This three-month old female giant panda cub made her public debut yesterday—amid some familiar-looking stuffed-toy camouflage—at the Giant Panda Conservation Center at the National Zoo in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

AP Photo by Joshua Paul

Yet another new commercial for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is out and while some of the previous ones have been largely rehashes of the trailers, this one—which focuses on Finn—is mostly new footage.

“You don’t know anything about me.” “Are you sure you’re up for this?” Oh man, we’re getting so, so close.

[]

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

Gawker Leave ISIS (Books & Gifts) Alone | Kotaku Prison School is Ridiculous and Fun | Gizmodo Kickstarted Drone Company Folds, Along With $3.4 Million in Pledges | Deadspin Nobody Makes Dirk Nowitzki Bleed His Own Blood

John Boyega talks wielding a lightsaber in The Force Awakens. Quicksilver has another elaborate super-speed sequence in X-Men: Apocalypse. Milla Jovovich looks different in Resident Evil set pictures. Plus, Sarah Dollard on her Doctor Who episode’s big connection to the season’s arc, and a new Jessica Jones clip. So Many Spoilers!

Justice League Dark

Salt shakers at the ready, but Latino Review claims the casting for the long-planned movie about a team of supernatural-themed DC heroes is under way, with discussions building from Guillermo Del Toro’s suggestions from before he departed the project.

Warner Bros. execs reportedly agree with Del Toro about Swamp Thing being played by Ron Perlman, and want to approach the actor. On top of that, two actors are being considered for John Constantine: Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor. Whichever actor is not picked for Constantine could instead be offered Jason Blood, the human side of the demon character Etrigan. For now though, treat this as a rumor and nothing more.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

John Boyega recalls the day he first got to wield Anakin and Luke Skywalker’s former lightsaber:

Man, the lightsaber came in this case. The guys brought it out and I’m like, ‘Now’s the moment, now’s the time.’

I held it in my hand and I just felt, you know, the clouds open up and the white doves come flying down. It feels very, very good. I hugged it for the whole day. I didn’t allow anyone to hold it but me.

[Empire]

George Lucas discusses why he didn’t want to return to direct a future Star Wars title—or any mainstream, big budget film, for that matter:

You go to make a movie and all you do is get criticized, and people try to make decisions about what you’re going to do before you do it.

Y’know, it’s not much fun, and you can’t experiment; you can’t do anything. You have to do it a certain way. I don’t like that, I never did. I started out in experimental films, and I want to go back to experimental films, but of course no one wants to see experimental films.

[CBR]

Captain Marvel

Writer Meg LeFauve briefly updates on where the film is currently at:

We are just starting. We have just started researching and spit balling. Nicole (Perlman) and I have decided that we are going to have a good time.

[THR]

Star Wars: Rogue One

BBC Entertainment correspondent Lizo Mzimba appears to have revealed the name of Riz Ahmed’s character: Bhodi Rook.

Tetris

Brett Ratner will produce a movie based on the making of the iconic classic video game. [/Film]

X-Men: Apocalypse

Evan Peters teases another elaborate speed sequence for Quicksilver:

Yeah, Quicksilver does his thing again. It’s bigger, longer, and more detailed. I think it’s an amazing sequence that they’ve put together.

It’s so cool to take that much time to make something like that really pop and really work. Knock on wood, I think it’s going to be a fun and enjoyable sequence for people to watch, with Quicksilver running around and doing his thing in slow-mo time. I hope people like it.

[Collider]

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

Milla Jovovich shared another picture from behind the scenes on Instagram—this time of her in makeup and prosthetics as an older version of Alice.

Deadpool

Apropos of nothing, here’s a goofy new display for the film hitting theatres in the run up to Christmas. [CBR]

Doctor Who

“Fear the Raven” writer Sarah Dollard discusses the episode’s importance the the overall arc of season 9.

When I started writing it, I didn’t even know I had a place in the season! [Laughs] Everything I was handing in, I was kind of dancing for my life. I sort of felt like every word I was writing was auditioning, doing jazz hands! [Laughs] My usual layer of anxiety is pretty high but there was an additional layer with this one. [Laughs]

I’d done a complete first draught and that was read by everybody. I came in for second draft meeting and sat there at the table and Steven [Moffat] said, ‘Good news is, we really love it. We love it so much, we’d like to talk about putting at this point in the season where it can form the part of an arc.’

[Blogtor Who]

Dead of Summer

ABC family has ordered a new horror series from the creative team behind Once Upon a Time, about counsellors at a Midwestern Summer Camp being driven to murder due to the supernatural history of the Campsite. [Deadline]

The Bastard Executioner

Kurt Sutter has taken to Instagram—well, a full page advert in The Hollywood Reporter, via Instagram—to confirm that the series has been axed due to poor ratings and reception.

Supergirl

CBS has released a synopsis for “Human for a Day”:

KARA AND HER FRIENDS MUST RELY ON THEIR INNER STRENGTH AND COURAGE WHEN AN EARTHQUAKE STRIKES NATIONAL CITY, ON “SUPERGIRL,” MONDAY, DEC. 7

“Human For a Day” – Kara and her friends must rely on their inner strength and courage when an earthquake strikes National City. Also, Alex’s mistrust of Hank reaches a breaking point when the earthquake traps them in the DEO with Jemm (Charles Halford), a powerful alien escapee, on SUPERGIRL.

Grimm

Likewise, here’s a synopsis for “The Rat King”:

THE WHOLE IS DEADLIER THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS - CARLSON YOUNG, JACQUELINE TOBONI AND DAMIEN PUCKLER GUEST STAR - Nick (David Giuntoli) and Hank (Russell Hornsby) are called to the scene when three Wesen go out on a hunt at a local dump and get more than they bargained for when two turn up dead after they encounter the mythical Rat King. Meanwhile, a very badly wounded Trubel (guest star Jacqueline Toboni) is taken to the hospital and Nick finally meets Meisner (guest star Damien Puckler).

