Star Wars: Galactic Racer and Zero Company Prove A Lesson the Movies Have Yet to Learn (& Marvel Is the Teacher)

The galaxy far, far away is at its best when exploring all types of characters and niches. The Star Wars milieu has room for excellent political dramas like Andor, neo-Westerns like the first couple seasons of The Mandalorian, and anime-adjacent shows like Star Wars: Visions; all different, yet all Star Wars. The variety works well in video game form, too. As shown by Star Wars Zero Company and Star Wars: Galactic Racer, Star Wars should continue dabbling in even more genres in the future.

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There used to be all kinds of Star Wars games. There were 4X games, first-person shooters, car combat games, third-person shooters, flight sims, online-focused shooters, racing games, RPGs, character action games, platformers, fighting games, and plenty of LEGO titles over the decades. Star Wars is malleable to fit into all sorts of genres, and many developers took advantage of that freedom. Not all of those games were great, obviously, but there was at least something for most kinds of players.

Disney Has Played It Too Safe With Star Wars Games

But that didn’t last. After Disney acquired Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion in 2012, that variety vanished. Most of the Star Wars games in general vanished, as the heartless overlords at Disney cruelly closed famed publisher LucasArts the following year. It noted it was going to “shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company’s risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality ‘Star Wars’ games.”

It’s ironic to bring up that it wanted a “broader portfolio” when all it did was vastly shrink said portfolio and vaporize any chance at the variety it said it wanted. What followed was mainly LEGO titles, mobile games, and stunning failures, as highlighted by the ill-fated Star Wars: 1313 and Visceral Games’ canned Project Ragtag (which was rebooted and canceled again at a different studio a few years later).

It took around three years for Disney’s licensing strategy to start bearing fruit in the AAA space, but those games were often rather safe. This return was kickstarted by 2015’s Star Wars Battlefront, a first-person shooter that was widely criticized, and its 2017 sequel, which was ripped to shreds at launch. After a year of silence, 2019 welcomed in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, a parry-heavy melee action game with Soulslike tendencies.

These three titles are the lowest-common denominator types of Star Wars games that aren’t the most exciting experiences to solely lean on. It’s not like these are terrible experiences or mean Star Wars shouldn’t have multiplayer-focused first-person shooters or melee action games; it’s just that these are quite narrow ways to look at the broad universe of Star Wars. It’s a little like the problems seen in many of the Disney-era Star Wars movies: They were so busy trying to appeal to everyone and honed in on what was most expected. Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the exception here, and its boldness is what makes it an excellent film.

A handful of Star Wars games after those three titles were a little more niche, but it didn’t last. The trio of VR games — Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series, Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge, and the VR-optional Star Wars: Squadrons — eventually gave way to Star Wars Outlaws. The Star Wars wrapping was solid, but, at the end of the day, it was still a rather middling and formulaic open-world game, which Ubisoft has rightly and repeatedly been criticized for. Even though Star Wars has never had an open-world game like that, it’s a crowded genre.

Star Wars Zero Company and Star Wars: Galactic Racer Are Niche, and That’s Great

The recent Star Wars Zero Company and Star Wars: Galactic Racer stick out because they’re in less popular genres. And that clearer focus has been refreshing. Cosmetic bugs aside, Zero Company is a brilliant turn-based tactical RPG that encourages players to study enemies and think carefully before acting, something that is not going to appeal to the same broad base Star Wars in general does.

Despite reportedly selling over a million copies, it likely won’t compare to the 33 million units (a figure from 2019) the two newest Battlefront games sold. But focusing on just the genres meant to appeal to the masses misses what’s so great about Star Wars. Star Wars: Galactic Racer realizes this, as well. It’s a skill-based racing game that also doubles as a roguelite. Roguelites are popular, but they are prickly, and the racing genre — aside from heavyweights like Gran Turismo and Forza Horizon — doesn’t seem to light up the sales charts the way it used to. But this genre fusion makes it quite an intriguing game that, because of its quality, is bound to be remembered for years to come.

Marvel Games, on the other hand, has cast a wide net and seen great success. After settling for mostly mediocre games for decades, Marvel Games has recently focused on quality and variety. Of course, there are games in widely popular action-based genres like Marvel’s Spider-Man, Marvel’s Wolverine, Marvel’s Avengers, and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, but they haven’t been the entirety of Marvel’s output. Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series, Marvel Snap, Marvel Cosmic Invasion, Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, Marvel’s Iron Man VR, Marvel’s Deadpool VR, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns all cover an impressive amount of genres from card battling to tactical RPGS to narrative adventures to fighting games.

Star Wars should adopt the same approach, since the franchise is about more than being a Jedi and shooting a blaster during the same fifty-year period. It’s a huge canvas many talented teams from all over the world could take a crack at. Imagine a narrative-based adventure from Dispatch developer AdHoc Studio, a 2D search action platformer from Blasphemous studio The Game Kitchen, or a fighting game from the Invincible Vs team at Quarter Up. There are so many possibilities and games like Star Wars Zero Company and Star Wars: Galactic Racer prove it.

What kind of genres do you want to see Star Wars tackle next? RPGs? Dating sims? Tell us in the comments.