The Ringer-Verse - 'Star Wars Zero Company' Instant Reactions | Button Mash

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

For the Republic! Ben, Matt James, and Steve Ahlman review the new 'XCOM'-meets-'Star Wars' turn-based tactics game, 'Zero Company.' First, they react to announcements and trailers from Gamescom Opening Night Live, and share Matt's experience with FromSoftware Switch 2 exclusive 'The Duskbloods' during its closed-network test. Then, they have an in-depth, spoiler-free discussion about 'Zero Company,' touching on the nuances of its combat system, how their playthroughs differed, where the game ranks on the pantheon of 'Star Wars' games and stories, the quality of recent 'Star Wars' games versus recent 'Star Wars' TV shows and movies, the game genres they'd most like to see a first-ever 'Star Wars' spin on, and more. (0:00) Intro(1:50)  Gamescom reactions(14:28)  'The Duskbloods'(19:34)  'Star Wars Zero Company' reviews(1:31:14)  Outro Host: Ben LindberghGuests: Matt James and Steve AhlmanProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome into the ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Winberg, senior editor at The Ringer and leader of our motley rag tag podcast crew at Butmesh. Podcasts are no fun with Zero Company. Those are called Monologues. And so I have brought company, good company today. I am joined by Ringer Deputy Artlead, Matt Hawks, James. Hello, Matt. Hello, Ben.

also with us is Steve Uppercut Alman. Hi, Steve. Good. Currently on Overwatch for my building super to come into my home. Good. I will be setting you up for an assist shortly. We are, of course, alluding to a little game we like to call

Star Wars Zero Company. Bit Reactor also likes to call it Star Wars Zero Company. That's who developed this game. It was co-developed by Bit Reactor and Respond, published by Electronic Arts. Or it is about to be, if you are hearing this when the podcast is going up, well, it's not quite out yet, but it will be soon. You can play it

the day after this podcast goes up on PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox series, and we have been buried in Star Wars Zero Company for, well, a high number of hours. We will talk about exactly how high soon. We're going to review it. Of course, we will not get into specific story spoilers. We don't want to ruin anything for you because story is worth experiencing fresh, as we will discuss. Before we get to that game, which we will break down both as a game, as a Star Wars experience, should we talk a little bit about gaming news announcements, anything of note? Because we are recording just shortly after the conclusion of Gamescom opening night live. None of us was in Germany for this event.

However, we have watched. We have gleaned the highlights here. Anything stand out to you, Matt? anything, catch your eye that you'd like to touch on. Barely, Ben. This was a lot of stuff that we've heard about, seen before, with a few new things sprinkled in, but overall, not quite on the level as game awards or summer game fest as far as impactful news.

You know, that's the problem, I think, is that we are so awash in Jeff Keely-led showcases that one showcase is cannibalizing another at this point because he can't always have a holster ready to go of just like jaw-dropping game releases. And when he has so many fests and showcases, I mean, to everything there is a season, to every season, there is a Jeff Keely gaming showcase. I guess that's not technically true. You've got summer game fest, which is technically during astronomical spring. Maybe it's in meteorological summer. Then you have Gamescom opening night live. That's during astronomical summer.

Then you have the Game Awards during Astronomical Fall. So there's no true winter gaming showcase. Get on that, Keeley. We go months at a time without Keeley just playing hours of trailers to try to hype us up. Gaming is a year-round business now, Jeff. Stop slacking. Stop taking the traditionally slow release months off. But that is a bit of an issue, right?

Because the Game Awards and the summer game fest, they're like the, the summer and winter solstice of the gaming hype calendar. And so opening night live, it's the kickoff to this big consumer event where people can get their hands on and play demos and such. But it means that there aren't quite as many major announcements left for this time because you got to save something for the other showcases, right? So this is like what slipped through the cracks. This is like the dregs of the key levers.

I wouldn't say dregs. I think it would probably just be more so be, hey, we're still probably just going to be reeling from GTA for a minute. And now maybe, oh, maybe in a world where we live past GTA, we might actually have to make some games. Nothing crazy. I immediately

perked up when I saw a roller coaster tycoon come back. Yeah. Yeah. The elder millennial that I am. But you know what? I'm going to have my fun with that. That's going to be great. Yeah. I'm, yeah. You know, witcher's coming out. That's going to be a thing. Final Fantasy is coming out. That's going to be a thing. Yeah.

Speaking of Elder millennials. We had another look at stage tour, which is sort of like the rebirth of rock band. I know. Huge news for producer Devin, who has been pining for this to come back. I mean, when are we not speaking of elder millennials or speaking as elder millennials on this podcast or at the rigger in general? But it's true if roller coaster tycoon wonderworks is your headliner. Maybe that's, you know, your mileage may vary. Maybe that was your takeaway. Steve. I'll never discourage rock band coming back or it being a thing because frankly, we need to come back to that level of socialization. Yes.

In the year of our Lord 2020. But I don't think it actually is going to be happening. Yeah. Well, this is what the third time rock band or guitar hero or something like that has tried to come back? Are you saying you haven't happened? You have not held on to your dust gathering plastic instruments for all these years buried in the back of the closet like I have. I'm just waiting. I'm saying that the world might not.

And I wish to be in part of the world where it does. But I really, really hope that this will stick this time. They've waited long enough that people finally gave up. And now they've discarded their plastic drum sets and we'll have to buy a whole new one. That's the scheme all along. They have us where they want us. Because we had seven moves between now and the last rhythm game we played. And now we have to acquire new hardware to go with them.

Brilliant. Hey, man, you can't buy a steam deck, but you definitely can buy a guitar that's full of plastic. Yeah. So I, very little RAM. That's true. That's not really requirement. I think the issue here, and it's not so much an issue.

I mean, this is more about thousands of people showing up on the show floor to get to play these games hands on. But it is a time when we see fewer announcements, just fewer looks at games that we had no idea existed. This is updates. This is trailers. This is footage. This is release dates. There was some speculation that, hey, maybe we're going to.

going to see Witcher 4 here. And then even before the showcase began, they say, no, not yet. It's coming in 2028, though, so you just wait. But we did see plenty of Witcher 3. There's tons of Witcher 3 news. We're getting a Witcher 3 remaster, which is free for those of you who bought the base game, and it's coming to Switch 2, and the remaster will have all the DLC. And speaking of DLC, there is yet another new expansion coming out.

now, what, 12 years after the game itself? Coming in early next year, The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt, Songs of the Past. Always good when you have the colon slash m-dash or hyphen combo that always drives our copy editors to distraction. But yeah, The Witcher 3, not dead, even though The Witcher 4 is coming along. Were there any trailers that you thought, ah, that looks good? or at least this looks more or less like what I expected. What stood out to you, Matt? There are three things that that piqued my interest that I think is worth talking about.

One is obviously the Final Fantasy 7 Revelation trailer. Not much new here, but, you know, love to see it. Can't wait. There's an indie-looking game called Loft Song, L-O-F-S-O-N-G. It looks like... It's sort of a black and white... Yeah, it's like Limbo and Journey went into a blender, and this came out. Yeah, very intrigued by that.

And then they announced that the 1.0 of Path of Exile 2 is coming in December. Path of Exile 2. I played extensively in Early Access over a year ago now, and that is an absolute banger of a game. And I will be going fully back into that when the 1.0 drops. Speaking of updates, forget about 1.0. How about 2.0? we're getting Crimson Desert enhanced.

Now, we talked recently when we talked about gaming glowups and games that got better after their initial release, we cited Crimson Desert as a notable example of that phenomenon. And now they're taking that to the extreme by sort of quasi re-releasing it in the year of its release. Really, it's just the 2.0 patch that they are rebranding as Crimson Desert enhanced. and supposedly, well, it has a lot of changes because when doesn't Crimson Desert have a lot of changes, but they are patching the story now. It's just adding cutscenes and story moments.

And this is a high bar to clear. This is a heavy lift because when we talked about games that got better after release, including Crimson Desert, a lot of it is about just making sure they're functional and fixing bugs and making them run. But sort of backwards engineering, a story after the fact, that's tough. That's tough to do to sort of ship a game with kind of a blasé story and then say, we'll fix it in post. We will just inject a story into this thing

after it's out. That's what they're attempting to do. And you know what? I wouldn't bet against them, given the pace of the patching. Yeah, it's a little early for like a new edition of the game, but you know, you can't fault them for being a couple years ahead of the curve, right? Sure. Why not? And we're very much into the territory. I like that suggestion, Steve, where not only have a lot of games cleared out of the release calendar around GTA's landing, but also maybe why even bother announcing anything now? Because everyone just has a one-track mind.