[Spoiler TV]

Channel Zero

Syfy has greenlit this anthology series from Nick Antosca and Max Landis that we’ve told you about before. The show will air in two six-part seasons in 2016 and 2017, and begins with an adaptation of Candle Cove, an internet “creepypasta” horror tale written by Kris Straub about “one man’s obsessive recollections of a mysterious children’s television program from the 1980s - and his ever-growing suspicions about the role it might have played in a series of nightmarish and deadly events from his childhood.” [Spoiler TV]

Jessica Jones

Finally, Jessica flips when Trish tries to call out Killgrave in a new clip from the show.

Additional reporting by Gordon Jackson and Charlie Jane Anders. Image: Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Eggplant is a masterful short film about Durian, a young boy who laughs when he’s sad and cries when he’s happy. It’s caused him a lot of problems.

Yangzi She’s UCLA Animation Workshop thesis film, Eggplant is a masterclass in fluid animation, flitting between different scenes with ease. It’s also a great idea very well executed.

[via Vimeo Staff Picks]

Contact the author at katharine@io9.com.

The winners of Royal Society Publishing’s inaugural photography competition have been announced, and they’re extraordinary.

These inspiring nature photos, chosen from over a thousand entries, were judged by a team consisting of Royal Society Publishing scientists, editors, and photographers. The award celebrates “the power of photography to communicate science.” We now present to you the top 10.

Overall Winner: Tadpoles Overhead

The top prize for the inaugural Royal Society’s photography competition goes to Bert Willaert of Belgium.

Tadpoles of many anuran species come in high numbers, but not many make it to adulthood. Here a group of common toad (Bufo bufo) tadpoles is seen from below.

In addition to taking top prize, this photo was chosen as best in the Ecology and Environmental Science category.

Image and caption credit: Royal Society Publishing/Bert Willaert

Going With the Flow

This stunning photo by Claudia Pogoreutz of Germany was the winner of the Behavior category.

A school of tropical clupeid fish exhibited synchronized behavior to keep a healthy distance from a teenage black-tip reef shark. Sharks would cruise placidly for hours without so much as looking at the smaller fish, until, all of a sudden, they would strike and gobble up a mouthful of clupeids. The picture was taken on a shallow reef flat on Kuramathi Island in the Rasdhoo Atoll, Republic of Maldives.

Other than an automated tone correction in Photoshop, no other post-processing was applied.

Image and caption credit: Royal Society Publishing/Claudia Pogoreutz

Fern With a Drysuit

This image won the Evolutionary Biology category, and it was taken by the UK’s Ulrike Bauer.

Plants have evolved elaborate surface structures to modify the wettability of their leaves. The leaves of the water fern Salvinia molesta are covered with whisk-like hairs. The leaf surface and all but the very tip of the whisks is extremely water-repellent, keeping the leaf perfectly dry even when it’s submerged for several weeks. The hydrophilic tips of the whisks ‘pin’ droplets in place. This further helps to prevent the water from entering the space in between the whisks.

In recent years, plant surfaces have repeatedly inspired the design of biomimetic (“nature-mimicking”) applications for human use, most famously the self-cleaning paints based on the Lotus leaf.

Image and caption credit: Royal Society Publishing/Ulrike Bauer

Ancestry. Dominance. Endangered.

Germany’s Martha Robbins was the runner up in the Ecology and Environmental Science category.

This photo shows the strength and power of gorillas, one of our closest living relatives, yet also shows their vulnerability due to the pressures put on their world by humans. Taken in Rwanda, I observed the gorillas walking to the eucalyptus trees outside of the Volcanoes National Park and watched them strip the bark with their teeth. Within a few minutes, the silverback of the group sat down to eat bark and faced out towards the farmland—almost as if he was contemplating the human society that lives next to the gorillas’ habitat.

Image and caption credit: Royal Society Publishing/Martha Robbins

Caribbean Brain Coral

This image by American photographer Evan D’Alessandro won a special commendation prize.

This image of what appears to be a single colony of the giant Caribbean brain coral Colpophyllia natans hints at the virtuoso abilities of corals to assume a wide range of different forms and appearances. This photo raises many important questions regarding this species of coral. Are the four distinct zones in this photograph really genetically identical? What spurred the colony to grow in this strange and beautiful manner?

Image and caption credit: Royal Society Publishing/Evan D’Alessandro

A Baboon Gets Lost in His Thoughts

South Africa’s Davide Gaglio won a special commendation award for this photo, which was taken at Cape Point Reserve, South Africa.

I was taking photos of a group of baboons trying to capture some interesting action shots. The baboons were not very active as the sun was up and most of them were just resting. I noted this baboon sitting and facing the sun with his eyes closed. Once I was close enough, and without distracting him, he put one hand under his face, posing as though he was lost in his thoughts.

Image and caption credit: Royal Society Publishing/Davide Gaglio

Fish Louse

Steve Gschmeissner from the UK won a special commendation award for this false colored image of a fish louse captured through a scanning electron microscope:

Lice lineages began to split and diversify during the late Cretaceous era, when dinosaurs, birds and early mammals probably were on the resilient parasites’ menus. Argulus is a species of fish lice that has been shown to be a well-adapted parasite, exhibiting unique hunting and breeding strategies that enable it to live in the harsh and variable climates of Europe, East Asia and Siberia, wreaking havoc on the profitability of any freshwater fishery it inhabits and infests.

Image and caption credit: Royal Society Publishing/Steve Gschmeissner

Sand Has Scales

This image by Italy’s Fabio Pupin was the runner up in the Evolutionary Biology category.

Bitis peringueyi is an endemic adder from the Nabib desert. It’s an ambush predator, highly equipped for the job. Many snakes are disguise masters but few completely burrow their entire body beneath the surface and fewer have their eyes moved on top of their head. Actually, if I hadn’t blown off the sand to better show its scaly pattern, this adder would have been completely invisible.

Image and caption credit: Royal Society Publishing/Fabio Pupin

Smashing

Italy’s Luca Antonio Marino was the runner up in the Behavior category.

