Revision 9

Hawks is the player character and the leader of Zero Company. Once a captain in the Grand Army of the Republic, Hawks left that life behind in disgrace and now commands a for-hire outfit operating in the shadows of the Clone Wars. The character is the fixed center of the story: squadmates can come and go, but Hawks remains.

Customization

Hawks is fully customizable. At the start of the game you choose gender, appearance, and voice, and you select a species from a set of six. You also set the starting Specialization, outfit, and name. That makes Hawks the most flexible member of the roster, a blank slate you shape to fit how you want to play and who you want to lead.

Hawks can be created as one of six playable species:

• Devaronian

• Human

• Mirialan

• Togruta

• Twi'lek

• Zabrak

This is a smaller set than the ten species open to custom Operators, which add Neimoidian, Ovissian, Rodian, and Weequay. You can change Hawks' species, appearance, and outfit later at the Den.

Creation also asks for a personality type, with rogue, mentor and professional among the options. The choice feeds into which voice lines and dialogue Hawks gets, so it shapes how the character reads in conversation rather than how the character fights.

In combat Hawks carries an ability called Pico-5, which grants an additional action to a teammate. Away from a fight, one of the odder things the character can do at the Den is pick up a Marfaset, a guitar-like instrument, and play it.

Role in Combat

As the commander, Hawks anchors the squad's special economy. Hawks can spend a small amount of the shared advantage resource to refresh a single Action Point for another squad member, once per turn, which keeps the team moving when a plan falls apart. Hawks can take any of the eight standard Specializations, so the protagonist's battlefield job depends entirely on the class you assign.

Hawks also carries a passive that applies to the whole squad. While Hawks is on the field, every Operator gains assist damage, defense and chance to hit, and upgrading the talent widens those bonuses. It is the mechanical reason the leader is worth a squad slot on a story mission beyond being mandatory there.

The Story's Constant

Because the campaign carries permadeath for the rest of the team, Hawks functions as the player's safe point. If Hawks falls in battle the mission ends, while losing a companion changes the story but does not end the run. Decisions Hawks makes at the Den and in the field shape relationships across the crew and steer the narrative's outcomes.

When Hawks Deploys

Hawks is mandatory on every story mission and takes up one of the squad's four slots there. Skirmishes are the exception: for those you are free to send any combination of Operators and leave the leader at the Den.

On a story mission the leader is also a single point of failure. If Hawks dies in combat the mission fails immediately and has to be restarted, rather than continuing without them. There are no call-ins or early extractions that change this, so Hawks has to walk out.

Two Voice Performances

Hawks ships with two voice performances, one for each of the masculine and feminine presets, cast to pull in different directions on purpose. The creative director has characterized the two by their register rather than by the character's history, describing one as feeling more like an outlaw cowboy and the other more like a by-the-book FBI agent, the idea being that players attach to whichever suits the Hawks they built. Species, first name, appearance, clothing, and Specialization are all set by the player alongside the voice.

Both performers were named in July 2026: Jonathan Freeman voices the masculine Hawks and Erica Luttrell voices the feminine Hawks. Freeman described the character on stage as an everyperson who gave his life to something he believed in, took the fall for something that was not his fault, and has drifted through the galaxy as a gun for hire since, until the job keeps handing him chances to be part of a team again. See Voice Cast for the full list of credited roles.