We're all just watching to see what cyber leak leaks next. So why even try to get us hyped for a post-GTA future? Can we even envision such a thing? So maybe you're getting games saving their announcement. even until the GTA hype dissipates. But what we are getting is a lot of release dates or confirmations of 2027 releases, which makes sense because 2027 is approaching after all. So we got some, say, Exodus, right, which is the kind of spiritual successor to Mass Effect is launching, supposedly April 7th of next year. And we got to look at Warlock Dungeons and Dragons.

that's coming out next year. A lot of 2027, a lot of 2027 release windows. Final Fantasy is spring, 2027. Of course, you always have to take these things with an assault seller because we're talking about gaming release dates. You just never know, even when we're kind of close. But we're very much into that territory of, you knew this thing existed. Now we are doubling down and saying that it's actually coming at right around this time.

And also, new rainbow six. game. Who knew, right? It's been decades since a Rainbow Six single player game, and we're getting an ex-com-like Rainbow Six tactics because that's all the rage right now. Star Wars Zero Company? Rainbow Six Tactics,

it's all coming back around again. Who knew? I don't know that any Rainbow Six fan wants this. And I don't know that any X-com tactics fan particularly is into the Rainbow Six thing, but you know, someone's

You know, people will try this. Hopefully they like it, I guess. Yeah, sure. Always nice to see a franchise get resurrected in some form. It's funny because Rainbow Six was always quite tactical for a shooter, but not in quite this tactical way. We also got a look at this game called Ananta. Speaking of GTA, this has kind of been branded as the anime GTA, which was revealed at GamesCon, I think, three years ago. and now has been confirmed for January 15th, really early in 2027,

and that's a PS5 Windows and also mobile release, which is kind of interesting. I don't know what to make of this game. I don't know what to make of that either, but there was one game in the pre-show that I wanted to mention, and this is a game that has been unveiled before. But as you were mentioning, you know, a lot of games got more definitive release dates

in in 2027, Marraichi Legends, which is a really fantastic looking kind of Metroidvania with a deep Mexican influence is April 27th, 20207, which is cool to have a date, but also we thought it was going to be

2026 at some point. So that's a bummer. Yeah, a lot of wild-looking stuff. PubG Deadnet, which is the sort of 90s theme, multiplayer, rogue-like, first-person shooter, that looks kind of unhinged. And then there's always the game that kind of looks like other games.

Like there's the Eldon Ring-like notice fall that is from the Genschen Impact publisher, Hoyoverse. It's just, this is like a NADLibs sentence that I'm saying here. But it's playable in co-op. I hope that, you know, we're going to be talking about orbitals on the pod coming up soon.

And maybe we are seeing a co-op resurgence of sorts. There have been a lot of those. And, you know, I saw some interesting co-op games at this showcase as well, which is just always fun for us. We did not get to play co-op the Dusk Bloods this past weekend, Matt, the last time you and I potted, we were barred from entering the network test of the Dusk Bloods. And I tried to connect the next window and still couldn't get in. I did everything. I restarted my system. I re-downloaded the beta.

I could not get in. but you did, and you played some desk bluds solo. Give us your impressions of the dustbleds before we get to zero company. I'd have to say it was better than I expected. And also, I was right, and it's not for me. Okay. It's kind of complicated as we kind of thought it might be with the different phases. Again, it has four phases in every game.

The first three of those phases are kind of single player around other competitors, and you can attack them, but there really isn't all that much of a reason to. You're just kind of trying to get a high score because each round, some people get eliminated if their score isn't high enough. And then at the fourth, at the end, everyone, the remaining three players kind of duke it out. And I had made the assumption that since there's, a quadruple jump, it would be kind of the Smash Brothers.

Yeah, Quadruple jump and AirDash, right? Yeah, and that is exactly how it felt. I can't believe how right I was on that. It is silly. It's silly in like a way that is fun.

At least now. But I think once people get real sweaty at this game, it could just be like deeply annoying to anyone who's not, who hasn't like cracked the meta and found what is the most obnoxiously lethal thing to do at the end of this thing. So I think if people have an interest in Dusk Bloods, I think you better get in it right at the start

before it's all figured out and all of the joy is taken from it, I think. And if you're new to from software games, it's probably too late for you. You hate to discourage a little bit. If you want to get in before you're getting the floor, with you, then probably that ship has sailed. Were you getting your clock cleaned in the PVP portion? No, because I realized that it was three people at the end, and I decided to kind of hide from the other two a bit,

avoid everybody until they had done a good amount of damage and then pop in at that point. One would say cowardice. Another would say reason, Ben. Tactics. tactics, right? But I did find, you know, once you learn the kind of complex nature of it, it is pretty interesting. There are these like kind of summons that you can get and and the many bosses that you encounter can be pretty cool. And the variety of the characters that you can't remember how many six, seven, seven I think, seven characters. And they all play very

differently in a way that is quite fun, I would say. And if this were to be, become a huge hit. You could see them, you know, dropping new characters into it in the future with new abilities, similar to like your traditional hero shooter. I think some people are really going to love this. It's less serious than other from Software Fair, which I think a lot of people will appreciate. But yeah, I'll probably be skipping it. Okay. Well, you may have to play it for podcast content. So I'm, yeah, I might. I mean, the phases in the rule and the points system and the scoring, it's a little Mario party

in a certain way. And it's also like so complicated that like the game is kind of like the rules of the game, right? It's like how football, American football isn't really like a natural sport. It's just a collection

of rules on like basketball, dribble the ball, put the ball in the basket, right? And that's kind of how Dust Bloods feels. It's like this, the sum of these rules. Interesting. Couldn't that apply to all of society and civilization? Aren't we all just correcting rules?

Yeah, aren't we just living in a set of rules to live our lives in harmony and peace? Some of us are just dribbling the basketball trying to score the ball. Just freestyle. Yeah. Man. Just going back to a state of nature. Well, we still don't know exactly when the duskbloods is coming out. But when it does, we will be on it and we will suffer, I'm sure, in some form.

Also, I wanted to just shout. out the Game of Thrones game. It's sort of been an underserved property, but might be of interest to people who are listening to this podcast, War for Westrose. And I'm not a huge RTS-4X game guy, but this looks pretty good. And clearly there is an appetite for this because people have been modding existing strategy games for this world. And now we're going to get an official release, kind of looking forward to that. And also one of the co-op games that I was alluding to there that looks kind of adorable is age twisters shown at O&L, which is a co-op narrative game. You play as a grandfather and granddaughter who team up to solve puzzles.

I'm in. Oh, yeah. All right. It was very, very cute. Yes. Okay. Well, let's talk about a game that is actually a single player, even though it feels collaborative, that's Star Wars Zero company.

And of course, there will be more showcase discussion to come on Button MASH this week, because opening nights, all credit to you, but all eyes, of course, are on the GTA extended look. The officially sanctioned GTA6 extended look, that is, if there's anything left to show after CyberLeak gets done with whatever they're doing, that will be on Thursday, on Netflix and YouTube,

and I will be back with a button mesh reaction as quickly as we can publish one. So stay tuned to the feed. But let us focus on Zero Company. Again, from Bit Reactor and Respond, published by EA for PS5 Windows and Xbox series. This is coming out the day after this podcast. We are putting this up right at the review embargo, so we don't really know what the rest of the world thinks. But I have a high opinion of Star Wars Zero Company, guys.

And you might have been able to glean that from the preview conversation that Matt and I had a couple weeks back after I had my hands on this preview build. playing the full game did not change my mind about how good this game is. This is one of my favorite Star Wars games ever. I don't think I'm overselling that. And we have not compared notes. I have no idea. Maybe you guys are going to be like, really? I think it sucks.

But I really like this game. And it is kind of a first for Star Wars because it is that turn-based tactics X-Con like model. And obviously a lot of ex-com veterans at BitReactor, which is a new startup studio, but with a lot of legacy developers. And man, this feels like a match made in the galaxy far, far away. It feels like this should have happened sooner. Steve, do you share my rave review of Zero Company? I think I just might.