In the photo, an adult wild bearded capuchin monkey (Sapajus libidinosus) uses a stone tool to crack a very resistant palm nut in Fazenda Boa Vista (Piauì, Brazil). These monkeys habitually crack open very resistant palm nuts on hard surfaces using stones as percussive tools. This behaviour is considered one of the most complex form of tool use by nonhuman species seen in nature. The alpha male, weighing 4.2 kg, picked up a big stone (3.5 kg) and lifted that above his head to crack a piassava nut. Capuchin’s actions are very fast so it is hard to capture the decisive moment,” noted Marino. “In a matter of milliseconds I shot and took the photo that I wanted: the representation of capuchin monkeys’ strength and beauty.

Image and caption credit: Royal Society Publishing/Luca Antonio Marino

Runs at Dawn

Special commendation goes to Jose Juan Hernandez Martinez for this photo of Canarian Houbarabustard, a large bird in the bustard family.

In the Canary Islands of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, after every winter rains Canarian Houbarabustard (Chlamydotis undulata) males begin their impressive courtship displays. From dawn onwards these males display at their favorite places and from there scamper around showing their plumage in all its glory.

Image and caption credit: Royal Society Publishing/Jose Juan Hernandez Martinez

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Email the author at george@gizmodo.com and follow him at @dvorsky. Top image by Royal Society Publishing

In the late 20th century, people hoped that the new millennium would usher in an age of promise: hoverboards, flying cars, personal robots, and the like. That future, the one that everyone predicted, never quite came to pass. Not in the way we thought it would, anyway.

Yes, living in 2015 has its perks. We can fit computers into our pockets, and we can communicate with people across the world with ease. But each real-world advancement brings with it a touch of disappointment. Futuristic tech was supposed to be our destiny and salvation. Instead, we got iPhones and Instagram. Is this all there is?

Fallout 4, one of the most hyped games of the year, was expected to help define the new generation of consoles. And yet, Fallout 4 often feels like a game many of us have already played. It is a behemoth of a digital creation, but the bones that give it shape seem suspiciously familiar. Antiquated, even.

All the same, I’ve spent the last week playing obsessively, as if in a trance. This wasn’t the future I was expecting, nor is it the magical, futuristic game I may have imagined when I first played Fallout 12 years ago. But for all the things about Fallout 4 that disappoint me, there’s something undeniably captivating about it and the world it allows us to explore. I’ve already played 60 hours, and I will likely be fixated on Fallout 4 for hundreds of hours to come.

In 2007, Bethesda, the publisher/studio best known for creating the Elder Scrolls fantasy RPG series, bought the rights to the Fallout franchise for $5.7 million. They then took the classic CRPG and modernized it, by which I mean they turned it into a first-person-shooter.

2008’s Fallout 3 was a huge transformation for the series, but despite the outward FPS appearance, many of the elements that defined Fallout were still present. Like Fallout games before it, Fallout 3 set players loose in a Mad Max type world full of mutated horrors created by the atomic fallout of a sudden world war. Like the original Fallout games, Fallout 3 presented a bracing blend of hard-boiled brutality and easygoing, arch humor. And like its predecessors, Fallout 3 gave players a huge amount of choice in how to approach the game. You could shoot or talk your way through Fallout 3, if you wanted.

The hook of Fallout’s alternate timeline is the fact that American culture never evolved past the chipper, distinctly conservative optimism of the Eisenhower era. While American culture may have stagnated, technology did not. In Fallout, cold fusion is real—and it powers everything from weaponry to cars. The cultural and technological aspects of this alternate timeline present a retrofuturistic world where the atomic family is the center of the universe, and the split atom is the center of all human progress.

Fallout 4 takes place 10 years after the events of Fallout 3. That’s not when it starts, however—in a neat twist, the game actually begins on the day the first bombs dropped on America. The player gets a brief chance to see first-hand what domestic American life was like before everything was destroyed, and that snapshot forms the lens through which your character views the events of the rest of the game.

Immediately after creating your character and meeting your family, you learn that the world is about to end. Thankfully—and, yes, conveniently—your family was just given a spot in a survival vault near your home in the Boston suburbs. You rush inside of the vault right as the mushroom clouds start to bloom. Once inside, your character realizes that he or she has been tricked. As it turns out, your particular Vault—Vault 111—is an experimental facility where they’re cryogenically freezing all residents. With no time to complain or process what is happening, your character is turned into an unconscious ice cube.

The game flash-forwards a century or two, at which point a dark turn of events leaves your spouse dead and your son missing. You are finally set free of your icy prison, 200 years after everything and everyone you know was wiped away. You have one goal: Find the people who killed your spouse and recover your kid.

Everything about the intro feels rushed, which is disheartening, considering how curious Fallout fans are about the era before the bombs dropped. It’s all just an excuse, of course, a reason to let you loose on a version of Boston that you do not fully recognize or know. And that is the heart of Fallout 4: exploration. Adventure. Seeing new places, meeting new people, and learning how the world is making do with what’s left.

Much of my time with this game has been spent pondering the secrets hidden just beyond the horizon. Wherever my gaze fell, I knew there was something new, waiting to be explored and conquered. Every landmark or ruin is an opportunity for discovery. It’s one of the most American aspects of an already very American series: Manifest destiny is alive and well in Fallout 4.

The first few hours of Fallout 4 are an often bracing learning experience. Most of the Boston wasteland—widely referred to simply as “The Commonwealth”—is hostile and harsh, and at first you’ll be short on the supplies and weapons you need to get by.

Fallout 4 is a much harder game than New Vegas and Fallout 3 before it. Some will find this frustrating, especially at the start of the game, though of course, one can always lower the difficulty. I find the constant struggle of Fallout 4 appropriate and enjoyable, because it makes survival more meaningful.

