Fresh off the debut of the big Official Story Trailer (as seen below), the Force was felt at IGN Live Sunday with a panel for Star Wars: Zero Company featuring Director Greg Foertsch and Lead Designer James Brawley.
The upcoming single-player turn-based tactics game is set in the twilight of the Clone Wars and Foertsch elaborated how you play against (and within) the backdrop of the Clone Wars, not so much directly immersed in them. “There’s so many things going on. Lots of different backroom dealing, lots of politics at play. While the Clone Wars is happening, there’s this other war happening beneath the war.”
Zero Company contains XCOM-style permadeath for characters, even though it is considered a canonical story. Said Foertsch, “All the stuff that happens in the middle, your experience will be different from mine, but in the end where it all wraps up, that’s where it funnels into the Star Wars canon,” even as there might be variations on who lives and dies around you along the way.
Brawley noted that while “the tactical missions themselves are the bread and butter of a lot of the gameplay and where all off the combat happens,” he was also excited for players to experience The Den. As he described it, The Den is “a place where you and your operators are operating between missions. You’ll have the opportunity to not only talk to the different members of the team and see how they’re doing and if they’re hoping you’ll help them take care of something, but also take care of a lot of the management tasks. You’ll be able to buy items from the black market. You can choose to modify your character’s load outs – what weapons and utility items they’re using and then customize and level up their skills as you choose to.”
Following that, you then move to the Galaxy map, which is where “you’ll send your guys out on non-combat missions that help them gather intelligence and new resources.”
At the conclusion of those tasks, the cycle concludes, with Brawley explaining that’s when you “accept and select a mission, choose your squad members, and see the sequence where you depart the Den.”
As for the team you assemble, Brawley noted that Star Wars: Zero Company contains “A cast of bespoke characters but the player can also create as many custom characters as they want and they can perform the same level of combat interactions as the other characters.”
Teamwork is integral because the game contains what Brawley calls the Bond System, “where actions and combat can improve relationships between two of the characters on the team. That’s really the backbone of how our characters progress. As the relationships develop, they gain more and more focus points to spend on leveling up their skills.”
In the game, you play as former Republic office Hawks, whose default is a human male, but Foertsch noted, “Hawks can be anything you want Hawks to be. You can make Hawks a Twi’lek or a Zabrak, a male, a female… It should be however you want to express yourself as a player”
The trailer revealed Anakin Skywalker will show up in the game, but it also showed a glimpse of an unknown figure holding a red lightsaber. Given we know Zero Company is set near the end of the Clone Wars, Foertsch and Brawley were asked whether Anakin would be considered good or perhaps more Dark Sided already – or perhaps you meet him both before and after? Replied Foertsch, “You’ll have to play it to find out!”
Star Wars: Zero Company will be available on PC, PlayStation 5 (PS5), and Xbox Series X/S on August 27.
Be sure to keep up with everything going on at IGN Live 2026. You can check the full schedule to see what else is coming up across games, movies, TV, streaming, and more.