My subhead of this glowing review would probably be, you did not have to go this hard, Zero Company. I was so, so, so impressed by a game that had no right to be this good, this often and this replayable, frankly. I'm a huge fan of Xcom and tactics games, and even then I still won't be playing the Rainbow Six Siege version of that. But I genuinely love the idea of tactics games that are also base builders like Xcom, mainly because it allows me to develop a sort of like head cannon immersion of what, like,

the squad that I build around is. When they go on missions, you find all of these operators that are so good at these one things. And you like operate in harmony and people are out of commission. And then people either die or have all of the other things. And Zero Company has all of that. But in the trappings of Star Wars makes all of those little tiny bits of head cannon that a player could have all the more engrossing because it feels like it considers all of those things. There is, like, I think at the heart of this, it's actually an incredibly compelling story that's absurdly well written and shockingly well acted to the point where I had to investigate the other people that like narratively made this game. And if they had written any books or had done any sort of work in like narrative fiction before, because it's genuinely so compelling and impressive that this might easily make my top 10.

Matt, am I crazy? Guys, I don't want to rain on your brain. No, I'm just kidding. This is one of the best Star Wars games ever made. It's one of the best games of the year. Yeah. It was a game that I've been looking forward to just on the principle of it being kind of like an ex-com take on Star Wars.

And we got that, and we got a fantastic, fantastic execution of that from a gameplay perspective, just incredibly balanced, interesting combat systems. But the real standout here is, as you were alluding to, Steve, the writing and the dialogue and the acting and the story, it's tremendous. And it is something that I will remember that and these characters, even more than that gameplay that I was looking forward to.

I just think it's an incredible experience. I was delighted from start to finish. I could not agree more. I wish we had someone in the crowds delivering a hot take about how terrible this game is so that we could have a first take style exchange, but we all agree it's a great game. And yeah, we're leading with the narrative

because it's so incredibly accomplished. And perhaps that's not surprising given the pedigree of the people involved. So the narrative and cinematic lead here is Aaron Contreras, who served in a similar role for the Star Wars Jedi Games, which also had excellent stories and casts and writing and world building. And clearly that same sort of respawn DNA is here. And Contreras also worked on Black Flag way back in the day as a mission designer, hoping to have him on the podcast at some point. The timing did not work out for this particular episode, but open invitation, because it's so impressive.

And I guess it's not saying much to say that this is my favorite Star Wars release of the year because Slim Pickens so far. Yes, I mean, there is another Star Wars game to come and no shots at Ninth Jedi, some shots at the Mandalorian and Grogoo. But it has not been a busy release calendar. And so we've kind of been looking to video games

to save the Star Wars universe this year and Zero Company, at least with Galactic Gracer still to come has absolutely delivered. I was trying to think of the best Star Wars games ever, purely in a narrative sense, just on a storytelling level. Obviously, you have to talk about the Cotor games and the Jedi Knight games and the Jedi games and Republic Commando and maybe the Force Unleashed. This is right up there with any of those.

And I think it's the best Star Wars story. in a game. Yeah, I'd have to like truly revisit some of the like actual big narrative twists and turns in the Cotor franchise, but like, this is really getting up there quickly with

some things that might have been on par with not just a great Star Wars game, but like this is kind of a bona fide classic already. Yeah. And like of any generation of any genre, mainly because of the fact that it has such good writing. And like the systems at play

when it comes to like the actual gameplay itself are solid to great, but it really is this like respect and reverence for Star Wars and what actually makes those things compelling that is both accessible and engrossing. Yeah. And I just I really can't recommend this enough.

Yeah, I was trying to mentally strip out the Star Warsness of it. and imagine what would I think of this game, if not for the license. And obviously, I think of that every time when it's a license game. And it's a license that I care about so that I have some preexisting attachment to this universe, which makes things a little bit easier from a storytelling perspective. If this were an entirely new universe, and it's mostly completely original characters with some crossovers and cameos, certainly.

But obviously, I go into this with a lot of background. as a Star Wars person. And so that enhances it. But it's also the double-edged sword there is that you can have the license and then be kind of lazy about the license and just say appearances. We'll do it all. And we'll just have the Star Wars archetypes and we'll have the trappings. But we won't really deliver a classic Star Wars story. And this is that.

I mean, this is not only does it look like Star Wars and sound like Star Wars, but this just feels like such a Star Wars. story in a refreshing way, like obviously playing a lot of the hits, but also doing its own thing. And I know that going back to the Jedi games, obviously I mentioned Aaron Contreras, but it takes a village, it takes a team. There were people who worked on those games, certainly, that had worked on the Clone Wars and Rebels. And you can certainly see that lineage here. This is, it's kind of like if I had to describe it, maybe Clone Wars and Bad Batch meet Andor. which is that sounds right high praise but it has a lot of the legacy of those shows and it kind of I'm not saying it's indoor quality I'd hate to saddle anything with that but boy I mean it

it has those influences and it definitely does right by them all of the characters are interesting and great and they when something happens they talk to each other about it and you know, I feel like we hold these, like Star Wars games don't always hit a high level narratively. And it was just so great to see this one absolutely slam dunk it.

And playing this game right after playing Big Walk, I actually could draw some parallels. These are both games about the journey and about the people you're with making the journey. worth while, you know? And there's a real ethos to this game. And in this case, the people are NPCs, but they're real to me. Within this story, Dan. Yeah. Maybe it's more Rogue One than Andor,

obviously, those are similar, but meaningfully different. But yeah, that's what fascinates me so much is just the mechanics of how they put this thing together. That's why I'd really like to talk to the devs because I feel like having sunk a lot of hours into this thing, I've sort of scratched the surface of it. You mentioned the replayability, Steve. It feels like one playthrough, you're seeing some small portion of everything that's there, right? Because you do, it's hard. Like sometimes you have a game that's linear, but the linearity is kind of camouflaged to give the illusion of choice. But in this game, there's a lot that you see on a single playthrough, even if maybe the main turning points and story beats lead to the same destination,

I could imagine that different play styles, different choices, different character recruits, this would be a completely different game. I think that as I was playing this first, because like the campaign itself is long enough. And certainly you'll be getting like a happy helping of both story and of mission variety and a lot of things that you'll get to do and see. I wasn't really worried about this because it's almost kind of like why I was kind of almost deterred from really diving into another playthrough of Balders Gate 3 because I had gotten so attached to my versions of these characters that came through it. And it's not like you have the level of like conversational depth or like illusion of choice from like grand sweeping narrative things that happen in something like Balders Gate 3.

But the moment to moment things that happen like along with. with like loyalty missions, with members of your crew, the amounts of things that can happen in between missions, both in simple text form when you're looking at a map, or even if somebody happens to just mention something while they're in the med bay, it can be like really profound and connecting when it comes to making like the sort of like moment-to-moment gameplay decisions

that make a playthrough worthwhile. And when I, And like, I understand that we're kind of like skirting around the fact that like there's actually a really good game in here too. But I think the biggest thing that comes with it is the fact that if all of those systems are in harmony and the story is amazing, it's kind of undeniable that you're that you're never going to forget this. I want to desperately talk about the gameplay. But as long as the campaign is it, the campaign is I can't not spoil a few things about the story because that affects the gameplay so much. as far as like the people that can come on to your team. Yeah, it's a roughly 40-hour game.

Depends on the pace at which you play it. And I really was just savoring the story. I was marinating in this where the typical gameplay loop is it's broken down into cycles, essentially a day in game. And each cycle you go through the same routine. So you can do operations, which are sort of text-based missions, just text adventures, where you're, you maybe make certain choices and you send some operators to do something and then there are penalties

or rewards for that. And then you have your actual missions, which are the full-fledged, send a team of typically four, though not always, to achieve some sort of objective. Sometimes it's as simple as just eliminating all the enemies. Sometimes it's a rescue mission. Sometimes you have to do things in a certain number of moves because it's turn-based. But they do inject some deviations from that formula from time to time, which is nice. Then you get through the mission and you come back to your base, the den, which is at the Ring of Caphrin from Rogue One. And actually, I'm doing this sort of out of sequence because the end of the mission actually ends the cycle and then you start a new cycle. So you start the cycle in your base. And in the base, I would liken it to Hades II kind of after

you complete a run where you come back and you decompress and you can talk to people and you can get snippets of story and you can upgrade in any number of ways, right? You can check the bond system, which is just the bond between certain characters who play together and that enhances their attributes. You can check out the black market and buy some stuff. You can tinker with your loadouts and your builds with utilities and weapon mods. You can recruit new operators who will join your team and then they show up at the den. There's also a larger overarching upgrade system where you can unlock, gosh, all sorts of things, really, that change your play style and your base and give you bonuses and such. But really, the highlight is just walking around

the room and talking to everyone. And after every mission and every cycle, there are new dialogue prompts and sometimes they're more cinematic and sometimes it's more casual, just brief exchanges. But someone always has something to say. You know, it's never like a repeat, exchange. And some of that stuff then leads to missions and operations in this really interesting way. Like if you just sped right from one mission to the next, I assume you would just miss out on a lot of stuff that wasn't triggered by those interactions. So it's really deep. It's almost like as good as the gameplay is the highlight for me is when the mission is accomplished and you go back to base and you just hang out with your crew. Yeah, which is.

