Word broke this week that Lucasfilm was reportedly ramping up for Star Wars – Episode X<\/em>, a direct continuation of the mainline \u201cSkywalker Saga\u201d and the Rey storyline. Simon Kinberg, who worked closely with Lucasfilm in the early days of Episode VII<\/em>, developed Star Wars Rebels<\/em> with Dave Filoni, and also wrote several Fox X-Men movies before directing Dark Phoenix<\/em>, will pen the screenplay. Jon Watts, maker of three Spider-Man movies and the so-so Star Wars TV series Skeleton Crew<\/em>, will direct. Get excited?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The news arrives when I\u2019m the highest I\u2019ve been on Star Wars since the hype-powered week before The Force Awakens<\/em> opened in 2015. The years have not been kind to my Star Wars fandom, which was off the charts through the \u201980s and \u201990s, barely impaired by the prequel trilogy (was just happy to be there), and has fizzled through the Disney era as half-hearted spinoffs and TV projects tied the lore in knots and diminished the eventized nature of each release.<\/p>\n But, man, I\u2019m back in the saddle. The current reason: Zero Company<\/em>. Bit Reactor and Respawn Entertainment\u2019s turn-based strategy game arrived in late August, and has led me to believe that Star Wars has transcended the cinematic medium to become something closer to D&D. A world this sprawling, a sandbox this large, is meant to be played in.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Picking up in the thick of the Clone Wars, Zero Company <\/em>centers on Hawks (who can be customized as any gender thanks to two different actors delivering equally rousing performances), a mercenary who\u2019ll work for Gorga the Hutt, the Republic, or in-peril Umbarans if the credits make sense. Their team of operators are all hired-guns, but as you jump from mission to mission, bonds are forged \u2014 through story and stats.<\/p>\n Zero Company<\/em> plays like the best XCOM game while loaded with Star Wars\u2019 most resonant lore. As a new threat, a mindhive known as the Coil, emerges, Hawks and their crew encounter familiar faces that never feel like Easter eggs (I loved a stint playing as Anakin Skywalker as a way of learning Jedi operator techniques) while the game\u2019s script makes dark moments on the timeline even grimmer through forcing player decisions. Since operators can die and missions go wrong, every action has stakes. Zero Company<\/em> is comparable only to Andor<\/em> in how it makes you feel<\/em> the war<\/em> of Star Wars.<\/p>\n As much as I love Rey, adore the genre experiment of The Mandalorian<\/em> season 1, and root for any Star Wars theatrical event (even ones directed by Shawn Levy), no one has really succeeded in creating the ragtag spark between class-type characters in Star Wars the way George Lucas did in his original movie with Luke, Leia, and Han. The conversations and battle assists in Zero Company<\/em> hark back to that era for me. I felt deep pain when my girl Jae had to fulfill her ore baroness duties on the mining planet Shu-Torun. I feared taking Kabbney Uppercut out on missions knowing he had a family back home, and that the Coil might bleed him dry if caught. There\u2019s a style of play in Zero Company<\/em> that considers the for-hire operators as meat shields for the mains, but even they were tugging at my heart strings thanks to some savvy voice over work.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cStar Wars\u201d has been a game property nearly as long as it has existed in film; Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back<\/em> for the Atari 2600 arrived a year before Return of the Jedi<\/em> hit theaters. Technological limitations kept it chasing Lucas\u2019 movies for nearly 20 years. And for all the hours I sank into Rebel Assault<\/em> and Dark Forces <\/em>and Rogue Squadron <\/em>or Battlefront<\/em>, they all felt like Star Wars simulators rather than carving out uncharted sectors of space. To me, Star Wars didn\u2019t fully bloom in its gaming potential until Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic<\/em> in 2003.<\/p>\n An RPG is the true test of a storytelling world\u2019s richness \u2014 how deep can you go into this lore? And how long do you want to stay there? Bioware, building off the mechanics of Wizards of the Coast\u2019s d20 system from the now-retired Star Wars Roleplaying Game<\/em>, stress tested playable life beyond Skywalker. There were many games, many genres, to explore without feeling like \u201cexpanded universe.\u201d This was the universe.<\/p>\n Recent games have followed the spirit of KOTOR<\/em> in declaring, through intertwined narrative and play, that fresh stories can be told in the Star Wars universe and ones that take unique advantage of immersing the player. As much as Respawn\u2019s Jedi games defied the \u201csole survivor\u201d aura of Luke Skywalker, Cal Kestis\u2019 journey from untrained padawan to underground Jedi warrior breathed life into the surface-level iconography of the Inquisitors and the exploits of the Empire outside of film canon. Cal is a damaged character, one experiencing past, present, and future all within his platforming escapades, and the loss suffered at the end of Survivor<\/em> packs nearly as much punch as the end of Lucas\u2019 Empire Strikes Back<\/em>.