As you explore, you’ll constantly run into hostile enemies that you must kill or escape. How well you handle combat is at least partially dictated both by what you scrounge from the wasteland, as well as how you choose to specialize your character. Gone is the “skills” system from previous games, and in its stead stands a streamlined system with two major components: SPECIAL and Perks. SPECIAL stands for Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck, and dictates your character’s fundamental makeup. Each Special ability has ten possible points, along with ten corresponding Perks that can be unlocked. You get a set number of points you can put into your SPECIAL build, and the more you put into a category, the more abilities you unlock in its respective SPECIAL tree. This, in turn, affects what your character can do overall.

The more points you put into Charisma, for example, the more options you have to smooth-talk your way through Boston, be it through driving a better bargain while bartering or having the social acumen to command others to do exactly as you say. If a Charisma-focused character skimps out on Strength, that character won’t be able to use melee weapons very effectively, nor will they be able to carry much in their inventory.

At first, you’ll have to carefully pick what you want to focus on, and those decisions determine how you’ll interact with the world of Fallout 4. Maybe you roll a roguish character, who uses sneaking and lockpicking to rob the wasteland blind. Maybe your character is a genius who uses robotics and hacking. Maybe you’re a bruiser who takes down foes with a huge pneumatic fist. The choice is yours.

The system has been streamlined significantly from past games, which gave you numerical stats in a number of different areas as well as a huge number of perks for further customization. Initially, the streamlining felt front-loaded and restrictive to me, in that it asks players to figure out exactly what abilities they’ll have in the foreseeable future. The old system was more malleable, in that having your skills detached from your Perks meant that you could add points as you went along.

However, in time, the new system eventually feels less restrictive—after 60 hours of playtime, I don’t really miss the extra layer of depth. It helps that Fallout 4 is generous with XP and there’s no level cap, meaning that whatever character you build can max out every single ability available to them. Provided you put in the time, of course.

Your SPECIAL stats might dictate the range of your combat acumen, but it’s still up to you to pull the trigger. Fallout 3’s signature VATS system makes a return in Fallout 4, with an added wrinkle. By pressing the VATS button, time slows down and a new interface opens up, where you can target specific body parts on an enemy of your choosing. From there, you can plan batches of discrete actions, depending on how many Action Points you have (a number which is determined based on your SPECIAL spread). It’s a curious mechanic that acts as a throwback to Fallout’s origins as a turn-based game. Unlike Fallout 3, however, time does not completely halt while you’re in VATS mode. It’s a tweak that changes the flow of a given encounter, and forces players to make decisions more quickly.

On the whole, Fallout 4’s combat is an improvement over Fallout 3. In Fallout 3, your real-time shooting seemed more directly affected by the stats you picked, with skills determining how likely it was that you’d hit something both inside and outside of VATS. In Fallout 4, when you aim at something and it’s in your crosshairs, the bullet will most likely travel exactly where you think it will. It’s a small tweak that streamlines yet another RPG aspect of the game, but it’s a welcome one.

In Fallout 3, I used VATS as a crutch to compensate for how tedious and unwieldy the real-time shooting could be. In Fallout 4, I spend less time in VATS and more time shooting free-form. VATS is a bonus, a skin-saver for tight spots. While playing, I have to constantly decide whether or not I want to use my action points, and in the middle of a firefight, that’s a juicy mini-consideration. Do I use VATS and leave my success up to the cold, hard numbers and probabilities? Or do I trust my aim, tried and true? It’s an interesting decision-making process, and keeps combat engaging throughout.

Another thing that helps keep Fallout 4’s combat interesting is the inclusion of legendary enemies. These fearsome foes, denoted by stars next to their names, are not only tougher than the normal fare, they can also mutate mid-battle and heal themselves completely. It’s a pretty annoying ability, to be honest, as dealing with these creatures often emptied me of my most precious ammo and healing reserves. Killing a legendary enemy rewards you with legendary gear, each of which gives you a unique ability. Right now, for example, I’m wearing two pieces of gear that slow down time when I hit 20% health. It’s awesome.

In general, the Fallout approach to gear has been retooled and overhauled to give the player more choice. Weapons and armor can be modified and tweaked to better suit individual playstyles, be they fashion-oriented or focused on raw power. It’s a robust customization system that allows players to modify every aspect of their gear, from the lining of a piece of armor to the stock of a gun. That probably sounds pretty straightforward, as far as customizations go, but that’s far from the case. It’s actually all kind of a pain to keep track of, as rewarding as it can be to perfectly customize your gear. There are unique modifications to keep track of, too. For example, I’ve jammed dozens of rusty nails on my legendary rolling pin, which also happens to get more powerful if I use it at night. (Yeah, this game can get pretty silly.)

The effect of the crafting system is most deeply felt with the return of Power Armor, the huge robotic exoskeletons that have become a symbol for Fallout as a whole. (To wit: Power Armor has been featured on the cover of every single main Fallout game to date.) In the past, Power Armor was aspirational, a thing you got near the end of the game, once you were strong enough. There was always a build-up to Power Armor. Fallout 4, on the other hand, gives you Power Armor right out of the gate. This might seem overindulgent, but Fallout 4’s relationship with Power Armor is different from past games. Not only can you customize every part of your Power Armor, it is now also fueled by a scarce energy source. As a result, your Power Armor feels like a vintage car. You only pull your Power Armor out on special occasions, when you need help on a particularly tough fight.

The entire Fallout 4 crafting system is powered by...junk. Yes, junk. Bethesda games have always been full of interactive objects that you can pick up and look at, most of which serve as window dressing for creating more believable worlds. In past Fallout games, rubbish served mainly as a reminder that this world really has gone to hell. Folding junk into the game so that it’s actually useful makes sense on paper: in a world like Fallout, everyone would need to McGuyver scraps together to survive another day. In practice, sorting through so much garbage and constantly managing my inventory to deal with weight proves cumbersome, and it takes away from time I could be using to explore more of what Fallout has to offer. (It’s not helped by Fallout 4’s generally awful menus and user interface.) Junk management is one aspect of the game I wish Bethesda had spent more time trying to streamline.

