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Dungeon Master
Welcome to Dungeon Master, PC Gamer’s regular RPG column, where Online Editor Fraser Brown delves into PC gaming’s most beloved and enduring genre. This week, Associate Editor Ted Litchfield has subbed in to trade iron short swords and goblins for blaster rifles and clone troopers
When I first tried Star Wars Zero Company for preview, its rhythm reminded me quite a bit of Mass Effect 2: Walk around your home base, upgrade stuff, talk to people, select non-combat activities and missions from a galaxy map, and enter levels that feel “strictly business.” Heavy on the combat, with minimal nonviolent gameplay.
It really struck me that Zero Company evolved into this form that has a lot of appeal for the story-heavy RPG fan like myself, but emerged out of a very different, tactics game lineage. That process of reverse-engineering something very RPG-like from a separate but related genre has resulted in a game that I’m not sure the likes of Owlcat, Obsidian, or Larian ever would have made.
Zero Company lacks the branching dialogue trees and minute reactivity of many RPGs, but taking on the apparently herculean task of making even story-centric characters permanently killable has resulted in a game that feels more profoundly reactive and personal than most RPGs I’ve ever played.
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Consequential
One of the coolest things about Zero Company is its simultaneous embrace of permanently missable/killable/losable main characters and triple-A production values, something I think I’ve only otherwise seen in Baldur’s Gate 3, and there only through specific beats of the main story.
In Zero Company, if an operator gets knocked down three times without a stay at the medbay in-between, they’re gone for good, no ifs, ands, or buts. Unless you tweak the setting in the game’s difficulty—but come on, don’t do that. Save scum like a true PC gamer.
Zero Company’s focus on tactical combat as its north star means you don’t see other forms of RPG choice and consequence, like alienating people out of your party in BG3 or Rogue Trader, but being able to permanently miss out on a companion’s presence and subplot due to a careless mistake in combat feels more meaningful and personal than many of the authored choices in games I love.
There are very few RPGs that have managed to truly paralyze me with their binary moral choices—Dread Delusion and Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty spring to mind—but more often, I feel fairly secure in the choices I make in such games, and even stick with them in subsequent playthroughs.
But a true sense of consequence can make things pop even if I know what I want to stick with. Being a commie in Disco Elysium is made richer by the very existence of its fascist playthrough, knowing how dark and depressing the story can get. Kim Kitsuragi’s trust and friendship means so much more when you understand it’s possible to lose it. Baldur’s Gate 3’s happiest endings feel almost saccharine to me, but I don’t mind, because the bad guy endings are so grim. You have to really work to keep everybody alive by the final party.
Zero Company’s companion questlines are excellent, and clone trooper Trick’s in particular blew me away. The fact that I have to work to keep Trick alive and see that story makes it feel more my own, even if someone else sees the exact same thing. Bit Reactor has made systemic and authored storytelling compliment each other in a truly novel, rare way. The Fire Emblem series has managed something similar, but not at this level of production values (full voice acting!) or with a cast so closely intertwined with the main plot.
Loss leader
If there’s anything I want Bit Reactor to do next, it’s to even more tightly wind the threat of permanent loss into the plot. It’s not possible to piss off squadmates enough that they leave your crew through the Bond (approval) system in Zero Company. I would love to see that wrench thrown into things in Bit Reactor’s next project.
There are story moments in Zero Company that genuinely imperil or drive away your companions: I want to see even more of that. Zero Company’s permadeath is a unique melding of story and gameplay in the current field, but otherwise, the game’s story and gameplay are fairly siloed from each other. The non-combat operations and exploration gameplay have fairly limited effects on the story and tactical side of things: You take on a mission, or you don’t. You have access to new resources, or you lack them.
With more time, resources, and experience making this sort of game, I would love for Bit Reactor’s next project to be even more of an RPG, to embrace consequence and reactivity even more deeply. It’s already a phenomenal first outing, and I can’t wait to see what’s next.