But you want to talk to absolutely everybody. You got to get that beep boop from the, from the droid every day. There were some repeated beep boops. But then again, I don't speak Astrobec or binary or anything. So maybe. Yeah, that's very insane. I know. Very close minded of you, Ben.

Being the Star Wars guy, honestly shocking. Yeah, you want to stop by Cab uppercut. It's a little stall every day and talk to him about whatever is on his mind. Fantastic character. Oh my gosh. Cab uppercut? Uppercut? I highlighted Cab in the preview and tease that everyone was going to like this character. This is one of my favorite Star Wars characters, period, just in anything.

Mate and marrow, as he says. Yeah. It has a very interesting way of talking that I just, the entire time I couldn't help but think, this is so difficult to write. Yes. And it is so well done. Yes. Cab has this distinctive syntax in a Yoda way, but to his own, you know, just a way of speaking

that you can kind of barely comprehend and they get a lot of humor out of the turns of phrase, but you can quite understand it. It's just, it's brilliant writing and a really kind of affecting character arc and great voice acting. Cab is played by J.B. Blanc who actually plays Scova Steve in Star Wars Jedi Survivor, who gets name checked in this game. So there is a little Eric Contreras crossover there. Just one of the best performances,

best singular written characters. Cab is a felshy, you know? I love when we have non-human memorable Star Wars characters. And of course, the hook here is that there is permadeath, right? And you can turn off that option, but I think it would be sacrilege, too. I think you need the stakes. I didn't have any of my characters die throughout the playthrough.

Yeah. So I, but the worry about it definitely increased my enjoyment of the game and the stakes of the battles for sure. Yeah. This is my mentality when I've been playing this game is that the way that I play this tactics game in particular, like you quickly find out, and this is true for Xcom or any like major tactics game as well. you find a play style and a roster of operators that you know work very well. And I've more so been kind of like set in my ways of like, okay, I bring a medic, I bring an assault trooper, I bring a sniper. And then there's like a flex spot that I, that I would like to go with. Like depending on what mission you have that may require a certain number or a certain character to go out with you.

There are certain people on this roster that I don't want to name at risk of offending some people on this call. But some of these main characters sucked and have done terribly on missions for me. They cannot aim for shit. They cannot heal for shit. Or they are absolute glass cannons and the cannon doesn't work.

I desperately want you to name who you think is bad. Cab. Cab sucks on the field. Get out of here. Cab sucks on the field. Okay. I turned. him into a sniper. This is a user error. I turned him into a sniper and he was incredibly useful. Because I might

see here's the thing. My main character was a sniper because I like playing snipers. And he was just his like regular assault guy that like mainlined in melee and stuff. I'm like no, that's tricks job. So obviously I don't need you. So I got the scoundrel that I need. Which is my absolute rock star of the of the squad. Because she gets me like two to five hundred extra credit submission and uses the advantage system to like stack damage on damage on damage and then we just plow through anything that we need.

So the main thing being that like you care about these characters but also like you have a relationship to be like, you know what? No, you're benched. Just stay here. Stay safe. Work the med bay. And the grownups are going to go out and save the day. Well, what's so fascinating I think is that your cab is different from our cabs.

And yeah, exactly. Maybe not so much in a narrative sense, but in terms of how. they play because it's so customizable. And there's a wealth of customization options just in the superficial sense, too. So if you want to trick out trick, if you want to just change the species and the body art and the attire and all of that, you can dive deep with that. But just in terms of crafting how you play. So yeah, my cab became more of a sniper to keep him out of harm's way.

But then... Because of what you told me, you were like, he's a great character. I was like, it's an excom game. I can't endanger him. I'm not going to make him a melee character. Yes, I can't. Because I got to keep him at it. I can't spare him.

But then also, he does, given his name, he's a former boxer and can still make hay and haymakers with his one remaining arm. So he does have that melee aspect. And I equipped him with this shoddy that you get also as sort of a special. And so he's like a sniper, but also lethal in close range. So Cap was key for me. But I think the most satisfying aspect. So if you've played a game like this, I mean, it's all about positioning and you can only move a certain number of spaces and you have to consider cover and line of sight and what percentage chance do I have to shoot and get shot.

And you have the unending frustration of, but it said I had an 80% probability. And I swear that they don't make four out of five of those shots. This thing is messing with me. But I think the most satisfying aspect for me is making those complementary skill sets and loadouts so that your team just works well as a squad. And I love when you get those sort of Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions where you can somehow engineer like four moves happening without any intervention. You know, when you're like, it's like a double bank shot. Okay, I want to kill this guy over here. So I'll set this sequence of events in motion where, okay, I'll set up the assist.

So if I shoot this person, then this person will come in and shoot them after I shoot them. And then I have this other ability on this other person where when a enemy gets below a certain number of hit points, then they can do a killing shot. And then they'll come in. And there's this case. Max that out. Oh, my God. That's the best ability in the game. It's so good.

Because it's like, oh, they still have a little sliver of health bar left. No, they don't. And then she just goes, you thought my turn was over, but now you're dead. It's just, it's so satisfying when you can set that in motion and it just plays out exactly the way that you planned it. Doesn't always go as planned. Yeah, like the trick character who is a clone trooper who's sort of finding his way through the galaxy as someone who's no longer part of the Republic. His weapon set is sort of like when you fire his gun, it drains like all. all of the action points.

Other characters, you can fire a gun and it takes one action point and they still have two left. When he fires his gun, whatever he's got, all the action points are gone, right? And so you have another character that can then gift an action point to another character, right? And there's also an ability,

like a team-up ability, where you can tag another character to attack when you attack. So you can shoot with Trick that will clear his action points. You can gift him an action point. He gets to shoot again. And then you have another character select him as the team up and he gets a third shot. And there's all these creative ways of like dealing with your team. It just plays so tremendously well and is so satisfying. And also,

I also want to talk about how I did not lose a single mission in my play through. I didn't get a single character killed. But every single mission that I played felt so tense and 90% of them there would be a moment whether it's the very start

or like when reinforcements arrive where I'm like what the fuck? How am I supposed to do this? And every time I did. There's an amazing uptick in difficulty in some missions where you're like the early

missions in this game, you're fighting the clone wars battle droids that, like, we all know, if you ever saw a Star Wars movie, these are like total pieces of garbage. Like, you can shoot them once and they're dead. And then when you get to like humanoid characters or like the main sort of like

evil force or villainous force in this game, they throw so many enemies at you and so many different types of scenarios where you're like, there's only four of us. How are we going to get out of this? and every time you kind of just still kind of scheme your way through all of the things that you've learned throughout this game and you pull it out every time again I haven't lost anybody at least major like I like I've gotten okay with like leaving the like recruited people behind because I could

always re-recruit them yeah yeah but like I but I didn't even burn through that many because I didn't want to lose somebody that valuable because I would have to like re-rigger their entire XP or their focus tree or whatever. And the enemy attributes ramp up as the game goes. And you actually have some say in that too because there are choices where you can choose to sabotage one upgrade. And if you do, then another upgrade gets gifted to the enemies.

And so you have to just choose the lesser of two evils. And of course, your skills scale up too. So it keeps pace perfectly. It's so well balanced and calibrated and play tested. Where same. I failed one mission where, one character couldn't die. And I was so close, I was one move away, because often you have to do the go get to the chopper

kind of escape, you know, get to the Evac zone. Yeah. And I had three people in the Evac zone and one person who was like bringing up the rear one turn away. And this was like an hour long mission. And she got at the very end and I had to restart the mission. So I didn't lose her because it was kind of one of those, you know, some missions because of the circumstances you can't.

lose a certain person or you just have to restart the mission. Others, you can lose them and you keep going, or they just get injured. And if they get injured a certain number of times, then they're dead for real. But if they're just injured, you can put them in the Bacta tank, put them in the med bay, and heal them up between cycles. But I had the same thing where I rarely lost the mission, but always felt like I could, like I was really running the risk of it and that the odds were insuperable, but then somehow I triumphed and felt so good It's like a magic trick. It's incredible game design. It is.

And so at the beginning of the game, you lose one character who has to die, right? Or is that just me? Yeah. So there's a sacrificial rodeo. Of course it's a rodeon. But let me tell you, that Rodion did not shoot first. No, not at all. And that was the mistake.