Despite my dislike for the inventory and crafting situation in Fallout 4, it’s something I learned to tolerate because of how useful the results are. There’s a fine, simple pleasure in destroying an enemy and knowing you did it with a weapon you assembled almost from scratch.

Fallout’s mechanical underpinnings have been strengthened, but the changes I’ve described thus far feel less innovative and more iterative. Big picture: Fallout 4 looks and plays very similarly to Fallout 3, down to the identical lockpicking and hacking mini-games and the uncanny facial animations.

Fallout 3 was an excellent game, but it was released almost a decade ago. Every time I turn off Fallout 4, I’ll sit there thinking to myself: “Shouldn’t there be more to this, somehow?” Maybe I’m being greedy. Maybe I’ve been conditioned to think this way by years and years of revolutionary, groundbreaking video games, and by the games industry’s laser-focus on exciting new ideas and inventions. But in the wake of games like The Witcher 3, which is leaps and bounds ahead of its last-gen predecessor, it’s hard not to look at Fallout 4 with a touch of disappointment. This is it? Really?

All the same, Fallout 4 is very good at keeping me hooked. It accomplishes this by constantly dangling the carrot of better loot while giving players a map that is full to bursting with new things to discover. Fallout 4 has also adopted another one of Skyrim’s defining features: the Radiant Quest system, which provides players with a never-ending—if eventually somewhat shallow—supply of randomly generated missions that can be repeated indefinitely.

Fallout did not become a classic by providing its players with an endless supply of randomly generated monsters to kill and stuff to collect. I like having that stuff as an option, but when I think Fallout, I think about the stories, the characters, and the world itself. I think about the many choices Fallout presents to you, no matter how absurd or game-breaking they might be. That writing and flexibility is what brought the first Fallout to life, and what motivated players to go exploring at all. It’s why Fallout 3 could get away with having such wonky combat in the first place. Lots of players didn’t care how that part of the game played, not really. It was a means to an end.

A good number of Fallout 3 memories still stick with me. I remember meeting Moira Brown, the happy-go-lucky saleswoman who was confident that writing a survival tips book could really make a difference in the world. I still remember discovering Megaton for the first time, and later, having the choice of whether or not I would blow it up. I still remember finding Oasis, and being awed that so much greenery could grow in the wasteland at all. I still remember deciding whether or not I would let Ghouls take over Tenpenny Tower.

Fallout 4 has so far had a tough time matching those sorts of moments. At least part of the blame for that rests at the feet of the new dialogue system. Instead of seeing what your character is going to say in full, Fallout 4 adopts a Mass Effect-like system. You get a maximum of four dialogue options, all denoted through a few on-screen words that do not always give you a good sense of what will be said next. Fans have provided mods to fix that issue, but even if Bethesda patched this feature in, it couldn’t fix the fact that on the whole, Fallout 4’s writing is thin. You never have particularly long or nuanced conversations with the other characters. I like to play a Charisma-focused character, and I was disappointed.

Fallout 4’s conversations often feel rushed, like your character is in a hurry to stop talking and go shoot some more stuff. The fact you can walk away from people in the middle of a conversation tells you everything you need to know about Fallout 4’s dialogue. And it certainly doesn’t help that so many of the choices given to the the player are false—whichever options I chose, I often found myself railroaded to the same short-term conclusion.

There are some upsides to the new dialogue system: Conversations can happen around you while you’re exploring a town or a settlement, regardless of whether or not you opt into them. You’re free to draw yourself closer to the NPCs and hear what they’re chatting about, or to ignore them and to be on your way. Often, if you’re willing to stop and listen, you can learn about a new location or gain a new quest. It’s an elegant way of disseminating information to the player, and in the right circumstances, can make towns feel more alive.

Plus, it’s not as if Fallout 4 is completely bereft of good writing:

Situations like that just feel more rare, now. It saddens me to say so, but more often than not, I’ve found myself mentally checking out of conversations in Fallout 4.

While Fallout 4’s “find your son” premise is kind of hokey, many of the main quest missions are quite good. Quests feel experimental, more frequently on par with standouts like Fallout 3’s Tranquility Lane. For example, there’s a quest in place called the Glowing Sea, and it takes you well off the main map into an hellscape that’s so irradiated, nobody dares tread there. Walking through the Glowing Sea in my Power Armor was something else. I loved feeling that desolation, I loved feeling the terror that came with discovering what horrendous monsters might live in a place like this. I’d love to tell you the specifics of other main quests, but I don’t want to spoil them for you. Let’s just say that Fallout 4 goes to some pretty interesting places.

As you go along, you find out that one of the Boston commonwealth’s main conflicts surrounds “Synths,” human androids built by a mysterious entity known as The Institute. The Institute is the Commonwealth’s boogeyman, a scary collective that can be blamed for anything and everything that goes wrong. Fueling that paranoia is the fact that advanced synths are essentially indistinguishable from humans. If you’ve watched Battlestar Galactica or seen Blade Runner, then you already have a sense of where this is all going.

There’s paranoia. Philosophical explorations of what it means to be human. People who support androids, and others who are threatened by the existence of androids. Androids who are human enough to make you question your prejudices. It’s an interesting—if clichéd—premise that works well enough, but thanks to the stripped down dialogue system, I never felt particularly invested in any of the factions or alliances presented to me. While each of the groups vying for control over the Commonwealth are interesting in theory, in the game they often came across as ideological zealots who leave little room for nuance and complexity.

Fallout 4 truly shines in its sidequests, and happily, these quests are numerous and varied. By putting the larger narrative aside, the writers at Bethesda embrace the freedom to tell one-off stories that aren’t beholden to the larger politics of the Commonwealth. Boy, do I love Fallout 4’s sidequests. There’s the one where you go into an Irish Tavern in search of a robotic drinking buddy. Or the one where you turn into a comic book superhero, costume and all. There’s the one where you explore the art gallery of a psychotic serial killer. And there’s a horrific quest during which you explore the remains of the Salem Witchcraft museum. The list goes on and on; Fallout 4 has no shortage of hilarious and intriguing sidequests that, when taken together, tell me much more about this absurd world than the more focused main story could hope to.

