Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Allows Lightsaber Dismembering “in Select Cases”

When the first Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order gameplay footage was shown at E3 2019, it teased an interesting blend of force-power skills and perfectly timed lightsaber swipes. But one thing it didn’t show was those famous laser swords dismembering anyone.

Given that the chopping off of hands/arms has become something of a trope in Star Wars – dating back to a bloody exchange involving Obi-Wan Kenobi, in the first film’s Mos Eisley Cantina sequence – a lack of limb-lopping in a Star Wars games never goes unnoticed. And there definitely wasn’t any in that footage.

IGN even went so far as to ask Justin Perez, a senior designer on Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, what’s going on with the dismembering situation. “We’ll use it in select cases,” Perez promised, before adding a fairly major caveat: you’ll only be able to dismember droids, spiders and other non-humans. There won’t be any chopping up of people in the game.

IGN goes on to state that we can “Blame the Disney branding folks for that one, it seems,” which makes a fair bit of sense from an outsider’s point of view. After all, the Mouse House is known for its family-friendly output, and they are the ultimate custodians of the Star Wars brand these days.

Lest we forget that the developers at Respawn are making the game, under the watchful eye of the at publishers EA, who are themselves under the watchful eye of the brand-owners at Disney. And even though Fallen Order seems to be coming with a 16 rating, we wouldn’t expect it to be a bloodbath.

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The Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order release date is set for Nov. 15, 2019, so that’s when you’ll be able to start chopping up non-humans with your lightsaber. We’ll keep you posted as we hear more.