Star Wars: Bruno from the authors of XCOM and Titanfall. New hope for Star Wars?

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars captured the hearts of millions of people. However, dark times have come for fans - films and TV series are no longer enjoyable, and very few good games based on the franchise have been released in recent years. Will an analogue of XCOM be able to restore the balance of power, or will it turn out to be another zilch from veterans? Let's find out.

Developers

The game with the working title Star Wars: Bruno was confirmed back in 2022 - development is being carried out by Bit Reactor on Unreal Engine 5, and Respawn Entertainment is only producing. The project is set to be officially unveiled on April 19th as part of the Star Wars Celebration event in Japan. The other day, journalists from the MP1st website found concepts from mid-2023 in the portfolio of one artist-creator.

The American studio Bit Reactor was founded in 2022 by Greg Ferch - he worked as an art director at Firaxis Games for more than 20 years and had a hand in the creation of XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2, Civilization III and IV.

The company is based in Hunt Valley, Maryland—funny, Firaxis had its office here until September 2009.

The team is made up of veterans who have worked on XCOM and Civilization, Gears of War (from Epic Games or The Coalition) and TES: Online (ZeniMax Online Studios).

You may know Respawn from the Titanfall and Star Wars Jedi dulogies and the battle royale Apex Legends.

Potential characters and progression elements

It looks like the Mandalorians will be the protagonists, which is really great for guerrilla operations and the fight between small elite forces and superior ones.The team will consist of Bo-Katan Kryze—leader of the Nite Owls squad and lieutenant of the radical Mandalorian faction Death Watch—and a female astromech droid model R4-P17: the same one Obi-Wan Kenobi had.

Presumably, the events will take place during the second half or at the end of the “Clone Wars”, or even after the fateful “Order 66”. This is hinted at by the design of the enemies' armor - this is the Phase 2 equipment worn by all clones towards the end of the conflict.

Perhaps the second Mandalorian will be Ursa Wren, but then the story would have to take place two decades after the reformation of the Republic into the Empire.

The headquarters may be located in the mining colony of the Ring of Kafrena, which first appeared in Rogue One.

Ahsoka is also seen in the headquarters concept - but she only teams up with Bo-Katan in the seventh season of The Clone Wars in the final arc, "The Siege of Mandalore." And I suspect that Tano will be more of a leader than a full-fledged fighter.

Let's try to predict the potential equipment, skills and progression of fighters.

Traditionally, Mandalorians are equipped with durable armor made of beskar metal or durasteel alloy - it can deflect blaster fire and block lightsaber strikes.As an improvement, you can add, for example, the focus master set shown in “Han Solo”, or the heavy infantry armor flashed in episode 3 of season 1 of “The Mandalorian”.

The Mandalorian helmets are equipped with: a scanner - allows you to analyze nearby rooms; sight - allows you to see over long distances; and rangefinder - displays the movement of targets and their range with a 360-degree view. That is, fighters should not, in theory, have any special problems with the field of view.

The Mandalorian weapons are varied:

• Galaar-15 blaster carbines and Westar-35 pistols;
• A jetpack that allows you to make short and long flights and fire a rocket attached to the back;
• Braces: can be equipped with a blaster, Dur-24 laser, flamethrower, darts - stun, electroshock, explosive, poisonous - micro-missiles, vibrating knife, installation for throwing an immobilizing whip and a laser guidance system.

Specifically, Bo-Katan's canon gear includes:

• Left bracer with a plasma shield that can deflect blaster fire and block lightsaber blades. By the way, he can be found in the game SW: KOTOR 1 and 2;

• Right bracer with blaster, stun darts, vibroknife and whip launcher.
• Two Westar-35 blaster pistols;
• Jetpack.

You can hope for the appearance of the Dark Sword if the events take place 20 years after Order 66.However, during the Clone Wars it was wielded by Death Watch leader Pre Vizsla, and later by Darth Maul.

Astromech droid R4-P17 can be a support hero: she is a maintenance engineer, can retrieve information, and has a stun gun.

XCOM: Star Wars? What would the potential gameplay be like

Let's briefly recall the features of XCOM 2. The sections of the flying base need to be cleared of rubble in order to erect various buildings - workshops, laboratories, all kinds of centers. Headquarters scientists and engineers research new weapons, armor, or consumables, and soldiers can make and strengthen friendships to improve their effectiveness in battle.

The operatives, united in a squad of 6 soldiers, have 5 classes with 2 development branches in each: grenadier, using a grenade launcher and a machine gun; a ranger who can attack with a sword in close combat; a specialist who provides all kinds of assistance to allies using a drone; a sniper who deftly shoots with a rifle and pistol; and a psionic operative who uses psionic abilities.

Many missions are limited in the number of moves and differ in tasks: you need to rescue hostages or civilians; defuse bombs; defend or destroy an important object. And the random generation of maps, the destructibility of most environmental objects and the variety of opponents create many unique situations on the battlefield.

Outside of missions on the global map, you need to discover new territories, collect resources and plan your next actions. XCOM 2 fascinates precisely because of the alternation of high-quality elements.Even just correctly copying the mechanics of a project is incredibly difficult.