Along the way, you’ll meet follower characters who can join you on your journey, each one with a distinct background and moral compass. These characters are all well written and fleshed out, sometimes to an amazing degree. One follower is an intrepid wasteland reporter, for example, and if you take her with you on your travels, she’ll stop people in the street and interview them. Another follower is actually a synth, and if you take him with you and spend too long standing around, he’ll take out a screwdriver and begin performing repairs on his own body.

For all the improvements to followers in Fallout 4, the dialogue system still left my various relationships feeling ultimately shallow and unsatisfying. In a way, Fallout 4 feels less like it is about people, and more like it is about an actual place: Boston.

Diamond City, a large community built within the wreckage of Fenway Park, is beautiful and surprisingly functional for a video game town. It looks like an actual city, where people live and work. You can tell exactly where the town gets its water, its food supply. There’s a place where kids get an education. You know exactly where people go to unwind and have a good time. Shops and houses, though crammed together in a small space, make the most of what they can in a way that might be familiar to residents of New York or Japan.

It’s all helped along by some stellar art direction. Fallout 4 may not have the graphical fidelity of its contemporaries, and it can look rough—especially if you pay close attention to the finer details. Even so, some strong art direction (and a nice original score composed by Inon Zur) presents a world that is brimming with atmosphere. It is always a delight to walk through new areas and and take it all in, even if the residents of the Commonwealth can be a little grouchy. This is the east coast, though, so I guess a little grouchiness is to be expected.

I’ve written so many words about Fallout 4, but I have yet to touch on its most obvious addition: the new settlements system. In addition to customizing your weapons and armor, you can also customize and manage a network of settlements spread around the Commonwealth. You can build structures, craft defenses, recruit new settlers, grow crops, and generally go full Minecraft.

At first, the level of freedom you’re given is almost jarring: If you don’t like a wall, you can tear it down. If you think your settlement needs an armory, you can build it. If you want to have a palace full of teddy bears, you can make that happen. If you want to start your own store, you can totally do that. All provided, of course, that you have collected the right materials.

A little more than a week after the game came out, I’ve already seen people create all sorts of ridiculous and amazing things, including a Cat Cafe, a dance hall, and even a torture chamber. I have no doubt that players will go on to create even more wild things as time goes on. Unfortunately, the game barely explains how any of the settlement mechanics work, and the entire system is buried beneath a truly atrocious user interface. The settlement interface is so unwieldy and poorly explained that whatever neat contraptions fans have built have essentially been achieved in spite of it.

Personally, I just don’t really have the patience to deal with it all. I don’t want to fight the game in order to make something cool, especially not after I’ve played better-designed and more user-friendly recent games like Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer and Mario Maker. I’m sure some industrious players will feel differently, but when it comes to making my own in-game stuff, I’m just not that interested in what Fallout 4 is selling.

And yet… and this may be a common theme with this game: I’ve gotten pretty sucked into managing some aspects of my settlements nonetheless. Your settlements are filled with people, and those people get more or less happy depending on how good a job you’re doing providing what they need. It feels a bit like playing The Sims, except with Fallout. Or perhaps it’s more appropriate to compare settlements to Fallout Shelter, the mobile game released earlier this year where players could build and manage their own vaults.

Many of Fallout Shelter’s ideas return for Fallout 4’s settlements, in particular the overall goal of managing your resources in order to keep your settlers fed, safe, and happy. The difference, of course, is that you now have more control. Where Fallout Shelter provided a somewhat static setting and focused entirely on your numbers, Fallout 4 settlements give you the freedom to build and tweak as much as you want, in the way that you want. I don’t feel the compulsion to keep settlement happiness at 100% in Fallout 4, as I did in Fallout Shelter. 70% feels good enough. I have more important things to worry about, like whether or not a Raider will be able to steal my docked Power Armor, or determining whether any of my settlers have been replaced by Synths. (Because holy shit, that can actually happen.)

Settlements can also be pretty damn useful. Not only do they provide a nice base of operations where you can keep all your junk and do all your crafting, you can also use them to grow many of your own crafting materials and even set up trading routes.

Part of me wishes Bethesda hadn’t put so much emphasis into settlements and crafting. As much fun as I’ve had with some of its various aspects, none of it is really why I play Fallout.

Then again, part of me senses that some more traditional aspects of the Fallout formula are starting to fray from overuse. I’ve played a lot of Fallout in the last 12 years. I’ve dealt with countless stories of Super Mutants, Ghouls, and human survivors, with all the twists and turns those stories could have. Perhaps, in order to combat the growing overfamiliarity with Fallout, Bethesda has started giving us the tools to make our own Fallout, instead.

When I think about the predictions we often make about the future, I realize that they’re mostly concerned with technological innovation. The hoverboards, the jetpacks, and all the rest. The thinking being, “surely the world will be better with all that cool stuff, right?”

Perhaps it’s fitting that I’ve thought of Fallout 4 in these terms, too. I’ve bought into the new generation’s promises of a magical tech future, and came in to Fallout 4 with my own set of expectations based in part on other, more polished big-budget games. But Fallout’s appeal has always transcended that. The fact that so many people are willing to tolerate Bethesda’s so-called “jank,” that so many people love games like Fallout and Skyrim in spite of and even sometimes because of that jank, is a testament to these games’ deeper appeal.

The American dream is alive and well in Fallout 4. In this game, you really can pull yourself up by your bootstraps and thrive. In this way, Fallout 4 continues Bethesda’s vision of an oddly hopeful post-apocalypse. Rebuilding is possible. First, we’ll purify the waters. Then, we’ll reconstruct the towns. Then, we’ll make a really cool rocket launcher.

This may not be the future we were promised—and some of us might get replaced by robots during this adventure—but we’ll still find a way to return America to its former glory. Just you wait and see.

