I was lucky enough to be able to go up to George Lucas' ranch this Sunday to see a screening of The Clone Wars and to interview the man himself, along with director Dave Filoni and producer Catherine Winder. To top that off, they gave us an insider's tour of the inner working at Lucasfilm and LucasArts.

There's a gallery below filled with highlights from the tour, including the LucasArts gaming lounge, the playtester's room, and their mocap studio. However, the real highlight was... tons of concept art from the "so secret we won't even talk about it" Indiana Jones game that is still forthcoming. It was all dated 2005, so who knows if it'll still feature in the game, but the above image of Indy watching the Golden Gate Bridge being built gives us hope. Find out more after the break.

Yes, it's been more than a week since the foul jellies you call eyes have been graced by a Podcast Rodeo. But let's not waste time with pleasantries: We missed you, you missed us. Let's talk podcasts.

ButtonMashers: One of our favorite activities on the Rodeo is finding brand new podcasts that have some promise and helping them to take their first steps, like Forrest Gump-style cybernetic legs. After just its seventh episode, ButtonMashers has already found itself a good flow, as well as a nice rapport between its hosts. In this episode, there's an extensive discussion comparing the DS and PSP, and it reminds us how much we like it when podcasts slow down and have a really thorough discussion of the topic at hand.

1UP FM: We're still trying to expose those who haven't heard about it to 1UP's excellent new feature-heavy cast, 1UP FM. This week, in addition to the usual stuff, there's a discussion of Skate 2 with an EA staffer and a discussion of the next generation of consoles that we are so not ready to have.

Each week Mark Methenitis contributes Law of the Game on Joystiq, a column on legal issues as they relate to video games:

GamePolitics recently posted a piece on Forbis, the makers of the weemote, and an issue that is all too familiar in Trademark law: trademark infringement. To summarize the GamePolitics piece, Forbis Technologies trademarked "weemote" in the year 2000 for a children's television remote. According to a Time piece on the weemote, sales have fallen considerably since the Nintendo Wii was released. The blog-o-sphere coined the term "Wiimote" soon after the Wii hardware was announced, and the term has stuck ever since. Nintendo, however, does not have a trademark on the term "wiimote," only on "wii."

Forbis is hoping to enter into a business arrangement by which it can re-brand its product and Nintendo can take control of "wiimote" and "weemote" (pronounced the same) because, as they put it, "the damage has been done here (whether intentional or not)." In fact, in cases of possible infringement between a significantly larger player and a smaller one such as this, a settlement of this nature would not be unusual. Even if Nintendo believes it would be successful in an infringement suit with Forbis, this may be the far cheaper option to resolve the issue. After all, the weemote brand had minimal value before the introduction of the Wiimote based on the company's self-described weak sales. Nintendo has thus far declined to purchase "weemote." But stopping at an out-of-court settlement wouldn't do much to illuminate the legal points that exist here, so let's take a look at this as if it were going to go to trial.

Here we are again, another month, and another 31 days of gaming possibility. August of 2008 is actually faring a bit better than stinky, unsatisfying predecessor July of 2008, with a handful of titles we can't wait to take for a spin, and a few that we might carve out a few minutes for.

So, what are we waiting for? Read on, savvy shopper! Read on!

We thought it'd be best to start off the month of August by cleaning house and collecting all our E3 impressions from around the Joystiq Network into one easy-to-peruse guide. In case you missed anything (and there's a pretty good chance you did), check out all of our impressions from E3 2008.

Multiplatform

• Age of Booty (E3 hands-on)
• Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway (E3 hands-on)
• Dark Void (E3 hands-on)
• Dead Space (E3 hands-on)
• Fallout 3 (E3 hands-on)
• Far Cry 2 (E3 hands-on)
• Flock (E3 hands-on)
• HAWX (E3 hands-on)
• Left 4 Dead (E3 hands-on)
• Mega Man 9 (E3 hands-on)
• Mirror's Edge (E3 hands-on)
• Neopets Puzzle Adventures (E3 hands-on)
• Puzzle Quest Galactric (E3 hands-on)
• Red Faction: Guerilla (E3 hands-on)
• Resident Evil 5 (E3 hands-on)
• Sonic Unleashed (E3 eyes-on)
• Silent Hill: Homecoming (E3 hands-on)
• Stormrise (E3 eyes-on: Stormrise)
• This is Vegas (E3 impressions)
• Tomb Raider Underworld (E3 hands-on)
• Tom Clancy's EndWar (E3 hands-on)
• Wheelman (E3 impressions)

