly. Right on. We saw a red lightsaber

[11:35] in there, but we also saw Anakin. We also said this is the Twilight of the Clone Wars. Is Anakin a good guy or a bad guy? I mean, you have to play it to find out, right? Okay.

[11:47] All right. I'm very intrigued. I like that you're showing us up. They think they're coming out soon. Yeah? August 27th? August 27th. How are you doing?

[11:59] This is what I like to see. I like to see this much of a game, this close to the game coming out. So I get excited, then I can go play it. Thank you guys so much for coming by. You heard it here. The Solar Zero Company is coming to TC and Controls August 27th. There is still a lot of time to get on.

[12:12] The biggest force to do is do it.