The X-Men are having a rough time in Marvel’s “All-New, All-Different” universe. Usually, that’d just be like another Tuesday for them, but this time there are a lot of questions up in the air: Why is Terrigen Mist killing them? What the hell did Cyclops do to make mutants hated again? Well, we might just have some answers.

Spoilers ahead for Extraordinary X-Men #2, by Jeff Lemire, Humberto Ramos, and Victor Olazaba.

http://io9.com/8-times-the-x-...

Uncanny X-Men #600 capped off Brian Michael Bendis’ run on the X-Men with Cyclops—disillusioned after he killed Professor X in a fit of phoenix-force-induced rage—bringing together the Mutants of the world on Capitol hill, hoping to forge a new, better world in a Mutant revolution.

That didn’t happen. Something did though, and in the process, on top of facing a world covered by Terrigen mist that is creating new Inhumans everywhere as well as sterilizing and poisoning Mutants, the world now hates them once more, fearing the disease they’re inflicted and untrustworthy of mutants in general. The X-Men have fled to a secluded X-Haven, and now spend their time trying to protect innocent mutants from the wrath of fearful humans. And the one thing they all talk about?

That all changed when Scott Summers did something so extreme that it sparked off a wave of anti-mutant sentiment the world over. And while we still don’t know exactly what he did, we do know a major ramification of it, thanks to Extraordinary X-Men #2.

At the end of the first issue, Storm and Iceman found the older version of Wolverine, displaced from his own future and now part of the world after Secret Wars—a world where his younger self had been dead for a while, because comic boooooooks. While trying to recruit him to their cause, Storm casually drops a huge bombshell: Whatever Cyclops did, it involved him dying.

It’s mentioned enough times later on in the book that it does seem to not be misdirection, but the actual case. But, as ever with comic books, you never really know—and it’s not like death has stopped superheroes from showing up before, time and time again in fact. For now though, One of the first X-Men is, apparently, no more—and he’s left all of mutant-kind in grave danger.

The One Where Amazon Sold the Complete Friends Blu-ray For An All-Time Low Price. Great gift idea, available today only. [Friends: The Complete Series, $60]

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Movies & TV

• Friends: The Complete Series ($60) | Amazon
• Preorder Shaun the Sheep Movie ($20) | Amazon
• Preorder Reservoir Dogs (Mondo Steelbook) ($20) | Target
• Preorder Highlander (Mondo Steelbook) ($20) | Target
• How The Grinch Stole Christmas: 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition ($10) | Amazon
• Scrooged ($8) | Amazon
• Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer: 50th Anniversary ($7) | Amazon
• DC Graphic Novel and DCU Movie Collection ($84) | Amazon
• 007: The Roger Moore Collection - Volume 2 ($10) | Target
• 007: The Sean Connery Collection - Volume 1 ($15) | Amazon
• 007: The Sean Connery Collection - Volume 2 ($15) | Amazon

Books & Magazines

• Sci-Fi Spectrum 9 DRM Free eBook Bundle ($12) | StoryBundle
• Holiday Fantasy 11 DRM Free ebBok Bundle | StoryBundle
• Let the Right One In: A Novel [Kindle] ($3 ) | Amazon
• Retribution (C.J. Townsend Thriller) [Kindle] ($2) | Amazon
• Super Mario Audiobook ($3) | Audible

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Ever since it was announced that the vaguely named IM Global Television would turn Kurt Vonnegut’s classic science fiction satire Cat’s Cradle into a TV series, I have been dreading it. Oh, I love Vonnegut’s bleak novel, but I was 100 percent certain no one could transform the slim, wonderful, esoteric book into live-action. I think I’ve just been corrected.

The Hollywood Reporter reports (from Hollywood) that Noah Hawley, executive producer and writer of the hit anthology TV series based on the Coen brothers’ movie Fargo, has been tapped to write and executive produce the Cat’s Cradle adaptation as a limited series for FX. This is really, really good news.

First of all, FX produces some really great TV; it’s not going to have an issue with Cat’s Cradle’s often low-key pace, its adult content, or its bleak ending, so that’s awesome. But what I’m really excited about is Hawley, who transformed the Coen brothers’ 1996 film Fargo into must-watch television. When that show was first announced, people freaked: How could he make an entire TV series out of a single movie? How could Hawley possibly replicate the quality of the Academy Award-winning film on TV? Just who did he think he was?

If you’ve watched the Fargo TV series, you know the answer—Hawley used completely new but intrinsically similar characters from the movie, building a larger story with similar elements. So while the TV show was larger and markedly different, it was still completely true to the tone and themes of the original movie. It was far more authentic than if Hawley had tried to retell the exact same story as the movie.

Of course I’m sure Hawley’s adaptation of Cat’s Cradle won’t be a revisionist reworking of the novel, but I’m also positive that he’s going to have to add a decent amount of material to turn it into a show that lasts more that two nights. And while the idea of anyone else on the planet having the audacity to “supplement” Vonnegut’s original work makes me furious, I actually trust Hawley to enhance the book while staying true to it—and that’s what’s really important.

Contact the author at rob@io9.com.

April 10, 1990: This is what happens when you unfurl a massive parachute in the world’s largest wind tunnel.

The Pioneer Aerospace Parafoil, also known as the Advanced Recovery System II, was tested at the 80x120 Foot Tunnel at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View California. The facility is approximately 24 meters by 36 meters, making it the world’s largest wind tunnel, and even then it was too small for anything but a scale model of the parachute.

1947: A view of the world’s largest wind tunnel at its largest section. Image credit: NASA

The aerodynamics test collected data on lift, drag, and pitch at angles from zero to stall (0° to 10°) used by air drops in gliding flight. An extended secondary test collected the same data during a flare maneuver at various trailing edge deflections and angles of attack. The recovery parachute was under development in 1990 to increase the potential payload weight of future missions.

Read the full test report here.

Top image: The Pioneer Aerospace Parafoil during wind tunnel tests. Credit: NASA

Contact the author at mika.mckinnon@io9.com or follow her at @MikaMcKinnon.

