Bit Reactor/Electronic ArtsSince video games were invented, they’ve been frequently used as a space to allow players to immerse themselves in fantastical worlds from film and television franchises, and one could argue that no expansive universe has benefited more from this than Star Wars. Straight–forward adaptations of the films have been a mixed bag, but the series really thrives in gaming when developers are allowed to tell their own story in a slice of Lucas’ massive galaxy. Games such as The Force Unleashed, Knights of the Old Republic, or even the recent Jedi: Fallen Order are enjoyed not simply because they have the Star Wars branding, but because they inhabit the world in ways that are simultaneously familiar and fresh.So many different subgenres have gotten the chance to play around in the Star Wars sandbox – traditional action-adventure games (Jedi: Fallen Order), dogfighting combat simulators (Star Wars: Rogue Squadron), even the puzzle-solving Lego games have gotten a turn. But arguably the franchise’s best pairing has been the RPG, which makes sense – in a universe filled with so many different alien species and a variety of moral and political factions, naturally players would want to inhabit a character from the ground-up, an ethos that led to the creation of Knights of the Old Republic, one of the best Star Wars video games and one of the best RPGs ever made. And now, the developers at Bit Reactor are putting their own spin on an RPG in a galaxy far, far away…and from the sounds of it, they’re giving players a perfect combination of elements from two eras of the franchise.Star Wars: Zero Company, the upcoming tactical RPG developed by Bit Reactor and published by Electronic Arts, is marrying the exacting, high-risk, high-reward playstyle of the XCOM games with the third-person exploration mechanics of something like the aforementioned Fallen Order. The founder of Bit Reactor, Greg Foertsch, recently talked to PC Gamer about the game and specified that although the turn-based combat is the centerpiece, there’s also a massive world outside of it. “We really wanted to add an element that allowed players to spend even more time in the Star Wars environments and not have those spaces be limited by what would make for fun combat."Naturally, the benefit of this is two-fold. For one, the combination of two rarely combined styles of gameplay allows for Zero Company to reach beyond just fans of tactical RPGs, hopefully impressing fans of adventure games as well as people who simply want to explore the universe of Star Wars without being tethered exclusively to some pretty demanding combat. But it also allows for the game, which is set during the Clone Wars era, to feature that sense of wonder and discovery present in the Original Trilogy.While set during the Clone Wars, Zero Company isn’t restricting playable characters to just Clone Troopers. | Electronic ArtsGeorge Lucas’ original Star Wars, first and foremost, was a coming-of-age film and a traditional Hero’s Journey. Part of what works so well about it is that, for an audience member living vicariously through Luke Skywalker, it allows you to explore worlds that are totally alien to ours; there’s a meaningful sense of exploration that comes from finding strange and exciting places like Cloud City or Dagobah. The prequel trilogy, on the other hand, is much darker and more grounded, focused on the boots-on-the-ground nature of the wars and how it provides a convenient stepping stone by which to circumvent democracy.Not many games have toed that line as confidently as Bit Reactor seems to be doing, which makes it a pretty unique ground for a franchise with countless video game adaptations. It’s pretty remarkable that thoughtful, genuinely reactive combat and immersive world-building and exploration are just two of the myriad features gamers can expect when Star Wars: Zero Company finally arrives, hopefully sometime soon.Star Wars: Zero Company does not yet have a release date.