Jedi are a key ingredient in most Star Wars adventures, but a little bit of a Jedi also goes a long way. Put too many Jedi in your Star War and you end up with an Attack of the Clones or a post-New Game Enhancements Star Wars: Galaxies—the magic and mysticism of those berobed space wizards drowned in a sea of lightsabers.
With its upcoming tactics game Star Wars Zero Company, developer Bit Reactor appears to understand this well. According to a recent AMA hosted by the studio, there will only be one Jedi Operator in the entire game. What's more, if you act cavalier with them, you may end up with none whatsoever.
As Bit Reactor has noted previously, permadeath is a major feature of Zero Company, with the main players in your adventure able to shuffle off this mortal coil at any point. For most classes, you will be able to recruit other Operators to fill in those class roles. But in the era when Zero Company is set, Jedi are supposed to be exceedingly rare.
So what does this mean for Zero Company's Jedi Padawan operator, Tel-Rea? Can players recruit other Jedi operators if she dies? This question was posed to BitReactor by SammyBoii in the Zero Company's discord server, to which lead designer James Brawley responded: "Tel-Rea is the only Jedi Padawan class Operator in Star Wars Zero Company—be careful that nothing happens to her!"
It's worth noting here that although permadeath is a big part of Zero Company, it isn't mandatory. Some difficulty levels will allow you to turn it off. Even if you do play with permadeath on, Zero Company's authored characters are "woven in the critical path of the story" for their respective introductions. Once you're into the full swing of the game, however, "they're very vulnerable, and it's up to you to keep them alive and make sure they're part of the team."
Taking permadeath to its logical extreme wasn't a decision Bit Reactor arrived at easily. Narrative lead Aaron Contreras previously told PC Gamer that "there were some fights" among the team about letting the whims of the game limit the impact those authored characters could have in the story. But Contreras added that he ultimately lost this argument, and that "it was good that I did." With Zero Company releasing next month, we'll soon discover for ourselves whether Bit Reactor was right or not.
