A story shaped by politics, grit, and myth. Set during the twilight of the Clone Wars, Star Wars: Zero Company pulls its inspiration from across the wider Star Wars timeline. According to Bit Reactor’s Greg Foertsch, the development team has taken clear inspiration from Andor, Rogue One, and the original trilogy. Not in terms of characters or plot, but in tone, structure, and presentation.
We’re inspired by the political intrigue of Andor, the gritty battlefield perspective of Rogue One, and, of course, the mythic pulp adventure of the original trilogy.”
These are three very different sources. The overlap isn’t obvious. But the way they’ve been combined here points to something deliberate.
From Andor: the conflict behind the conflict.
Andor is my favourite Star Wars TV show – season two is just a few days away – and the game borrows the show’s focus on smaller moves behind the scenes. Andor showed that Star Wars could slow down, get quiet, and still say something. It introduced a version of rebellion where the lines blur and the characters carry the cost of their choices. The Clone Wars have always been presented as a large-scale conflict, but this story turns away from the front lines. It’s about sabotage, surveillance, black ops. The kind of work no one talks about, but someone still has to do. Zero Company adopts that mindset. The squad members aren’t idealists. They’re professionals with conflicting loyalties, trying to complete missions in a shifting political landscape.
From Rogue One: the ground-level view.
The influence is obvious. This is a squad story. Dirty uniforms. Improvised missions. Deaths that matter because they’re they’re personal. From Rogue One, it pulls the visual and narrative weight of ground-level action. Most decisions are made with incomplete information. Most victories cost something. The squad doesn’t operate from the centre of power. You won’t see Hawks or his squad standing before the Senate. They’re sent in to handle situations others want to avoid.
From the Original Trilogy: myth, without the prophecy.
This is where it gets interesting. Zero Company avoids the Force-as-destiny narrative. But it still carries that mythic tone. Strangers from different worlds brought together, facing an unseen threat, forging bonds under pressure. From the original trilogy, it takes forward momentum. Missions are specific. Characters serve a purpose. That’s not new. That’s Star Wars at its core. But here, it’s stripped of ceremony. No chosen one. No hidden heritage. Characters aren’t exceptional. They just have a job, and a limited number of chances to get it right.
Lucasfilm’s Kelsey Sharpe explained the narrative direction:
We’ve never shied away from showing how complicated this conflict was… but I really think Zero Company is going to be one of the first times players actually get to go hands-on with that.”
This isn’t a new approach for Star Wars, but it is rare to see it explored in a videogame. Most Star Wars titles focus in on familiar characters, established arcs, and clear morality. Zero Company is focused elsewhere. Missions matter but they’re not grand set pieces. The characters all have a roll to play, quietly, behind the scenes and probably behind enemy lines too. The conflict in Zero Company plays out in the gaps between history. There’s no attempt here to revisit the mainline saga or replicate its structure. The story in Zero Company follows a small squad navigating a larger war.
That scale, and that framing, makes this one of the most interesting Star Wars game concepts in years.