Can you keep Tel-Rea alive for 30-40 hours?

Image credit: Electronic Arts

Star Wars Zero Company is the XCOM-style tactics RPG in which you, a Clone Wars-era roughneck called Hawks, lead a squad of "unconventional professionals" into battle against some enigmatic threat to the galaxy. Among these unconventional professionals is a Jedi Padawan, Tel-Rea. Her moves include dual-wielding lightsabers and Force Pushing mooks into overwatch zones. What a beast! Be careful with your Tel-Rea, though: you only get one of her, and she's permakillable. There's no option to train up a replacement Jedi Padawan as a custom operator.

I assume this is a bid to avoid the usual Star Wars balancing problem where Jedis trounce all other characters, but perhaps developers Bit Reactor just really hate Luke Skywalker, and have added a Jedi to the roster only grudgingly after a messy blaster battle with their marketing team. They certainly can't be accused of hating R2D2, though. In Zero Company, you can field an entire squad of astromechs. Four rampaging cyber dustbins in a world of chest-high cover. They will be unstoppable. What's the binary for "the future is now, meatsacks"? Ah yes: beebly squeebly bobbly beebly do. Get 'em, lads! Bang into their shins repeatedly! Jab 'em in the Hutts with your hacker prods!

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All that's from a new developer Q&A that covers the game from top to bottom. Among other things, we learn that it's a 30-40 hour RPG experience with no plot branching, no formalised character romances, no plans for modding support, and no New Game+. I am sad that I will never be able to max out an astromech's Seduction Bar, but glad that my custom protagonist will not have to fend off any thirsty Han Solo wannabes.

The campaign consists of a mix of Operations – optional, quickfire activities that may involve some choose-your-own-adventure style storytelling – and actual missions. Missions can be put off and will eventually expire, but story-critical varieties will become mandatory past a certain point.

There are 12 classes, including four exotic classes, like the Jedi Padawan character. You'll get some developer-written people to throw down with, but you'll also be able to craft your own unsightly Star Warblers. Again, though, you only get one Jedi, unless the mysterious unannounced fourth exotic class is actually a Jedi Master. Wouldn't put it past Bit Reactor to have a Qui-Gon waiting in the wings. You can also turn the permadeath off if you're a COWARD.

As for the combat itself, there are 150 planets to fight on, and you'll be able to scout maps out before entering the fray. Your team has a shared Advantage resource pool for tide-turning special abilities. They're also adding mission types such as sabotage and VIP rescue which they hope will avoid "the traditionally safe Overwatch crawl strategy commonly found in tactics games".

Our Julian interviewed Greg Foertsch, founder of Bit Reactor and creative director on Star Wars Zero Company, in April. Foertsch had many sensible things to say about the value of keeping teams together, based on his time as XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2 art director. I assume the same reasoning applies to storming positions in Zero Company, which launches on 27th August.