Lightsaber battles usually involve a limb or two getting cut off, but Disney doesn’t think that would be appropriate. Especially not for a video game.
Respawn Entertainment’s new Star Wars title, Jedi: Fallen Order, will allow the player to kill thousands of Stormtroopers in painful ways using a lightsaber and the Force, but no limbs will go flying. That’s because Disney and LucasArts have an actual rule that bans human dismemberment.
While droids, spiders, and other non-humanoids can be cut up “in select cases,” Stormtroopers, Imperial officers, and Sith Lords will just make sparks.
Blame the Disney branding folks for that one, it seems.
In fact, speaking with Tatyana Drewry Carvin, a Story Artist on The Clone Wars – Season 7, we were told that these sort of rules about what you can or cannot do when it comes to removing parts of people with a lightsaber are common in Star Wars properties, alluding to the fact that this seems to be a Lucas Arts edict.
“One of the rules we were given was to always hide the cut in case of decapitation. And never show blood,” Drewry Carvin said. “The burn of the lightsaber is supposed to cauterize it instantly.”