And so that's just to familiarize yourself and the player with the idea that, oh, when characters are dead, they're dead. the only other person I lost along the way was one of the recruits. And it actually fit perfectly because this recruits character was that they were super overconfident and thought they were the best operator in the galaxy. And then they died the first time I used them. And it was just perfect, almost like they had planned it that way. But I was wondering, because you can construct all sorts of squads.

And you can do any type of approach. You can be brawlers and be right up close. You can be snipers. You can have some sort. of amalgamation. You can do an all-droid team if you want to. And the problem was that I wanted to just keep switching things up, but I got so attached to my main crew that I then...

Yeah, emotionally and technically. Exactly, right, because there's the bond system that actually builds up those connections. So if they've been in those fights with you, then they have certain skills that another character wouldn't have. So I felt like I have to keep using them for that reason. but then also because they're my crew. I'm not going to suddenly forsake them. And there are some times in the story

where a character gets taken away from you, at least for a while, not because they died, just because they're doing their own thing. And suddenly I lose a member of my core roster. And I'm like, wait, what am I going to do without whoever, right? Like I've got this lineup where I have cab and I have Trick Daddy and I have Jay and I have Hawks.

Yeah, because he's a thug. Yeah. And suddenly I have to, and I'm kind of glad that they made me adjust on the fly sometimes so that I could actually use more people. And there are certain missions where certain skill sets are more beneficial. And so it does encourage you to switch things up. But I did feel like I underutilized the number of characters and combinations I could use because the game did such a good job of making me attached both emotionally and gameplay wise to those core characters. I had the same experience where, like, to equate it once again to basketball, as I often do, it really feels like at a certain point, you've got your starting roster, right?

And if someone goes down with an injury or they have a personal issue, they have to take care of, it's next man up. And you have to figure out how they're going to step in. And the incredible thing about it is like you're not going to have, I guess you could, but you're not really going to have an adequate substitute for a character's exact skill set. I had some six-man awards where, you know, if someone had to step up, it was okay.

But it wasn't the same. Yeah, but my point is that like when you bring someone in off the bench, so to speak, you have to kind of tactically rethink the way that you do things around that, you know, bench players' skill set. And I obviously wanted to use my starters every time, but I definitely liked that. That, yeah, that it kind of forced me into using those other characters because I was worried that I would pretty much play through the whole game,

but just four characters. And instead, I do feel like there were a few characters that I was like, I tried at first, and I was like, I don't think I liked this. I don't get this character. And then you get forced into a position where you're, you tinker with them and you play around with them on the battlefield and you would start seeing like, oh, this is the thing that makes this character.

Yeah. There were some characters who didn't suit my play style until I was forced to experiment. And then I thought, oh, yeah, this is viable. This is just a different way to play. And then I was sort of stuck in my ways and went back to my core roster. But that was what gave me the impression that, oh, there's so much more to this game than I have seen, even though it seems like I've seen a lot. can I like interject and talk about like one character in particular if it's not too

spoilery can I can I like project out of this because again like I don't know how how you guys changed when tell Ray came into the roster because the paduan character of getting a Jedi in a tactics game is like thrilling but then you jump in and you actually don't know how to use her at all like was it was that first encounter for you like frustrating or that's actually Especially what I was talking about when I was speaking vaguely, Steve, at first I was like, this is a Jedi, and I don't think I'm going to use her. And then eventually I started seeing the real tactical advantages of her force push and force pull and what that can do to the battlefield and the setups of everything. Because you sort of think like, okay, I've got a lightsaber now.

Time to go lightsaber everybody, right? And like the real meat and potatoes of that tactically is the force push and pull and moving characters around the battlefield and being able to push characters off a ledge when they have full health and they're just gone. Right? Yeah. And this is not a spoiler because it has been in the trailer and in a profile on Star Wars.com, et cetera. Anakin Skywalker's in the game, but not as a full-fledged member of Zero Company. But you do get to play as Anakin, and Anakin's appropriately O.P., right? Like, Anakin is just tearing through everyone.

And so that's your first feeling of playing as a Jedi, and it's like, oh, this is great. Obviously, a Padawan, and not a particularly gifted Padawan necessarily Middachlorian count-wise, is not quite the same steamroller. and because I was more of a ranged attack sniper type player when you're playing as Talray and you're having to play up close because lightsaber, obviously you get, you know, lightsaber throws and stuff and force pulls and pushes. But at first you have to be up close and personal.

And those are powerful attacks, as you would expect, with a lightsaber. But also leaves her pretty exposed and vulnerable, though you can then anticipate that and put her in a stance where she can repel, blast her fire from a source. certain direction and how satisfying was that? I love like some of the, you get a Mandalorian character who became part of my core roster too. She has a jetpack. She's a bounty hunter. And at first, I was thinking, I don't know how to play as this person, but then you're like hopping all over the map, right? And so it's almost like a cheat in some levels because there's some levels where you have

to get to say the far side of a map to trigger an elevator or open. safe or something or whatever, right? And if you play as this Mandalorian Bounty Hunter, you can take your jetpack, just rocket across the map and then rocket right back, and you're sort of stranded and isolated on your own, but it totally changes the traversal. And so that kind of blew my mind as well.

And I mean, you know, we're talking about how there's a Jedi, there's a clone, there's a Mandalorian. At times it almost feels like, yeah, we're playing all the hits here. You have your token star. Wars archetype, right? Every type of character is here. And it could feel kind of gimmicky, I guess, but it just, it doesn't really, because all of them are integrated so well and fully fleshed out that it's not just like, yeah, have to have your clone, have to have your Padawan, have to have

your Mandalorian. Like they're all... Or woke Star Wars. Yeah. They're all like characters you kind of come to care about. And they're pretty sparing, again, not to give away too much, but pretty sparing when it comes to overlaps with the wider universe and established characters. So, yes, it's a Jedi, but it's not a Jedi, you know, with the exception of Anakin. And, you know, Darth Vader or Anakin seems to crop up in every Star Wars video game these days. Maybe we've gone overboard with that. But here at least we get Anakin and a pretty good portrayal of prequel era Anakin.

And they did it, I think, in moderation, where you're playing during the prequel era. and time passes as you're playing, which has some significance because you miss out on certain missions and operations if you don't get to them in time, which is another way that the game varies depending on your play through. And so you get a great sense

of what's going on in the wider war, but also you're in this little pocket of it. You're in this side quest. You're going after this cultist group called the Infinite Coil and the Shadow Plague and you start to get some sense, of how does this tie in with some of the characters we know in the wider war, but it doesn't feel super gimmicky.

It's like you're getting HoloNet updates on, oh, I see, we're at that stage of the Clone Wars, but you feel somewhat separated because you are a separate independent operator to some extent, though you then get embroiled with this wider war and it becomes all encompassing. So it's a great kind of threading the needle of, yes, we're in one of these well-established, well-covered Star Wars eras. There are certain milestones and touch points that you have to hit. But it feels like you're just in this galaxy and you're aware of these wider events the way that anyone would be kind of in a backwater of this galaxy while you're doing your own thing.

So I really appreciated how they integrated the existing lore without relying too heavily on it. Absolutely. And there are times where it really does kind of sit on the back burner as kind of seen dressing. and then there are times where it roars to the forefront of everything that's happening in incredibly satisfying ways. It's and it's not without its own levels of fan service and Easter eggs. Again, like, I'm loath to spoil too much, but like there's a really great throwaway line that alludes to Bad Batch that like it could go on without being noticed, but like real heads

will notice that line and they're like, oh my God, this is just another level that this game took care of to both like respect and like, while not like, again, overly relying on fan service to the fans of this

story to like actually give a great level of homage to. I was thoroughly impressed by the amount of ways in which it's both trying to carve out like a meaningful story on the sidelines because like Star Wars canon is always this thing that like there's these big main events that like everything else has to dance around.

And you can't make something too big or too high stakes because you have a galactic war going on. And anything is just going to get sucked into that narrative. But this exists in a very good pocket of things where it both makes sense and does not engulf the main story that we all know and love in Star Wars. And Ben, I think you would agree with that. Yeah, everything in Star Wars, unfortunately, I've lamented this, but almost everything takes place during a trilogy that exists already or between trilogies. Everything's an intercourse, including the Jedi games, right?

