From Dark Forces to Zero Company: how Star Wars games have kept reinventing the galaxy
Star Wars Zero Company arrived on 27 August 2026, but its significance extends beyond being another game set during the Clone Wars.
Developed by Bit Reactor in collaboration with Electronic Arts and Lucasfilm Games, Zero Company is the first Star Wars game built specifically around turn-based tactics. Players command former Republic officer Hawks and an unconventional squad trying to stop the Separatist-aligned Infinite Coil during the closing stages of the Clone Wars.
That makes it the latest example of something Star Wars games have been doing for decades: taking the same galaxy and allowing players to experience it from completely different perspectives.
We’ve flown X-wings, become Jedi, joined the Sith, commanded armies, fought as clone troopers, raced podracers, built LEGO versions of the films and participated in enormous multiplayer battles.
Now we’re commanding a tactical squad.
For South African gamers who grew up alongside those games, Zero Company represents another step in a gaming history stretching back generations.
Star Wars games became more than adaptations of the films
Star Wars and video games have been connected almost since commercial gaming began.
Early games understandably concentrated on reproducing recognisable moments from the films. Technology eventually allowed developers to do something considerably more interesting.
They could let players live inside the universe.
That distinction became increasingly important.
A film shows Luke Skywalker destroying the Death Star.
A game can put you behind the controls.
A film shows Jedi fighting with lightsabers.
A game can hand you one.
Eventually, developers stopped simply recreating the movies and began telling entirely new Star Wars stories.
That decision produced some of the most memorable games in the franchise.
X-Wing and TIE Fighter put players inside the cockpit
During the 1990s, the Star Wars: X-Wing series demonstrated how well the franchise could work as a serious PC game.
Instead of simply watching starfighters race across a cinema screen, players could fly them.
X-Wing allowed players to fight for the Rebel Alliance, while TIE Fighter turned the perspective around and placed them inside the Imperial Navy.
That second game was particularly important.
Star Wars games did not necessarily have to make the player the obvious hero.
The universe was large enough to support stories from different perspectives.
Lucasfilm’s catalogue of classic PC games still includes X-Wing, TIE Fighter, X-Wing Alliance and X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter today.
That willingness to experiment would become one of the strongest characteristics of Star Wars gaming.
Dark Forces gave Star Wars its first FPS
Then came Star Wars: Dark Forces in 1995.
It was the franchise’s first first-person shooter and introduced players to mercenary Kyle Katarn.
The importance of Dark Forces becomes clearer when looking at what followed.
The series evolved through Dark Forces II, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy, gradually combining blaster combat with lightsabers and Force powers.
Lucasfilm Games has described that lineage as moving from a traditional first-person shooter towards an experience that let players use blasters, lightsabers and Force abilities across both first- and third-person gameplay.
Kyle Katarn became one of the most recognisable characters created specifically for Star Wars games.
More importantly, the series showed that video games could expand Star Wars mythology rather than simply borrow from it.
Knights of the Old Republic proved games could tell major Star Wars stories
If one game demonstrated the storytelling potential of Star Wars outside the films, however, it was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
BioWare’s RPG moved the story roughly 4,000 years before the Galactic Empire and gave players control over their character’s journey towards the light or dark side.
Players could choose dialogue, build relationships with companions, develop Force abilities and make decisions that changed their story.
Then there was Revan.
The character became so closely associated with Star Wars gaming that Lucasfilm itself has described Revan as one of the defining video-game characters in the franchise.
KOTOR demonstrated that players did not need Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader or Han Solo for a Star Wars story to matter.
Give them compelling characters and enough freedom, and the game could create its own legends.
That philosophy remains visible in Zero Company.
Hawks and the other members of Zero Company are not replacing famous movie characters.
They are getting their own corner of the galaxy.
Republic Commando showed the Clone Wars from inside a helmet
The Clone Wars has become one of the richest periods in Star Wars storytelling, but games were exploring it before the animated television series became the phenomenon we know today.
Star Wars: Republic Commando launched in 2005 and put players inside the helmet of RC-1138, better known as Boss.
Instead of playing as a Jedi, you commanded Delta Squad.
The game combined first-person shooting with straightforward tactical squad commands, allowing players to direct their clone teammates during combat.
Lucasfilm Games later described Republic Commando as the first opportunity for players to experience a story directly from a clone trooper’s perspective while exploring the special-operations side of the Republic military.
More than two decades later, that idea has an interesting connection with Zero Company.
Both games explore the Clone Wars through relatively small teams operating away from the enormous battles usually associated with the conflict.
One puts you inside the squad.
The other asks you to command it.
Battlefront made Star Wars warfare enormous
The original Star Wars Battlefront games went in the opposite direction.
Instead of concentrating on one hero or squad, they tried to make players feel like participants in the enormous battles seen in the films.
The series allowed players to fight for factions including the Republic, Empire and Rebellion across familiar Star Wars locations. Lucasfilm has credited the original games with combining recognisable environments with large ground battles in a way that expanded how players could experience the universe.
Electronic Arts later revived Battlefront in 2015, followed by Battlefront II in 2017.
The modern games brought Star Wars battles into a new graphical generation, while Battlefront II eventually expanded across all three major film eras.
For many players, this was Star Wars as spectacle.
Lightsabers, blaster fire, starfighters and dozens of soldiers could occupy the same battlefield.
The Force Unleashed let players feel ridiculously powerful
Not every Star Wars game needed tactical depth.
Sometimes players simply wanted to throw stormtroopers across a room.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed leaned heavily into that fantasy.
Players controlled Starkiller, Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, in a game designed to exaggerate what Force powers could do.
Lucasfilm combined Digital Molecular Matter, Euphoria and Havok technology to create destructible environments and physics-driven interactions alongside deliberately extreme Force abilities.
