The lightsabers in video games are too weak

Last week at E3 we watched a lot of the next gameplay Jedi Star Wars: Fallen Order, the new game of Apex Legends Respawn Entertainment developers. The game looks good and I'm excited to see characters like Saw Gerrera appear. But there is the problem that so many others Star wars Games with lightsabers have: His lightsaber feel really weak. And it's not the only one with pathetic laser swords.

If you think of lightsabers in movies, especially original movies, they are not used very often and usually, when they appear, they are presented as weapons or powerful tools.

Think back at the first time Star wars New hope that we see someone using a lightsaber in combat. Obi-Wan Kenobi uses it to cut a guy's arm off his body. In one installment, Kenobi was able to remove an arm with little effort. In The empire counter-attack, Following New hope, the lightsaber has more time on the screen and is used to cut and slice.

At first, Han Solo uses a lightsaber to open a Tauntaun and does it so easily. Later, Vader cuts Luke's hand quickly. Even in pre-quels, lightsabers are dangerous and powerful. Anakin decapitates Dooku with a lightsaber, Obi-Wan cuts Darth Maul in two with the help of a lightsaber and Mace Windu removes Jango Fett's head. Attack of clones.

Even in the Disney era of Star wars movies, we see people cutting themselves with lightsabers. More precisely Last jedi has some nasty lightsaber fire.

But in video games, this is rarely the case. Ignore droids being sliced Star wars the media because no one cares about robots, Star wars the games rarely allow you to really shred people with a lightsaber.

Unchained Force was it advertised as a fantasy of incredible power. You were an extremely powerful force user capable of doing everything and killing entire armies of enemies. But your lightsaber was still basically a glowing baseball bat. Of course, it hurt people, but it never cut people by cutting limbs or head cut in half. And it seems Fallen Order will also follow this same path.

In the gameplay of Fallen Order, we see the lightsaber leave glowing traces on the enemies and the main character stabs even a few. But the limbs and heads never fly away. In an interview with IGN, a senior game designer, Justin Perez, explained that players would be able to cut down robots and cut off the branches of large alien creatures. But humans seem out of the table.

This is an interesting problem in these games and a problem that movies rarely faced. In movies, Luke never cuts Stormtroopers. In fact, when the lightsabers come out, they are never used for this purpose. Luke never faces a dozen soldiers and does not empty them with his blade. Even the prequels were leaning on strange droids or strange alien creatures as enemies, with a few exceptions. In a way, it makes sense. Jedi probably should not be seen with joy or frequently dismembering people. It also helps prevent movies from being too violent in the eyes of parents. When a lightsaber is used against humans in movies, it's usually in a very important scene or moment and then we can see how these swords can be deadly.

But it seems that developers do not have or can not prevent their players from constantly facing dozens of unnamed rebels or soldiers. So, game developers like Fallen Order or Battlefront II are faced with a problem that movies have most often avoided: using lightsabers on human beings and humans.

The results are generally disappointing. The lightsabers are supposed to be these powerful weapons, swords made from pure energy. They hum like a deadly electric generator or a bare wire. They can tear metal and steel. But in games, I rarely feel like I'm handling a powerful Jedi or Sith weapon. Instead, it feels like a pipe that is really hot and glows.

Some games have tried to have dismemberment, such as Star Wars Jedi Knight and Jedi Academy. But without cheating nor mods, the dismemberment was a little rare in these games. Yet, that could happen.

It's not just the lack of flying members that disappoints me. These are laser swords and yet, it can take several shots in many games to kill enemies. Of course, this question is no longer a problem to try to balance the gameplay. If a player could kill most things, the game would be too easy. But I think that if a game was built around the idea of ​​a powerful lightsaber, it could work.

Maybe a player has to hide it for most levels because he's trying to stay undercover? Maybe the more you use to kill people, the more obscure you will gain? There must be a way to make these iconic and powerful weapons more impressive than light sticks that hum.

Another aspect of this situation is that Disney, Lucasfilm and the former 20th Century Fox, have probably all repulsed the lightsabers, presented as powerful weapons, able to slice and cut enemies. Hopefully these restrictions will be mitigated in the future so that we can finally use the deadly laser swords we see in the movies. If we are allowed to see people being chopped in movies, why not in games?

Or at least a cheat code, we can enter if we want to do some hashing.