Star Wars: Zero Company sequel hope after making franchise history
Star Wars: Zero Company was originally met with a single raised eyebrow, mixing a patient and tempered genre with a franchise renowned for flashy action and cinematic combat.
But after just two days on the market, Zero Company has hit the perfect symphony with the Star Wars fan base and has been a huge success.
Very much coded to the maturing player range who loved Andor, the turn-based tactics title has made for a nice change of pace and has been dubbed the greatest game to ever come out of the franchise.
And the numbers back that up.
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Now, straight off the back of a soaring start, the Bit Reactor has teased a follow-up is on the cards.
Star Wars: Zero Company sequel makes franchise history on Steam
Star Wars has had some stellar releases in recent years. Particularly, Jedi: Survivor proved to be a favourite in the community, diving much deeper than the first Cal Kestis title with an open-world exploration that felt much better than the single scripted storyline.
But Zero Company has come out on top and scored a franchise high, over the last 20 years, on Metacritic.
Scoring 86 on the review site, only the original Knights of the Old Republic double-header, a duo of Jedi Knight titles, and Rogue Leader ranked higher. All of those games are over 20 years old, with KOTOR II being the most recent higher scorer, released in 2004.
In our hands-on review, we described it as 'the best Star Wars game I've played in years'.
"It’s a fantastic spiritual successor to the XCOM series, clearly wearing its influences on its sleeve but without feeling like a pale imitation. The Star Wars theme doesn’t seem like shallow set dressing either, but rather it feels like an integral entry to the overall franchise canon with plenty of understanding behind what goes into making a good Star Wars story."
Zero Company sits sixth on the all-time list, but it's also hit a chime with a mass audience, becoming the highest-peaking Star Wars game, in terms of concurrent players.
On Steam only, Star Wars: Zero Company surpassed 69,000 players on August 27, which beat the previous record set by Jedi: Survivor.
After setting these records and proving that Star Wars can be so much more than slinging sabers, Bit Reactor claimed that a sequel is high on their list of their bucket list, if they can get the green light.
Zero Company devs tease a sequel after smash hit
Describing the reception as 'surreal', Bit Reactor founder and game director Greg Foerstch has revealed that the GOTY discussions have validated their efforts and that they'd 'love to' continue to work inside the Star Wars universe.
"It’s surreal. When you start making a game, you aim to make a game of the year, not a strategy game of the year, but a game of the year. That’s why you do it. But to see the reviews come in and kind of validate that feels good. So, yeah, it’s an amazing feeling,” he said in an interview with VGC.
"I think for the next game, I think we’ll be looking to do existing IP - and we’ve loved working with Lucasfilm. It’s been an absolute joy and such a good experience. So we’d love to keep making Star Wars."
The developer has a long history of finding success inside of pre-existing IP, and the appetite for Zero Company can only be a positive sign for Lucasfilm when entertaining possible sequel talks.
Of course, finding a gap in Star Wars' release calendar will be a difficult task, with multiple games in the works.
Fan-favourite Cal Kestis is returning for a third game at some point, a new action-adventure title named Eclipse is limping its way to a finish line following studio layoffs, and the Burnout-inspired Galaxy Racers is finally bringing Podracing to our consoles.
And all of that comes before the highly anticipated Knights of the Old Republic remake that finally dropped a teaser after years of secrecy and deliberation.
There has to be a place for Zero Company II somewhere, though.