Star Wars Zero Company is a great take on the XCOM-like turn-based tactics game, and as I said in my review, it actually pushes the genre forward with a blend of new ideas and excellent execution. But as laudable as that is, Zero Company actually managed to accomplish something much more daunting: it made me care about the Clone Wars era of Star Wars.
I am an old-timer of a Star Wars fan, raised on the original trilogy, and I have distinct memories of watching the prequel films. I enjoyed them, I convinced myself I loved them, but over time the shine of “new Star Wars” faded and I was left with movies that were largely mediocre. I’ve since settled into a position taken by lots of Star Wars fans, and especially those my age: I give George Lucas credit for having some interesting ideas and a distinct authorial vision for his universe–in stark contrast to the Disney era’s cloying emulation and fan-service–but the movies just aren’t very good.
And to be clear, I have engaged in the expanded universe of prequel-era fiction. I read volumes of Star Wars books that have since passed into Legends canon, and more recently, I’ve generally kept up with most of the Star Wars shows, including most of the seasons of the Clone Wars cartoon show. For that I credit the excellent podcast A More Civilized Age, which served as my excuse to finally watch through the Clone Wars cartoon. Like the prequels, I found the cartoon had some neat ideas with mixed execution, but it did show that there was more room to explore this era. Lucas had created an untapped corner of the universe, and the Clone Wars cartoon (and later, Rebels) began to flesh it out and make it more interesting.
At the same time, this era of Star Wars always felt like a runner-up to me. Perhaps more creatively inviting than the sequel era, which has bafflingly been left almost entirely untapped with supplemental material, but still nothing compared to my beloved original classics.
Then I played Star Wars Zero Company.
Zero Company borrows settings, characters, events, and other story structures from the Clone Wars era, many of them established in the cartoon, and gives them a more mature glow-up. In many ways it felt like how Batman Arkham Asylum was a more mature (or at least T-rated) version of the classic Batman: The Animated Series cartoon. The grit and grime of this era of Star Wars, often so characterized by shiny chrome, felt more real. Hawks is a classic rogue hero in the mold of Han Solo, showing how that character type can work within the context of this period when the galaxy was nearing collapse but had not yet fallen into fascism.
When my decommissioned Clone Trooper, Trick, clashed with the Umbaran sharpshooter Luco Bronc, I understood it to be a continuation of the tensions established in the Clone Wars cartoon, given new context and space to breathe. When Anakin enters the fray, I could sense this being just one in dozens if not hundreds of adventures that the character had just-offscreen. For us, it was a significant life event, but for him it was a Tuesday. And when good-natured Republic envoy Bennic shows up wearing an officer uniform that is virtually indistinguishable from the Galactic Empire, the dread sets in as I witness these looming political changes from the perspective of a regular squad just trying to get by, rather than a character central to its events. It made the era feel more real to me.
Perhaps most importantly, Zero Company showed me through a combination of story and gameplay what I had heard but never really internalized before. The Clone Wars era is readymade with a variety of competing factions and interests–Jedi, Republic, Imperial, Mandalorian, Separatists, not to mention various alien races. I may have rolled my eyes when the prequels name-dropped the Banking Clan only to do nothing of significance with the concept, but that created space for other authors to explore. The Separatist element of the prequels felt perfunctory, but comes alive when you hear your accountant Runa Blask argue a form of space-libertarianism about the Republic’s market policies.
What the prequels and Clone Wars cartoon did, which I had never really appreciated until now, was create a massive canvas on which other artists have plenty of room to paint. That’s something that can’t be said even about my beloved original trilogy, which more-or-less consisted of two factions–Imperials and Rebels. In hindsight, this is why so many Expanded Universe books invented new factions like the Black Sun syndicate or Thrawn’s sub-faction of Imperials. They had to, to create new storytelling opportunities. The Clone Wars era already has those opportunities ready to go.
The original trilogy will always have a special place in my heart, and nothing will ever replace it for me as peak Star Wars. I’m not a prequel convert, and I still think the movies are weak. But as a garden for new stories to grow, I understand now why the Clone Wars era is such fertile soil, unmatched elsewhere in the franchise.