Which is why I'm looking forward to Starfighter, because at least we're pushing past, you know, a few years into a new era here and a blank slate. And the challenge then is just, okay, we know where we're coming. from we know where we're heading. How do we tell a consequential story within those constraints? And the way that you do it is you establish a narrative that is maybe related and adjacent, but is its own thing and maybe has sort of unknown implications for the wider narrative, but has its own sort of standalone story and its own independent cast of characters that we care about and we don't know what's going to happen to them, much like, say, Calcestis or the

crew he encounters in those games. And it's the same here where, yeah, I was intrigued by some of the overlap with established lore. But then a lot of the missions are just like, I had this dialogue exchange with one of my characters, and now I care about what happens to this character. And actually, we're taking a detour and we're just doing sort of a side quest

to take care of something in this character's life that doesn't really have anything to do with the wider conflict we were hired for. But you care about that just as much because you care about Cab uppercut, right? So it's just such a success on that level. And I don't know how they engineered it. And I want to know, but I also don't want to know

because they had to somehow craft this story not knowing who you would be playing with, whether those characters would even be alive, whether you would choose to play with them. And then even the recruits who fill out your roster. And I never fully filled out my roster because it costs money to, recruit characters. And I was just like, well, I just, yeah, I didn't need to. Yeah, I didn't need to.

As long as you have enough that, you know, if someone's hurt for a round or something, you could sub someone in, I wanted to recruit more characters just to kind of fill up the den because then they're milling about and it just adds to the atmosphere and the milieu and everything. But I didn't because credits are scarce, which is another thing I appreciated because a big bedrock of the story is like, we're just scratching and clawing. We're trying to make ends meet here. And resources are scarce. And so you're always like, oh, I wish I had a few more credits.

I could get this thing. Maybe in a few cycles I can get there, which kind of fit the story. And so I never really had the excess disposable income that I was just recruiting extra characters. But when you do, those characters are really well integrated into the game. Like, they all have their own interesting lines. One of my favorite characters was one of my recruits,

who's just kind of like a conspiracy theorist sort of. He's just like hanging around like he's on roberts. or something or wait a second. He's just like, what is the Republic not telling us? And in this case, there's like an added level of humor because we know that it actually is a conspiracy and he's actually on to something here. But like, was that unique to that specific recruit? Would some other recruit if I had randomly drawn them have had that same personality?

I don't even know how that works. Like, is it that they have a certain number of preloaded characters? you can just. It must be. Yeah, like it's too good to be procedurally generated, I think. Like it's right. And those characters then take part in conversations. They're voiced.

Yeah. They take part in real exchanges with other characters that they had no way to know in advance that would even be coinciding at the den, right? So it's like, what was the flow chart here when they had to plan the writing? How much dialogue went unheard by me? in my playthrough. It must have been an enormous amount, right? To plan for every eventuality.

Entire voice actors that you never heard. I know, right? I feel almost bad. It's like a number. How much went into making this game that I never even got to experience. But it just impresses me so much that they then made that mesh. And yeah, there's a meaningful distinction between those core characters and the recruits. But then the recruits will talk to the core characters and vice versa.

And they'll have things to say. and they're not purely window dressing. And the way that they did that is almost magical to me. Yeah. I haven't really seen anything like that before. It's very impressive. And I kept thinking about it during the story and everything. And there's one moment where a character hops up and gives a speech or whatever.

And are you with me, et cetera? And I just happened to notice that the first people to respond to that were essentially like some of the characters that don't go out on missions because they're the ones that are obviously going to be there, right? There's no chance that they die. We'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah.

So yeah, let's do it. Making video games is, I mean, it's all about sort of hiding the seams, you know, just like, okay, we can't have someone go there because we don't want to design that entire part of the world. So we'll just stick some shrubbery there. And some games are really ineligent and obvious about that. And you can just see, oh, invisible wall. Yeah, here's the barrier.

I just can't go there for no particular reason just because they didn't want to build this part, understandably. And this game is great at just hiding all of that engineering. I'm sure it's there. Yeah. But it's so opaque. Like you don't see, oh, here's how they're pulling the strings. I get it. Here's how they're making this all work.

It's just such a convincing simulation. of this outlaw experience. And, you know, even as you go, like, it's a pretty memorable enemy and the shadow plague and the infinite coil. And speaking of the enemy skills ramping up, the coil, their gimmick is that they're all kind of networked, you know, and they reinforce each other. And the annoying thing and the challenge in the later missions when you're fighting the coil a lot is that when you kill one of them, you know, it's like.

You strike me down. Right. It's like I'll only be stronger, right? But you kill one coil and then their life essence or whatever just goes to the next coil person over and you make them. Resonance. They call them. Yeah. Resonance or whatever surge.

And suddenly it's like, ah, yes, I killed that coil person. Wait, I just made everyone else stronger. And now it's harder to kill this next person. Yeah. When a coil gets to three of those resonance points, they become particularly powerful. Yes. So then you start strategizing about how to take them out in an order so that by the time, like, you know, you're minimizing the number of people with three resonance points,

or you're making sure that like by the time this person gets that third point, their health has already been significantly lowered. Or you're like, I don't want to deal with the melee people. When they get three points, they become invisible. They become the predator. Yeah. So I want this one with the gun. the ranged one to become the one that is.

There's so much news to that. So much. Yeah. And it's like, right, I can't strike you down yet. I will wait to strike you down until I kill this other person because that'll be more advantageous to me. So look, obviously we're kind of giddy and raving about this game. It seemed like there wasn't that much hype prior to the preview praise, I guess because

it's not an established studio. Just on this pod. Yeah. Yeah, just, you know, because like, it's not as if Xcom likes are really all the rage right now, unless they're coming back into Vogue, but there hasn't been a real, you know, number. Number six, man. Yeah, exactly. But there hasn't been a numbered Xcom game for 10 years or whatever. I mean, you know, there's a ceiling to the popularity of these games, which I get.

And the other thing is that in this game, as we discuss on the preview, it's not purely the tactics-based gameplay. It's also the walking around the world in the Dan most. but also sometimes you go to particular missions and you're just sort of working your way up to the battlefield by strolling up to them and exploring. And there's not that much to do. They aren't that interactive. You're kind of picking up some intel and advantages you go.

But I thought it really helped with the immersion. Just kind of that was an example, Steve, of like this game didn't need to go that hard. Like it could have just been. It's a perfect example of a thing that the game did not need to do. and ultimately it adds like a little, but it's a level of personal flair that the game could have easily avoided

and we would have thought it still being a decent game. But again, it's a culmination of little things that constantly put it over the top. We're like, oh, they thought of that. Like, oh, they thought of this. Like, they keep doing these things that will impress you and it doesn't stop. But like, and my main concern for the fate of this game is ultimately that it doesn't go the way of like a Marvel Midnight Suns, a game that was very, very, very, very good that nobody played.

There's no book club. And no book club. No book club. But hey, how good would a book club have been in this? Yeah. It would have been a good book club in this, you know? But I, if these guys had movie night, you wouldn't be ecstatic. Have opera club.

Yeah. I kind of bounced off Midnight Suns a little bit. because I found, I mean, first of all, it was the card-based battling, but also. But I like that battle. Yeah, a lot of people did. But they didn't think of all, they thought of too much in the interim.

Yes. They made too much of like a sim focus. Yeah. But like, it's still an underappreciated thing. It was kind of boring, frankly. I mean, I appreciated what they were going for, but you're just in this mansion

with a lot of characters who are, you know, the generic character equivalent of the characters that we know, and you're just sort of shooting the shit with them. And a lot of it was like, this is not as interesting as the gameplay, whereas in Zero Company, it's maybe more interesting,

but also the gameplay is great. I just found this way more accessible. So I hope that that will be the case for people, just in general. But it's just, you know, even like the production values, the score, the soundtrack, which is done by Gordy Ha,

who is, you know, a staple of so many Star Wars projects. and has just mastered the art of sounding sort of like John Williams, but doing his own thing and coming up with incredibly distinctive themes, check out my interview with him from a few years ago at the ringer.com. What a great website. But there are some themes in this game that by the end of the game, I kind of forgot that they were not from Star Wars proper.

It's like there's one theme that sounds like Andor a little bit, but they were also distinctive. that by the end of this, I was like, yeah, this is just a classic Star Wars theme. This is not just like the off-brand equivalent of Star Wars themes. This is like genuinely, legitimately, just a great Star Wars score. So, man, I mean, we can't say enough. The only quibbles I would have, first of all, this is not a game that you can easily play in short bursts. I mean, you can.