<\/p>\n Even the traditional Star Wars sim experiences have set out to explore something beyond the scope of the charted timeline and challenge players with the circumstances of the Rebels conflict with the Empire. The flight-sim-brained Star Wars: Squadrons<\/em> dealt with the aftermath of the destruction of Alderaan; Star Wars Outlaws<\/em> invented a new character through which the Outer Rim\u2019s brutality could be channeled as players navigated its open-world maps. Star Wars: Galactic Racer<\/em>, arriving on the heels of Zero Company<\/em> (the fans are eating well) both embraces Lucas\u2019 core love of speed and tells a story again set on the fringes of what we\u2019ve seen before. Star Wars Episode I: Racer<\/em> was exhilarating in 1999, but it also existed to bolster Phantom Menace<\/em>. By all accounts, Fuse Games poured soul directly into the vehicle molds of Galactic Racer<\/em>. Our review calls it a generational racing game.<\/p>\n As it enters its 50th year in existence, Star Wars is a struggling mega-franchise. The Mandalorian and Grogu<\/em>, clearly aimed to enchant the young fans who snatched up Baby Yoda backpacks, bombed in theaters. The TV shows appear to be fizzling: Dave Filoni\u2019s Ahsoka<\/em> season 2 is in the can, ready to scratch an itch for Clone Wars<\/em> and Rebels<\/em> diehards, but no one expects surprises (or future seasons). Levy\u2019s Star Wars: Starfighter<\/em> could be a huge win with Ryan Gosling in the cockpit, yet an IMAX re-release of Lucas\u2019 original version of Star Wars set for the 2027 anniversary might steal the spotlight. Star Wars has never been a modern-day global phenomenon like Marvel (look at Chinese receipts), but years into the Disney era, it also feels strained and wayward. Except in games.<\/p>\n Why can\u2019t Star Wars be a transmedia property instead of just one thing? Very few things are; while Dungeons & Dragons has never been more popular, and Baldur\u2019s Gate 3<\/em> blew past every expectation to become a critically acclaimed mainstream blockbuster hit, 2023\u2019s D&D movie Honor Among Thieves<\/em> swung and missed with audiences, despite rocking hard. Magic: The Gathering is in a similar boat, with mainline and crossover sets igniting a new generation of fans, while Hasbro has never found a functional way into movies or TV with the property. While Star Wars started as a foundational SFF film franchise, to me, it\u2019s grown beyond it \u2014 and its many corners demand hours and hours of play instead of two hours of tidy, linear fun.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know if we\u2019ll get more Zero Company<\/em> \u2014 reports on behind-the-scenes staff furloughs and other lawsuits spell trouble for BitReactor \u2014 but there is another<\/em>. A few others: Jedi 3<\/em>, the prequel saga Eclipse<\/em>, and KOTOR<\/em>\u2019s spiritual successor, Fate of the Old Republic<\/em>, are all in the works. The future of Star Wars, against recent odds, looks bright. Provided you own a controller.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Word broke this week that Lucasfilm was reportedly ramping up for Star Wars – Episode X, a direct continuation of the mainline \u201cSkywalker Saga\u201d and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":90460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1163,5351,2063,2562,321,3345,297,1256,5852],"class_list":["post-90459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-belongs","tag-forget","tag-franchises","tag-future","tag-games","tag-movies","tag-star","tag-video","tag-wars","wpcat-32-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/90460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n Zero Company might be the ideal Star Wars… anything
\n <\/h2>\n![\"star-wars-zero-company-2\"](\"https:\/\/static0.polygonimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/star-wars-zero-company-2.png?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2\")
\n <\/picture>Image: Electronic Arts<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n Games make Star Wars’ possibilities endless
\n <\/h2>\n![\"4d6ce1e4-6702-4303-b1c4-1b57aef06ec4\"](\"https:\/\/static0.polygonimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/4d6ce1e4-6702-4303-b1c4-1b57aef06ec4.png?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2\")
\n <\/picture>![\"Cal](\"https:\/\/static0.polygonimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/chorus\/uploads\/chorus_asset\/file\/24610401\/star_wars_jedi_survivor_cal_stormtrooper_3840.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2\")
\n <\/picture>Image: Respawn Entertainment\/Electronic Arts<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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