As most Star Wars fans, I have always been really fascinated with the lightsaber.
I think I first really fell in love with them when Luke and Vader fought in the Sky City on Bespin.
There is something indefinable cool about a lightsaber that is hard to describe.
The glowing blade that gives it a distinct visual presence and the eerie low level buzz that promises ozone scented mutilation and/or 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.
The are carried by elite samurai-like warriors that use them with expert skills that make them much more deadly than a solider with a common blaster.
All this has made lightsabers become possibly the single most recognizable science fiction weapon in movie history.
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 series and Knights of the Old Republic.
I have had a problem with how lightsabers have been portrayed in almost any game that I have played.
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.
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 the feel of lightsabers to me, making them feel less like a weapon of incredible and barely harnessed power, and more like a glowing stick that you thwack your enemies around the head and neck with.
Of course this will be much the 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.
What I am more worried about though, and what is unique about The Old Republic, is the sheer proliferation of lightsabers that we are going to be exposed to.
For me, the point about lightsabers, and force users in general, being rare has always made them more interesting and fascinating.
With The Old Republic it's very likely that we'll see at least half the player base using a lightsaber wielding character (unless people somehow skew away from those classes, but I don't see why that would happen. Probably the opposite is more likely).
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 and I am worried if it will simply ruin some of the "heck yeah, awesome!" feeling from seeing lightsaber combat, once you are seeing so much of it in every play session.
Of course, this is not going to stop me from making my Sith Inquisitor, as I decided on in my class selection process, but will I still have the same love and appreciation for my intricate blade of carnage, when I am hitting max level and I can't swing my lightsaber without hitting... another lightsaber?
I really hope that Bioware has managed to still make lightsabers feel as the most awesome weapon ever.
At least seeing touches such as characters swinging the blade around to deflect blaster bolts and rudimentary lightsaber on lightsaber combat shows that it is something that the are consciously trying to deliver on.
Only time will tell in the end.
A long time ago.
In a galaxy far far away...