It worked commercially as well.
Lucasfilm later described the original Force Unleashed as the fastest-selling Star Wars game at the time, with more than seven million copies sold worldwide.
The game wasn’t trying to simulate being an ordinary person in the Star Wars universe.
It wanted you to feel incredibly powerful.
That variety is exactly what has kept the franchise interesting.
LEGO Star Wars introduced another generation
Then there is LEGO Star Wars.
Its importance shouldn’t be underestimated simply because the games are humorous.
LEGO adaptations turned familiar Star Wars stories into accessible co-operative adventures that parents could play with children.
The games removed much of the difficulty associated with traditional action titles while retaining recognisable characters, locations and events.
For younger players, LEGO Star Wars could easily become their first Star Wars game.
For older fans, it offered an affectionate parody of stories they already knew.
Few franchises can move convincingly between Knights of the Old Republic, Republic Commando and LEGO comedy without losing their identity.
Star Wars somehow can.
Jedi: Fallen Order proved single-player Star Wars still mattered
By the late 2010s, the future of large single-player Star Wars games had become uncertain.
Then Respawn Entertainment released Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order in 2019.
It was significant enough that Lucasfilm described it before launch as the first new solely single-player Star Wars game in nearly a decade.
Players became Cal Kestis, a Jedi Padawan who survived Order 66.
Rather than copying The Force Unleashed, Respawn combined lightsaber combat, exploration, platforming and character progression with a more measured interpretation of Jedi combat.
Its success established another major Star Wars gaming series and strengthened the relationship between Lucasfilm Games, Electronic Arts and Respawn.
That relationship would eventually help create Zero Company.
Star Wars gaming opened up again
Another major change came in 2021 when Lucasfilm Games returned as the official identity covering Lucasfilm’s gaming titles.
The following years increasingly demonstrated that Star Wars games were no longer expected to fit into one genre or come from one development group.
Electronic Arts and Respawn continued working within the franchise, while Lucasfilm Games expanded collaborations across the industry.
That is important because Star Wars works best in games when developers are allowed to ask different questions.
What does being a Jedi feel like?
What does flying an X-wing feel like?
What does fighting as an ordinary soldier feel like?
What happens if the player chooses the dark side?
And now:
What does it feel like to command a Star Wars operation one tactical decision at a time?
Zero Company continues that history rather than replacing it
Star Wars Zero Company therefore feels less like a radical departure when viewed against the franchise’s complete gaming history.
Experimentation is the tradition.
Bit Reactor’s debut game places former Republic officer Hawks in command of an unconventional group of operatives during the twilight of the Clone Wars. Their enemy is the Infinite Coil, a Separatist-aligned cult attempting to spread the deadly Shadow Plague across the galaxy.
Players make tactical decisions both on missions and from their base of operations, The Den.
Characters develop.
Relationships form.
Abilities combine.
And decisions can affect how the campaign unfolds.
It is still unmistakably Star Wars.
The difference is that this time the most important weapon may be the person giving the orders.
What Star Wars games meant to South African gamers
There is another part of this history that global retrospectives rarely capture.
South African gamers experienced these generations under very different circumstances.
Older PC gamers encountered Star Wars during an era when boxed games, computer shops and physical media dominated the market. Playing something like X-Wing, Dark Forces, Jedi Knight or Knights of the Old Republic didn’t require a permanently connected gaming ecosystem.
That mattered in a country where internet connectivity was expensive and broadband adoption developed very differently from markets such as North America and Europe.
Console gaming expanded the audience further.
PlayStation and Xbox made franchises such as Battlefront, The Force Unleashed, LEGO Star Wars and eventually Jedi accessible to players who had never considered themselves PC gamers.
Today, digital storefronts have removed another barrier.
Many of the classic Star Wars PC games remain commercially available digitally, including Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, KOTOR, Republic Commando, Empire at War and the X-Wing series.
South Africans no longer need to find an old boxed copy hidden somewhere in a second-hand shop to experience much of that history.
Multiplayer changed the South African experience
The move towards online gaming introduced a different challenge.
Games such as Battlefront and Squadrons depend much more heavily on internet infrastructure and proximity to online servers than KOTOR ever did.
That matters in South Africa.
Local players are accustomed to checking server locations, latency and regional matchmaking before committing significant time to an online game.
It creates an unusual divide within Star Wars gaming.
A single-player game can reach South African players without its core experience depending on the size of the local multiplayer community.
A competitive online title cannot ignore those considerations as easily.
That makes Zero Company particularly appealing from a South African perspective.
It is a single-player game.
There is no competitive server population required to keep the campaign alive. There is no matchmaking queue that depends on enough players being active in the region.
The PC version still requires an internet connection and linked EA and Steam accounts, but the actual tactical experience does not depend on competing against overseas players.
For South African gamers who prefer substantial single-player experiences, that distinction matters.
Star Wars games have grown up alongside their players
Perhaps that is the real reason the history of Star Wars gaming matters.
Someone who played Dark Forces in 1995 could have moved to Knights of the Old Republic in 2003, Republic Commando in 2005, The Force Unleashed in 2008, the revived Battlefront in 2015 and Jedi: Fallen Order in 2019.
In 2026, that same player can command Zero Company.
Meanwhile, someone discovering Star Wars through gaming today has decades of earlier releases waiting behind it.
Not every Star Wars game became a classic.
Some divided players. Others disappeared. A few ideas worked considerably better than others.
Yet the franchise survived because developers kept trying different things with it.
Zero Company is another experiment.
After decades of asking players to be the hero, Bit Reactor is asking them to sit behind the battle and decide what every hero does next.
For a franchise that has already given us almost every imaginable kind of Star Wars fantasy, finding another one worth exploring is an achievement in itself.