You can pause it. But it's not a game that you can pick up for 15 minutes necessarily. and feel like you accomplish something because each cycle is roughly an hour and the game is probably 40-ish hours depending on your pace and how much you you stop to smell the roses. But, you know, it's more satisfying. I had some marathon play sessions with this game more so than I usually do where I need a bit of a break in this game. I was just playing all night.

But it's best when you can enjoy it for a while. So it's not a pick-up and play in short bursts. Also, there were some performance issues. So this is really the only significant quibble that I had. And we were playing much of this prior to the Day Zero patch. But even after that patch, which came toward the end of our playtime, it didn't change all of these things. There were some hang-ups, some stutters, some kind of distracting texture pop in where textures would load. You know, you're flying away from a planet and it just looks like a blurry.

orb until suddenly the textures kick in and you can see the landmasses, that kind of thing. Sometimes when you're in a mission and you trigger a certain move, there is a disconcertingly long time before that move is executed and your heart is in your throat because you're like, uh-oh, did this thing just hang up? The game is doing math now. It needs to take some time. Only one time during my playthrough did it actually just freeze or at least I left it for like 15 minutes hoping it would resume

and it never did and I gave up. But there are some stutters like that. And I was playing famously on PS5 Pro. Nonetheless, you know, and these were more pronounced on quality mode, but even on performance mode. Like some little jitters and stuff like that that seems well within the range

of maybe they could patch this and make this polished and perfect at some point, but be aware going in, you know, little stuff though, but not like... Some camera issues. as well where you're in a battle and it pans over to whatever action is going on and sometimes you're just kind of blocked.

Or the camera's just inside of a wall for one move that you just can't see what happens. Yeah, that happens. And I felt like the interface, it's pretty intuitive, but there were times where I felt like maybe it could have automatically because you're cycling through your characters, right?

And there were times where I thought like, okay, only one of my characters has action points left. So it's this person's turn. But I'm on this other character and then I'm cycling through four characters to get to that character. I thought there were times where maybe that could have been streamlined slightly. But on the whole, it works totally fine. And I didn't run into anything that was like game breaking. And some of this stuff might be polished by the time you play it, perhaps.

Yeah, and hopefully. I played on PC and I had some of the same issues. where, you know, sort of like loading areas, there would be just some pretty significant hitches, even though my PC is fairly capable. And even after the patch, there would just be a little hang-up going into hyperspace or whatever here and there.

But again, you know, these are hopefully going to be ironed out and the rest of the game is so polished that when a little jank pops up, it didn't really hinder me very much. Yeah. And, you know, I was thinking, I feel like Star Wars gaming, it's kind of the happy medium between where we are with Star Wars TV and Star Wars movies. Because if you rewind several years, the Mandalorian came out November 12th, 2019. Jedi Fallen Order came out three days later. I feel like that was sort of the start of an era. Wow. Rise of Skywalker came out the following month, right? So that November, December of 2019, that was a miles. Stone Time in Star Wars. And then think back since then, right? I mean, highs and lows, right?

TV, thanks to the success of the Mandalorian, becomes incredibly prolific. We are just swamped. We are awash with projects. And you have some high highs and or alone made it all worthwhile. But obviously some issues with quantity over quality, right? And even the Mandalorian itself fell off in season three. And so maybe they go overboard. when it comes to the TV, that version of small screen scripted Star Wars Entertainment,

and they've since pulled back dramatically, where we're going months at a time without live action Star Wars on TV. Movies, of course, there hasn't really been one since the Rise of Skywalker. Again, some shots at The Mandalorian and Grogoo streaming soon on a Disney Plus app near you. But, you know, that's the only movie that we have had since The Rise of Skywalker, and even that was a TV transplant. So somewhere between, we're going way overboard and we're giving you six shows a year and we're giving you no movies, essentially, for seven years. We have Star Wars Gaming, where you had the lull in the EA exclusive era where it felt

like they should be making more Star Wars games. They're not doing enough with this license. Since that exclusivity expired or even the tail end of that period, to go. from Jedi Fallen Order into the 2020s with Star Wars Squadrons, a game I really liked, Lego Star Wars, the Skywalker Saga, Jedi Survivor,

Star Wars, which was a good game that actually I meant to mention in our gaming glow-up discussion, because that did get improved somewhat post-launch with the stealth overhaul, et cetera. And then Zero Company, and lots of hype for Galactic Racer coming later this year,

maybe that's kind of the middle ground where, hey, we're getting like a banger a year, basically, and we're not swamped. This isn't more than we can keep up on. And of course, you know, there are a ton of like forgettable mobile games and things like that that are in the mix as well. But there are some like really solid, you know, on a roughly annual basis, there's a really good Star Wars game that is among the best Star Wars games of all time. So I feel like the Star Wars video game 2020s era has actually held up better maybe than TV and movies. So famous last words, we'll see. But hopefully Galactic racer continues that streak because I'm a happy camper right now.

It's incredible. I'm so, so, so happy that we got this game. It really, really is the surprise of the year. Okay. Closing thoughts here then. Since this is kind of a first for Star Wars, I mean, we've had Star Wars games going back decades and decades. you'd think they would have tried everything.

But this is really the first Star Wars game in this particular genre of turn-based X-com style tactics combat. I wanted to know what other untapped genres are out there. What genre have we not seen a Star Wars game in or at least haven't for a very long time, just some other mashup of license and gaming style that you think maybe could work the way this surprisingly flourished. Did anything come to your mind? I have some suggestions,

but what's on your wish list, if anything? I had the thought that I think it would be really cool to have kind of a a Knight's Sisters-focused game on Dathamere that is kind of like survival horror. Yes, this was on my list.

Star Wars Survival Horror game. Yeah. Yeah. I think that could work really well. I think so, too. And maybe if they made it a card game for you, Ben. No, thanks. There are plenty of Star Wars card games out there.

But, yeah, Republic Commando had some kind of creepy aspects, which I really liked. But yeah, I love that idea. Even as a non-survivable horror game guy, for the most part, I would totally go for that crossover. Anything occur to you, Steve? I really had, like, the obvious, like, funny answer is, like, dating sim or something like that. And I was like, well, maybe. Like a wookie farming sim. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But no, I think the cozy genre space is actually, like, pretty good, untapped potential here. Like, imagining to that you're owning like a blue milk farm and you're just, like, making your way around tattooing. Like, I, there's like a pocopia version of this with, with all the different kind of species of creatures. I wish I was thinking of this too.

Yeah, like a Star Wars due valley or something. Yeah. It's just like a, because there was. was or a life sim. I mean, I know there were Sims for Star Wars expansions, but, and I guess OG galaxies, you could kind of do that and just be a moisture farmer or whatever,

just live your life. But, but yeah, that kind of cozy vibes, life sim, farming games, Star Wars, I would go for that.

That was on my list for sure. Yeah, not out of the realm of possibility. Or like a totemotee life kind of thing where like you're just interacting with people around the town. Like, it could get sinister, but like honestly, like in good faith, keep it lighthearted and fun. Because I think that the biggest problem to me, at least with Star Wars games in general,

is that it might actually take itself too seriously and that EA has kind of had a bit of a chokehold on wanting to make it either Mass Effect or revamp Cotor or give us an uncharted with Star Wars. And yes, that will, that is like four quadrant lowest common to not. nominator, like everybody would love that game. But to know that, like, we have a tactics game that can feel this detailed and not niche and very accessible is good. So, like, why not? Why not put some of those things in the blender with Star Wars? Because that IP works.

This world is incredible. Yeah. And I would love to see some actual innovation in that space. Yeah. That's the one thing that's missing from the Mass Effect-esque. storytelling of Zero Company is romance options, which, you know, maybe workplace romance is you don't date within Zero Company, could screw up the camaraderie, but absolutely not. I fell in love with my admin wife, my Twilipwai, admin wife, my very tall, strong twilight wife.

Yes. I was disappointed that she's not a playable character, unfortunately, and her. Or Romanceable. Or my God, I fell in love. Or her dialogue options did run a little light at a certain point. But I was getting kind of like Rex vibes from Cab Uppercut. So just design-wise. Sure.

Yeah, to each their own. Okay. So I was also thinking in addition to those, maybe, you know, we were just talking about roller coaster tycoon. What about some sort of business sims tycoon game? Like we've had RTSs, 4X games. I played a lot of Star Wars Rebellion when I was a kid. I don't even know if that game was good, but I thought so at the time.

Hutt simulator. Yeah, or maybe like you're a hut, like criminal empire. Building my empire. Oh, so wait, is it kind of like a resource manager? Yeah. Like Dune Spice Wars or something like that? Or like a city builder, you know, Sim City, but Star Wars like. Civilization-esque stuff?

