'Zero Company' Knows You Are the Glup Shitto
From Zero to... well, Zero Company.
Welcome to Zero Company week at the Observation Deck. The new Star Wars game is occupying the vast majority of my brain at the moment, so all three blogs this week will be dedicated to my thoughts on the latest gaming escapades in the galaxy far, far away.
All video games are fantasies, powerful or otherwise, but Star Wars games operate on another level. It's not enough to be powerful; you have to be powerful in the language of Star Wars: a mighty Jedi or terrifying Sith, a soldier on the front lines of grand armies shaping conflict on an interstellar level, your choices and deeds shaping a galaxy. Even the more humdrum callings often have you be the best of the best—part of an elite group, the fastest pilot, the most skilled and roguish smuggler the galaxy has ever seen, or the most deadly bounty hunter.
The power fantasy of Star Wars: Zero Company for me so far has been a series of tactical retreats.
The new Star Wars XCOM-alike at first seems like it's setting you up to be one of those best of the best—at the height of the Clone Wars, you are the head of a private intelligence working group called Zero Company, a small but seemingly reputable outfit willing to blur the lines of the galactic conflict to make a quick credit or two and fight "the war beneath the war," as the marketing often described it. The reality is kind of anything but: the first mission sees you lose one of the only four active field operatives Zero Company has, you're 80,000 credits in the hole with cartel debt, and your remaining support staff have one eye on the door of the beat-up decommissioned frigate hiding in the arse end of nowhere you call a base because they don't know if you're going to even get them moldy rations to eat next week.
You are a zero, in name and deed. You are the chief glup in a band of shittos not even motley enough to be considered a crew yet. And that's brilliant.