Well looky here! The X3F Week in Review is back! We've finally put E3 to bed, and things are finally starting to return to normal. Our regular community features like Ask X3F, XBLA in Brief, and Community Content should be making their way back soon, so stay tuned. In the meantime, soak up our latest Fancast and some of this week's more interesting news items.

Community

• Xbox 360 Fancast 077 -- Feudin'
  In which a war begins

News

• Splinter Cel Conviction delayed into 09 ... GASP!
  Try to look surprised
• Video: New Xbox 360 dash leaked early
  Hooray for shaky-cam!
• RvB launches achievement website, achievables unlocked!
  Bleep-Bloop!
• MS promises to 'explore' not exploit the Halo brand
  Off to a good start
• New COD4 playlists are worthy, still "In Testing"
  Now with less grenade pooping!
• Too Human is Too Gold
  Ten years of development come to a close

With the bleeps and bloops of our beloved games -- and we suppose Mega Man 9 was the only thing that sounded like that, really -- echoing through a cavernous and lifeless Los Angeles Convention Center, it was clear that this year's E3 was different. But the more things change, the more they stay the same. We still got to play some promising games, we still had to endure some rotten ideas and we still had to roll our eyes at corporate PR foibles. Thankfully, that's exactly what the Joystiq E3 2008 Awards are for.

We're only halfway through the pandemonium that is Comic-Con this year, and the International Masquerade is still to come -- but in the meantime we wanted to bring you just a taste of the eye candy available on the show floor and in the clogged halls of the SDCC. Us? We're wearing our patented bedraggled blogger hobo look. These are the people who made an effort.

Will Wright gave the opening keynote today at the nerd-packed Comic-Con 2008, an event so chock full of fellow geeks we're hard-pressed to find a free patch of San Diego Convention Center floor to stand on. For the first half hour or so Will rattled off profound observations and inspirational quips at approximately the speed of light, leaving the second half of the presentation to an extensive demo of the civilization and space stages of Spore.

The touted reveal of the MashON Spore Comic Book Creator wasn't much more than a few minutes' discussion of the tool that will live at http://mashon.com/spore/, enabling players to take the creatures and other assets they make in the game and import them into an interactive comic book creation engine. A booklet passed out to attendees while waiting for the keynote tells us you'll be able to drag and drop screenshots taken in Spore right into the tool, add audio and video clips and other assets, create and lay out the entire story environment and share it with friends via email or Flash embed code. Users can rate and save other players' stories on the Mashon.com site and play them back as digital flip books as well as print them out. Wright talked about how the Comic Book Creator fits within the overall ethos of the game, which is about putting players more in the role of George Lucas than Luke Skywalker, allowing them to actually create the worlds themselves beyond just playing in them.

After last year's detour to Santa Monica, E3 returned this year to its traditional home at the L.A. Convention Center. But the more things stay the same, the more they change, as they say (if they're a bit confused). Despite the return to the old location, much of this year's E3 had an empty, ghost town feeling when compared to E3s past. The general lack of participating developers and publishers, combined with the strict, invite-only attendee list combined to make a show that seemed incredibly small in the incredibly large convention center. To see just how small, check out our "E3, then and now" gallery, which compare scenes from previous E3s to similar scenes from this year's show.

Each week Mark Methenitis contributes Law of the Game on Joystiq, a column on legal issues as they relate to video games:

As we wrap up our E3 2008 coverage here at Joystiq HQ, I thought it might be a good time to take a look at what makes many of E3's big surprises possible: the non-disclosure agreement. Non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, are common not only in the gaming industry but in virtually all industries, and I've drafted my fair share of them. However, they are exceedingly prevalent in the game industry because of their application to not only game company employees but also members of the press who are given early access to titles subject to media blackouts, which are just another form of non-disclosure agreement.

