It launched 27 August on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, and it arrived with a deceptively simple pitch: XCOM, but Star Wars. What Star Wars: Zero Company has turned out to be, at least for those who’ve spent time with it, is something a little harder to categorise — a turn-based tactics game that uses permadeath not as a difficulty modifier but as a storytelling tool.
The game comes from Bit Reactor, a studio formed by many of the developers who made XCOM: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns at Firaxis. Published by Electronic Arts and Lucasfilm Games, it casts players as Hawks, the customisable leader of Zero Company — a mercenary outfit operating during the Clone Wars era of the Star Wars timeline.
How Permadeath Changes the Story
Permadeath in most tactics games is a mechanical pressure: lose a character, lose their stats and gear. In Zero Company, the stakes are narrative. Squad members who die in the field don’t just vacate a slot in your roster — they’re removed from the story. Their absence creates ripples. Questlines that would have featured them go unreachable. Certain plot branches close off entirely.
The system extends to story characters. Characters like Trick and Kabb — who seem, by all appearances, to be significant to the narrative — can die permanently in combat. If Hawks falls, it’s a mission failure requiring a restart, but every other member of Zero Company is fair game. Three injuries to a single operator means they’re gone.
“When playing with permadeath, that character is permanently removed from the game. Yes, that includes the story characters who are then removed from the story.” — RPGFan review
A Feature You’re Supposed to Use
Bit Reactor is clear about their intent: permadeath is optional but actively encouraged. The developers recommend playing with it enabled for a more emotionally engaged campaign, and critics who’ve spent significant time with the game generally agree. Game Informer’s preview noted that by the end of a 10-hour demo, only Hawks and one other original Zero Company member were still alive — not through negligence, but through the natural attrition of difficult tactical missions.
The system also pairs with a toggle that prevents manual saves when activated, forcing players to live with their decisions rather than reload. Taken together, the two options push Zero Company significantly further than a typical licensed tactics game would venture.
Key detail: Three injuries to a single operator triggers permanent death. The injury system accumulates across missions, meaning a character who survived one battle damaged is already at greater risk in the next.
The XCOM DNA Is Still There
None of this is to say the game has abandoned its tactical roots. The turn-based combat is recognisably XCOM-descended — cover mechanics, action point economies, overwatch, and the constant tension of not knowing exactly where the next threat is coming from. Bit Reactor brings deep institutional knowledge of that formula, and it shows in how fluidly the core loop plays.
What Zero Company adds on top is a degree of character investment that pure tactics games rarely achieve. Because your squad members have personalities, dialogue, and story roles, losing them to a bad dice roll or a tactical miscalculation carries genuine weight. That weight is what makes the permadeath option something worth engaging with, rather than a mode for masochists.
The Clone Wars Setting Pays Off
The Clone Wars era gives the game room to breathe in ways that more canonical Star Wars settings sometimes don’t. Hawks and Zero Company operate in the margins of the conflict — mercenaries unfolding a mystery involving a fanatical cult, rather than the saga’s central characters fighting predetermined battles. It’s the same approach that made Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order feel like a proper story rather than an extended lore delivery mechanism.
Star Wars: Zero Company is available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S, rated Teen.