Let's return to Bruno. At first glance, the gameplay is close to XCOM - isometric view, tactical turn-based battles, shot hit percentages, standard rescue of prisoners in a limited number of moves. Among the possibilities of battle on concepts, the following can be noted:

• throw terminal detonator;
• firing from a blaster;
• observation mode - outside of his turn, the fighter will fire at a target that has entered the destruction radius;
• go to defense;
• Control a scout or commando droid, reminiscent of the Prowler 1000 model or "sabotage droid" of the clone commandos used during the Clone Wars.

The construction of a base, in theory, can be approached from 3 sides:

• Just a location in which a conditional engineer who improves equipment, a merchant who provides black market services, and a galactic map with a selection of missions will be available.Gears Tactics has a similar formula - you can’t upgrade your base, the emphasis is on battles;
• Full-fledged traditional development of the headquarters and accompanying fuss;
• Implementation of several bases, as in Phoenix Point.

With progression, everything is more complicated - if this is an adventure strictly for certain characters, then it is easier to imagine acquiring skills through development trees, which will open up active combat capabilities and passive improvements, rather than choosing and developing classes.

We have already decided on the improvement of weapons above: Mandalorians will gradually be able to expand their arsenal, becoming more deadly on the battlefield due to maneuverability and a variety of weapons.

I’m curious how the choice of missions will be implemented in the case of a standard execution - will there be a strictly linear passage or will they be given some freedom on the global map? And whether the developers will be able to implement an exciting alternation of game elements or introduce new ideas and mechanics - there are many questions.

On the other hand, now it’s enough to simply release high-quality and interesting tactical turn-based tactics without innovation - the market is empty, and the direction has a lot of devoted audience.

The same XCOM 3 may never come out at all or become a disappointment - yet game designer Jake Solomon, responsible for XCOM 1-2 and the failed Marvel's Midnight Suns, left Firaxis in February 2023.Allegedly, he does not want to work on turn-based strategies, since he can no longer bring anything to the genre, and said goodbye to the series after the release of the War of the Chosen add-on.

Although in mid-22, Solomon argued that the franchise would not die as long as the studio and he existed. Perhaps Jake was morally weakened by the release of Marvel's Midnight Suns in December - the tactics were diversified with a card system, but the game emphasized too much on the plot and the development of relationships.

The toxic Star Wars brand and distrust of veterans

Although the Bit Reactor studio was founded by Greg Ferch with many years of experience, veterans have not been trusted lately. For example, let's remember Stormgate: Frost Giant promised a revolution in the real-time strategy genre - we'll make Starcraft 3 with an interesting synthesis of ideas from Starcraft and Warcraft.

And the powerful team of former Blizzard employees really inspired hope:

• Tim Morten is the producer of StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void;
• Tim Campbell - campaign designer for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne;
• Mickey Nilsson - author of books on the Warcraft universe, wrote the Stormgate universe;
• And even the legendary Chris Metzen showed up - a game designer, artist and voice actor who took part in the creation of Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo.

And this is not the entire list of authors. As a result, it turned out to be extremely crude and cheap in everything, which was developed for 4 years with a budget of 37 million dollars! At its peak, the project attracted 4.8 thousand players at the early access release - now the daily online average is 60 people, and only 48% of the 7 thousand ratings are positive.Let me remind you that the development of the grandiose Kingdom Come: Deliverance II cost only $41 million.

Over the past 10 years, the Star Wars brand has become extremely toxic, thanks to the sequel trilogy of films and TV series like The Acolyte. However, the franchise still has a huge and loyal audience waiting for its rebirth. Creating a decent game in the universe now is a great move to earn the love of fans and earn a lot of money.

And in recent years, not many great games have been released, which only increases hunger:

• Star Wars: Battlefront (2015) - little content;
• Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017) - a scandal with paid containers that affected leveling in multiplayer;
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen order is a wonderful game that was released a month before the ninth film was shown;
• Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a technical disaster on all platforms;
• Star Wars Outlaws is a strong but failed project from Ubisoft.

The fate of future projects is completely vague:

• Remake of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic from Saber Interactive - announced in 2021, but the project is in an unknown state;
• Star Wars Eclipse by Quantic Dream - Also coming in 2021. This is an action adventure, although before that “Kvantiki” made exclusively “interactive cinema”. And the current trends of canceling games or closing studios are additionally alarming;
• A Star Wars Jedi threequel is in development, according to the authors.

Summary

Star Wars: Bruno can be anything from a terrible failure to a successful and worthy representative of the turn-based tactics genre.If all the cards line up successfully, the project can become popular and beloved both among fans of XCOM and similar games, and among the Star Wars audience.

However, Bruno should still be expected with great caution due to several factors: this is the debut for the newly minted studio Bit Reactor, the veterans have already let us down, and the XCOM formula is difficult to even simply repeat - where can new ideas be brought in?

However, everything said is speculation and speculation - the game will be officially announced on April 19, then we’ll probably find out something worthwhile about the project.