As most Star Wars fans, I have always been really fascinated with the Ultrasabers. I think I first really fell in love with them when Luke and Vader fought in the Sky City.

There is something indefinable cool about lightsaber that is hard to describe. Glowing blade that gives it distinct visual presence and eerie low level buzz that promises ozone scented mutilation and dismemberment. And of course, the awesome sight and sound of two lightsabers striking each other, sending sparks flying every which way. With a sound that leaves no doubt about the deadly potential of these weapons. Finally, lightsabers are very rare weapons in Star Wars. They are carried by samurai that use them with skills that make them much deadly than solider with common blaster. All this has made lightsabers become possibly the single most recognizable science fiction weapon in movie history.

Where it was used?

Endlessly parodied and copied in other movies, games and various other media. The Old Republic is not the first game to let us play a lightsaber wielding character. This has been done many times before with various degrees of success in games like the Jedi Knight. I have had a problem with how lightsabers have been portray in almost any game that I have play. It is a simple problem of game balance versus staying true to the fiction. In the Star Wars movies a lightsaber can cut through pretty much everything in a single swipe. It will happily dismember people/aliens/droids or cut through a vent on the underside of an AT-AT. However, in almost every Star Wars game I’ve played. You cannot kill your enemies by simply hitting them once with the blade. This makes sense from a game balancing perspective of course.

Challenging for the players:

It becomes really hard to make a game challenging to the player. If he can just run up and swing once to kill the enemy. Nevertheless this has always cheapened feel of lightsabers to me, making them feel less like weapon of incredible. And more like a glowing stick that you thwack your enemies around the head and neck with. Of course this will be much same for The Old Republic, judging from everything that I have seen so far. And I can accept that in the name of balance, even if it makes me a little sad. For me, the point about lightsabers, and force users in general, being rare has always made them more interesting. With The Old Republic it’s very likely that we’ll see at least half the player base using a lightsaber wielding character. This means that in any given four player group.

You’re likely to see two lightsabers at any given time. Walk out onto the Senate Square on Coruscant and half of those 200 people will be sporting a lightsaber. In short, you’ll be seeing a lot of glowing sticks. People of all ages love to play these games. They all like it.