Star Wars Zero Company drew unexpected inspiration from an AMC show, helping Bit Reactor build a Clone Wars story with original heroes. The upcoming turn-based tactics game was announced by EA last year and will be released later this month.
In an interview with Variety, Greg Foertsch, head of Bit Reactor, revealed the game was inspired by the AMC series Turn: Washington’s Spies. “Much like that show ‘Turn,’ where it’s surrounded by the Revolutionary War, there’s this thing happening inside of it, and you’ve got Cornwallis, and you’ve got Benedict Arnold, and you’ve got Washington, and they all pepper you from outside this orbit,” said Foertsch.
“So you’re familiar with this stuff. You’ve heard all those names. You know what’s happening in the Revolutionary War. But then there’s the story happening with these characters that I’ve grown accustomed to, care about, and their relationships. And so that’s probably the biggest similarity to our approach to this.”
Turn: Washington’s Spies debuted on AMC in 2014 and ran for four seasons. The period drama followed a group of spies known as the Culper Ring that played a major role in the American Revolutionary War. The series was based on Alexander Rose’s 2007 book Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring.
How the Clone Wars setting gave Zero Company more freedom
Foertsch explained that the Clone Wars era gave Bit Reactor the flexibility to incorporate legacy Star Wars characters. However, the development team wanted to create an original story set during wartime that is canonical to the franchise. Despite that, players will still have plenty of freedom to shape their experience. For starters, players can fully customize Officer Hawks, who leads the titular team.
“But it gave us a lot of freedom, frankly, to introduce the things we wanted to introduce mechanically, that also marry up super well with what’s going on in the canon,” Foertsch explained.
The Clone Wars has been one of the most used settings in Star Wars media outside of the films. It was the subject of the eponymous animated series, Star Wars: Republic Commando, and elements of the Battlefront games. Zero Company will be the first turn-based squad tactics game in the franchise with gameplay familiar to XCOM players.
Star Wars Zero Company releases on PC, PS5, and XBOX Series X|S on August 27, 2026.
Originally reported by Rahul Majumdar on ComingSoon.net.
