Lego Star Wars dev talks about difficulty of 1:1 lightsaber control on Wii

Cutting up people with a sword on your Nintendo Wii may be fun, but doing the same thing with a lightsaber is tons better. Unfortunately, it may be a while before we may be able to do it, as Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga developer Jonathan Smith from TTGames says that making a 1:1 lightsaber game for the Nintendo Wii is not as easy at it sounds, it will take some time before someone comes up with a way to accurately translate a Wiimote‘s movements into the graceful and deadly art of lightsaber combat.

It’s been discussed for quite a bit, but the thought of being able to control a digital lightsaber with even the smallest movement of a Wiimote still has a tight grasp on our imaginations. After all, who hasn’t had the fantasy, that daydream of becoming just as cool and as awesome as a Jedi with his glowing stick of hot laser death? That’s right, no one. Which means everyone. At some point in time in their lives.

But while it would certainly rock and would be completely intuitive, developers are saying that it would probably be a while until someone comes up with a way on how to accurately translate a Wiimote’s movements into the graceful and deadly art of lightsaber combat. One of these developers is Jonathan Smith from TT Games, a man involved in the making of the recently-released Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga for the Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, and Nintendo DS.

So, what does he has to say about the whole lightsaber-Wiimote deal? He says that it’s partly the Wii’s fault, and partly how difficult the actual undertaking would be. His exact statement, verbatim:

When I play a game I want to feel like I’m a Jedi, not like I’m some kind of imbecile who just keeps on stabbing stuff in the guts. You’re not going to be able to fight with style because you won’t know how to put the moves together.

There’s always got to be some sort of interface between what you’re doing and how the character’s making you feel cool. That’s a design problem on top of the technical problem.

Well, that’s certainly a letdown – we can’t have 1:1 lightsaber action because we probably won’t be able to accurately emulate how Jedis fight, and that it wouldn’t be very conducive to the overall badass-ity of being a Jedi if we only resorted to using such an elegant weapon to stick someone in the guts. Of course, Jonathan Smith says that while it may be difficult, it’s certainly not impossible, as we could be seeing a game that does exactly what we want with a lightsaber sometime in the future.