Well, I mean, we have had sort of civilization-style Star Wars game. But I'm thinking, you know, not so much an RTS, but like, yeah, like a Sim city, you know, with a planet-sized city. Give me like Sim Corrissant or something and just let me. Oh, God. Yeah, I don't know. But yeah, that kind of base building. You can do like a papers, papers please. Yes.

In the Star Wars universe. Yeah, that might work. Yeah, look, that's very clerical sort of tale of fascism. I was thinking, you know, maybe like a narrative adventure, maybe a telltale style Star Wars adventure where it's all about the choice and the storytelling. Again, we're kind of getting that with Zero Company. Yeah. With another great game grafted onto it. Oh, my God.

So. Who made heavy rain? Oh, my gosh. Well, well, we have Star Wars eclipse coming at some point, supposedly, apparently. So, yeah, maybe that'll be along those lines. and that's supposed to be in an earlier High Republic era. I don't know whether we'll ever actually see that game. But yeah, the Quantic Dream, you know, problematic workplace kind of game.

Maybe. Maybe that would scratch that itch. But how about it's a problematic workspace simulator in Star Wars? That's zero company, I think. But yeah, oh, that's true. And I was also, yeah, but like a Tropico kind of meet Star Wars, like tycoon game. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Or I was thinking, what about?

like a smash-style brawler, you know, not just another kind of 2D fighting game. Because, of course, we had the notorious Masters of Tarasca C. Right, back on PlayStation in 97. Ah, yes, who could forget. Yes. So, you know, it's been an untapped mostly resource the Star Wars fighting game world. And look, we've seen a lot of fighting games launch and quickly crash and burn this year what was 2XCO. and then others that just invincible versus a lot of layoffs and the avatar fighting game and now Marvel token, which is a good game, but obviously had a rough launch on PC.

So that's an uphill battle. I'm not saying we need that for Star Wars because I think it's difficult with Star Wars when it comes to like the power scaling and stuff because it's just like how do you even engineer a battle between, I don't know, a clone trooper and a Jedi or something that makes sense. And then like, you know, because so much of the Star Wars combat, it's either you have a lightsaber and force powers or you've got a blaster, basically. And so I don't know that it would make sense exactly. And maybe that's part of why Tarascai did not work. That was not the only reason. Yeah, I mean. But, but yeah, I'm thinking more of like a smash style.

I mean, we had like an arcadey action game like Jedi power battles, which I liked. But more of a just, you know, kind of kid-oriented, but not. totally kid oriented, but just a little less of a simulation style, you know, hardcore, get good tons of combos, but just items and stages and, you know, kind of like your your SpongeBob, your Nickelodeon, your multiverse's style of Star Wars game. I'd go for that. I'm going through this article that I'm just reading through now on Thegamer.com of like the 25 weirdest Star Wars games. And it just brought me all the way back to a core memory of the first time that I ever got a smartphone

of playing Star Wars tiny Death Star, it's basically like Fallout 76 for Star Wars or like you're running a Death Star with like different floors it's so fun and it's this level of weird that I need. There was like also a can'tina restaurant sim. Yeah,

that's a good one. It's great like this is this is the stuff we need. Yeah, I mean I remember like back in the day there was, this is very obscure there is an adventure game called Yoda stories. That was like an overhead.

I imagine so. And it was just like a very cutesy style adventure game where you needed to get the item to take here to do that. There have been some weird ones for sure. It's one of the great things about the Star Wars universe is that it can be a fertile home

for so many types of stories and so many types of games, right? And you've got your kind of combat action-oriented platformer Jedi-style game, you know, maybe a more fully fleshed-out lightsaber simulator. Like we've had some of the Jedi Knight games did that really well, and we've had some VR implementations of that, but a more serious like a For Honor meets Jedi combat, lightsaber combat could be kind of cool.

But, you know, you have your racing games. You have your flight sim games. You have your platformer combat games. You have Lego games, like fun for all ages, right? But it does seem like there's still a lot of untapped territory here. I think we've come up with some excellent pitches here or just give us Cotor 3. That'd be nice to. Or just, you know, give us a new rogue squadron or whatever.

I mean, we had squadrons. It was great, especially in VR. Anyway, there are a lot of highlights, but Zero Company now stands on the Star Wars Pantheon. I mean, it is one of my favorite Star Wars projects of any kind in recent years and one of my favorite Star Wars video games of all time. So do not sleep on this game. Go get it. If you have suggestions about Star Wars games you would like to see, please write in. Let us know. We'll share them on the show. Ringerverse Gaming at Gmail.com. While we're at it, wanted to read just a couple of brief responses we got to the prompt that we discussed on a recent episode, Matt, about if we were super rich

and could be an anonymous benefactor to bring back a more abundant game franchise. And we named a lot of them inspired by Ron Gilbert being funded to make Thimble Weed Park 2. One response, which came from listener Brant Phillips, Sly Cooper. Brant says, I love those games as a kid, and I would especially greenlight it, knowing that I'm currently unable to play them, since to my knowledge, the games are not backward compatible on PlayStation. I think the first one is, I think you can get the first one in the PlayStation store, and you can also stream the Sly trilogy, I believe, on PS5, but it's not.

optimal, but you can. Yeah. I mean. Well, no, no, they're actually like the first three sly games are available as like downloads on PlayStation. It makes me sad that that franchise has just fallen on hard times because it's it's among my favorite games and platformers ever. I didn't think of that because like, you know, Sony owned Sly Cooper. It's not like they needed us to win the lotto and fund that. They probably could if they wanted to and they just haven't and we were supposed to get a Sly animated project and we didn't get that either. So bring back Sly. At least put the raccoon in like goes Sushima sucker punch, you know?

Come on. Yeah. Or make a cane sword or something. Yes. Like nod the head. Raccoon with a hat and goes to Sushima. We are crying out for Sly. There are dozens of us.

Acknowledge Sly Cooper's existence, please. Yeah. If I have to underwrite this for Sony to give me more Sly then I'll do it if I'm ever enormously wealthy. And another suggestion from James. One series came to mind immediately. It's Splinter Cell. I know Ubisoft is supposedly remaking the first Splinter Cell.

That's true. How about a Splinter Cell tactic? Yeah. But given we've seen almost... You know what? You say that. That could work, actually. You say that.

Yeah, I mean, a... More than Rainbow Sixth series, yeah. But given we've seen almost nothing... It could work, but it's not what people want. It's not. Given that we've seen almost nothing since the original tease, that was in development, I'm skeptical. Also, I would love a brand new Splinter Cell game, as much as the original remake will certainly seem new with how much they need to rework the original controls, maybe a little Metal Gear solid treatment and have the first three games

on a single release. Sure, why not? I mean, there is that remake and also there is a Splinter Cell animated series. I don't know whether anyone is actually aware of that, but Splinter Cell Deathwatch is just one of those many, many Netflix game adaptations that. is getting a second season. So someone must have watched it, presumably. I did not know that. So Splinter Cell, still alive as a franchise, but maybe we can bring that game back.

And yeah, that's not exactly like mom and pop shop. They need us to donate. But then again, Ubisoft, maybe they do actually need us to fund a Splinter Cell sequel if one is going to get made. So Ringervis Gaming at gmail.com, write in, share your thoughts and suggestions for Star Wars games you'd like to see. And guys, I'm so. glad that you could keep me company on this zero company pod.

Maybe we will have more coverage of this game. Maybe we'll get into spoiler territory in a future episode or have an interview because it's just that good that I think we could possibly double dip, though we are really in the thick of things when it comes to releases. So I don't know where we're going to find the time. There's a few other games coming out. Yes. Don't let this get lost in the shuffle.

I know that we're about to be bombarded by Blood of Don Walker and Orbitals and Anamoo and we'll be talking about all of that and so much more in Marvel's Wolverine. But please do carve out time somehow for Zero Company. Guys, thank you for accompanying me on this journey. Thank you, Benjew. Mate and Marrow. Yes, for the Republic. And thanks, as always, to Devin Rinaldo for producing this episode to Arjuna Ramgapal for his senior podcast management.

And stay tuned. But MASH will be back very soon. We will be bringing you an instant or as close to, instant as we can manage reaction to the GTA6 legal showcase on Thursday. And we can compare and contrast the actual TIG-2 version with what we've seen from CyberLeak so far. So ButtMesh will be back soon. And I will close with the words of Cab Uppercut when he is asked by Tell Rea why he talks that way. Dropped on Noggin, Maki Head Foggin.