Star Wars Zero Company: How Some of the Greatest Minds in Tactics Games Are Pushing the Genre Again

June 15, 2026

We spoke with Bit Reactor's Greg Foertsch and James Brawley — veterans of XCOM and Marvel's Midnight Suns — about the tactical heart of Star Wars Zero Company: bonds, specializations, the Advantage system, and how they're moving the genre forward. It launches on Xbox Series X|S on August 27.

"A Star Wars turn-based tactics game" is a pitch as obvious as it is exciting — and it's hard to imagine a better studio to deliver it than Bit Reactor, recently founded by a core group of former Firaxis (XCOM, Marvel's Midnight Suns) developers. We sat down with Greg Foertsch (Creative Director and CEO) and James Brawley (Lead Designer) to dig into the tactical side of the studio's debut, Star Wars Zero Company.

Foertsch was an original member of the Firaxis art department; Brawley spent eight years there as a Level and Technical Designer. Both worked on XCOM: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2 and its War of the Chosen expansion, and Marvel's Midnight Suns — so they've had a direct hand in shaping the modern tactics genre. Here's how they intend to push it forward again.

What lessons from your foundational work in the genre did you want to carry forward?

Foertsch: We believe a lot in this genre's ability to tell stories and immerse players. We deliberately stacked the team with a core group — about 20 people — who've worked on strategy games, but we also wanted a big group without that background to give us fresh insight. We didn't want to keep retreading our own ideas, so we've got a really diverse group from God of War, Elder Scrolls Online and more. I'm always trying to erase the last thing I did — my background is art, so it's like, "I did a painting yesterday, I don't know what we're doing today." James can talk more about the specific design side.

Brawley: We rolled through a lot of mechanics and concepts and landed close to the general genotype of these games, but with its own unique features. A lot carries over — how we structure missions and encounters, how we apply pressure during tactical gameplay. But at the root of this genotype is that the enemy units present a puzzle every turn: a big canvas of possibilities, figuring out who does what and in what order to orchestrate the results. That's where the reward and depth really emerge.

With a clean slate, was there anything you were happy to do differently?

How has Star Wars inspired the tactical design?

Foertsch: Star Wars, at its best, is about relationships and found families. In Rebels you've got Rex and Kanan — a clone and a Jedi after Order 66 — hating each other, then overcoming it. That's a theme we wanted to tie into, and it naturally fit what we wanted mechanically.

Brawley: It was clear early on that we wanted a mechanic to help characters bond. Building their relationships should make you feel you're not just building a company — you're building friendships that matter and map into the gameplay in a beneficial way.

Tell us more about the bond system.

Brawley: Every character on your roster has a tracked relationship with every other character. The more they do things together, the stronger it grows — and some authored characters even start with negative relationships. Sending them on missions together raises their bond, as do certain combat actions: have my medic heal my soldier and that relationship improves, or call someone in for a shot assist. There are also strategy-layer actions that boost relationships when you assign characters to work together.

How do the classes fit together in combat?

Brawley: We call it our specialization system, and each character begins with one specialization. For the most part you're free to change it, even on authored characters — with a few exceptions whose identities are very strongly tied to their role. There are eight general specializations:

• Assault — mobility and close-range combat, built for flanking.
• Heavy
• Sharpshooter — hangs back for high-precision, long-range critical hits.
• Scoundrel
• Soldier
• Gunslinger
• Scout
• Medic — support class that heals and buffs teammates.

Midway through the game you can select a secondary specialization for each character, creating two-point permutations with a lot of build possibilities.

Does the protagonist play a special tactical role?

Brawley: They slot into those same specializations. Each character also has a talent specialization carrying one or two abilities. Your main character, Hawks, has a unique talent that carries over no matter your specialization — and in the intro you customize Hawks' appearance, starting specialization and starting weapon.

How much do tactics rely on synergies between characters?

Brawley: There are definitely synergies. The medic's Combat Stim gives a teammate a temporary buff to damage and health — pair that with a gunslinger taking lots of single shots and you output a lot of extra damage. Or the scoundrel's ability to identify weakness, flagging a target for a critical hit on the next attack, which combines very effectively with the sharpshooter.

How flexible is team-building over time?

Brawley: Each character has a talent specialization — fixed for some, selectable from a pool for custom operators — plus a weapon specialization (pistol, rifle, long arm, repeater), a primary tactical specialization, and a mid-game secondary. So you have four points combining into a kit for each of the four operators on your team. It's a wide slate of possibilities, and it makes rotating characters in and out comfortable without disrupting the rest of the squad.

How does the shared Advantage Points system affect gameplay?

Brawley: Advantage is a shared resource you earn by damaging enemies — each hit adds a point to the whole squad. Many special abilities consume advantage instead of action points, so they're essentially an extra action, and many of the most powerful attacks rely on it. But if I want my soldier to fire a rocket, that consumes advantage I might've used for my medic's morale boost. It's another layer of decision-making.

How are you pushing players out of the safe "overwatch crawl"?

Brawley: We have a variety of map structures — some close-range, where holding good positions works well, and some longer maps where you must advance to complete an objective while dealing with the enemy. Our maps differ from XCOM in two key ways: we don't use Fog of War, so you always know where enemies are — which makes pure overwatch less appealing — and our overwatch isn't omnidirectional. You place a cone in the combat space, and enemies who enter or act within it get counterattacked.

What are you most excited for players to experience?

Foertsch: From early on we wanted what you do in the tactical layer to continue into the strategy layer — those relationships and decisions carry over both ways. They're not two separate halves. The characters you interact with in the story also go out on missions, and they can die, and it changes the experience. Everybody has a canon result, but your journey in the middle is different from mine, every time you play, based on the relationships you build and the specializations you choose. What I'm happiest about is that every level connects holistically — story, visuals, gameplay, strategy and tactics all work as a unit.