How Star Wars Zero Company Aims To Replicate The Gritty Wartime Feel Of Rogue One And The Clone Wars

After an official reveal at Star Wars Celebration Japan, new details on Star Wars: Zero Company have been revealed. One of the interesting things about the game is its setting, as the events of Zero Company will unfold during the Clone Wars. While the galactic civil war has been explored in detail, Zero Company will focus on the hidden stories of that conflict and the covert operations that took place. Thematically, the game draws upon Star Wars stories like the Clone Wars animated series, Rogue One, and its prequel series Andor, as well as classic World War II movies like the Dirty Dozen.

"The Clone Wars offers us a lot of the tools we need mechanically for the game, which is great," Bit Reactor creative director Greg Foertsch explained in an interview with GameSpot. "But it's also interesting, we haven't seen that kind of zoom level in the Clone Wars, and so it's a pretty unique spot to land that also offered a lot of great options for us from a game design perspective, to tell a really great story with some great mechanics added to it. That really opened the door for us to do a lot of things."

LucasFilm Games producers Orion Kellogg and Kelsey Sharpe added that the Clone Wars era allowed for "all sorts of places in that zone" where original stories could be told. The nuanced storytelling of the Clone Wars was a big influence on Zero Company, alongside the boots-on-the-ground atmosphere of Rogue One. Films like the Dirty Dozen also inspired the idea of how the Zero Company squad comes together, but as Sharpe noted, the first Star Wars film still stands as the guiding light for the game.