So, what is an NDA? At the simplest level, it's just another contract, but one that limits someone's ability to share certain information, sometimes with anyone and sometimes with certain designated people, for a set period of time. The NDA arose because companies have to share information with employees and outsiders, and those companies need to manage the risk of having that confidential information leaked to the public or to competitors. NDAs may be stand alone contracts or provisions of larger agreements, largely depending on the context in which they are needed.

Real Time Strategies have never been a good fit for consoles, thanks to their over-reliance on a mouse and keyboard. The Creative Assembly are hoping to change that with Stormrise by creating a fully intuitive, pad-based control system. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to try the controls out for ourselves, but from what we saw it has some potential.

Selecting units is as simple as flicking the right analogue stick. Holding it in any direction will bring up a radar screen, showing your troops throughout the level relative to your currently selected unit. Rotating the right stick will let you highlight your units and, letting go of the stick, select them. Quickly "whipping" the right stick in any given direction will select the nearest unit in that direction, allowing you to switch between units swiftly.

Once selected, the game's viewpoint switches to above and behind the unit, allowing you to see what they see. They can then be moved to any visible ground using a 3D cursor. This seemed to work well, but there are also other methods of controlling units that seemed to work even better, depending on your play style.

Sonic has had a hard time since he discovered the third dimension. Not only is he now chubbier, but his adventures in 3D-land have been met with lukewarm reception. The general consensus is that the last great Sonic game was on the Sega Genesis. With Sonic Unleashed Sega are hoping to reinvigorate the franchise with a focus on speed and platforming, as well as evolving the character (literally) into something unique.

The first thing you notice about Unleashed is that it's very pretty. Even with rough shadows and unfinished lighting physics, the game looks gorgeous. It looks like it might also play quite nicely, depending on controls. There are two different styles of gameplay in Unleashed which, together, could satisfy most Sonic fans.

For a lot of people the name Sonic is synonymous with "speed," and the day-time missions in Unleashed reflect this. The first level seemed simple enough -- hold the analog stick in the right direction and watch Sonic go, making sure to jump in time. Obviously, this won't be true throughout the game, later levels will feature more precise platforming sections and less non-stop running. There are also different routes to take throughout the levels, which require a specific button combination press in order to reach.

Volition's decision to change the perspective in Red Faction: Guerrilla from the first to the third-person couldn't have been an easy choice to make, but it seems to be the right one, something that even now feels strange to put to words. Even as a fan of the developer's terrain-deforming original, it's difficult to look back on Red Faction without qualifying my enthusiasm with the promises and potential of what might have been.

However, after sitting down with Volition senior artist Jasen Whiteside over a hurried E3 lunch and actually playing the title, it's evident that action game fans shouldn't feel at all awkward about adding Red Faction: Guerrilla to their list of titles to look forward to in early 2009.

Each week Dennis McCauley contributes The Political Game, a column on the collision of politics and video games:
For more than a decade the Electronic Entertainment Expo was a must-see event for game retailers and media types. While it's true that in recent years E3 had become an exercise in wretched excess, that was, in fact, a large part of its charm. By day E3 featured massive, massively noisy game displays laid out end to end to end in the cavernous main halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center . By night dozens of game industry parties kept L.A.'s bartenders and sushi makers off the unemployment lines and gave a generation of scruffy game journalists an all-too-brief taste of the good life. In 2006, its final year as an extravaganza, a reported 80,000 people streamed past E3's exhibits.

But beyond that, E3 put the modern video game business on the map. You could be certain of national T.V. coverage from all of the major networks. The top newspapers were there as well. The media coverage of the show's bright lights, booth babes and nonstop bells and whistles made mainstream America sit up and take notice of a form of entertainment it had previously held to be child's play, and for geeky children at that. Of course, the gaming press went absolutely nuts during E3 week, pushing screen shots and trailers and interviews and whatever else it could get hold of to millions of eager readers.

To paraphrase Mick Jagger, I used to love you, E3, but it's all over now.