Since Star Wars Rebels is canon, it’s always a big deal when they introduce a new character. This is a person, creature or droid that will now forever be a part of Star Wars lore and, in the latest episode, they introduced a good one: Female bounty hunter Ketsu Onyo, voiced by Gina Torres.

To genre fans, Torres is best known as Zoe from Firefly and Serenity, and her addition gave Rebels a big dose that classic Joss Whedon, rapid fire, back and forth banter between Ketsu and and her old friend Sabine Wren.

In the episode, called Blood Sisters, newly minted Captain Hera gives Sabine a mission. She’s to make contact with a spy and transport the spy to a secret location. It takes a while but she and Ezra–who tags along because he kind of has a crush on Sabine–find the spy. It’s a gonk droid, EG-86. Things are going smoothly until Ketsu arrives.

We find out that she and Sabine used to be great friends, until Ketsu left Sabine for dead on a mission. The two battle verbally, and then with blasters, as the Empire gets wind that’s something going on. Luckily, Sabine escapes with the spy, but Ketsu is in hot pursuit.

Awesome cameo alert. The transport ship Sabine steals to escape was piloted by Captain Rex, the original pilot of the theme park ride Star Tours. Was this a canon appearance of Star Tours in the Star Wars universe? Maybe, and even if it’s not, it was a nice wink to fans. Rebels loves that.

Out in space, Ketsu follows in her Ghost/Y-Wing mashup ship called The Shadowcaster. Again, she and Sabine go back and forth like old friends until, finally, circumstances force the now enemies to once again realign. Together, with a huge dose of help from Chopper, they escape the Empire and get the spy to its destination: the planet Alderaan, where R2-D2 is waiting on behalf of Bail Organa.

That sounds familiar, right? A droid with plans in it has been delivered to R2-D2 for an Organa? Sounds a lot like the opening of A New Hope, but this episode was definitely not Rogue One. These were other, much less important, plans. But maybe, just maybe, this was some kind of trial run.

Much like last week’s episode, which focused on Hera, this Sabine-centric episode didn’t quite move the overall story forward. But it’s really exciting to continue to learn more and more about these characters. Sabine was training to be part of a group of hired assassins and bounty hunters called the Black Sun, a group that Ketsu is now a part of.

How did she get to that point? Will we get to see how and why she left to come to the Rebels? Eventually, I’m sure we’ll find out.

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

Chances are you’ve never heard of the Port Chicago disaster. Yet it was the worst catastrophe on the US home front during World War II. It was the single deadliest incident on the mainland during the war, and remains one of the worst calamities to ever hit the San Francisco Bay Area.

Yet today, it largely lives on only in the memories of long-time locals who actually heard the blast, and, as we’ll see, civil rights historians.

Until its brief moment of infamy, Port Chicago was just another one of the small railroad towns lining the Sacramento River a few miles up from where it empties into San Francisco Bay. Its population was never more than a few thousand, most of whom commuted to jobs in the factories and refineries of towns like Martinez, Pittsburg, and Antioch. It had been home to a small Naval facility during World War I, but even this was dwarfed by nearby bases like Vallejo’s Mare Island Naval Shipyard and Pittsburg’s Camp Stoneman.

Port Chicago’s brief moment in the sun came during World War II. Shortly after the war started, the Navy realized it needed more wharf capacity to handle munitions bound for the Pacific Theater. Port Chicago, with excellent rail and road access, deep water channel, and relative isolation from major population centers, fit the bill perfectly.

By December 1942, Port Chicago was home to the first pier designed exclusively for loading munitions. Unfortunately, more care was given to physical design than work conditions. The Navy decided that civilian longshoremen were too expensive and far too attentive to pettifoggery like safety and work conditions. Instead, the Navy turned to the cheapest labor they could find: African American enlisted seamen.

Like the rest of the armed forces, the Navy was strictly segregated. Black seamen were restricted to the least desired naval duty: labor battalions. Port Chicago was a perfect post for them, the Navy figured. Needless to say, the officers were all white and opportunities for promotion were non-existent. It was a perfect recipe for rotten morale.

Port Chicago was a hard-labor base with a single rule: Get the Ammo Out. Ships were loaded on 24 hours a day, seven days a week at a breakneck pace. Yet no one really know what the hell they were doing. The Navy didn’t have an ordnance loading manual. Instead, they relied on one put out by the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was really intended for loading small amounts at a much more leisurely pace.

The enlisted men had no experience in handling explosives, and the officers were no better. Local longshoreman offered to train the men, but the Navy never responded. In normal settings, a winch operator was never allowed to handle munitions without years of experience loading less hazardous loads. At Port Chicago, they went at it with little more than a quick rundown on what lever did what.

The Navy did have safety rules, but they were never posted in the barracks because the base captain didn’t think the men could understand them. As for the Coast Guard rep who was supposed to oversee the loading—well, that was too confusing too.

The result? Lots of jokes about who would be the first one out of the hold. With a goal of loading 10 tons per hatch per hour, there were enough bombs and explosives being dropped and rolled to give any newcomer the heebie-jeebies. There just wasn’t time to be careful.

Something was bound to happen.

And it did, on July 17, 1944 at 10:18pm.

The Liberty ship EA Bryan had been taking on munitions since the 13th. By the evening of the 17th, her five cargo holds (each as deep as a four-story building) were half full. She held about 4,600 tons of ordnance, including depth charges, 5,000-pound bombs, and 650-pound incendiary bombs. These last one were especially dangerous; unlike most bombs, they were shipped with the fuses and detonators intact—very carefully. On the other side of the pier was the Quinalt Victory, which was in the process of being rigged for loading. As usual, the pier was jammed with men, locomotives, boxcars, and 430 tons of bombs.

At 10:18pm, there was a small explosion, followed seven seconds later by an enormous blast—the biggest human-made explosion in history up to that time.

It was like the world’s biggest fireworks show. A huge column of smoke, flame, and sparks rose above the depot. The flash was seen in San Francisco, 35 miles away, and windows were broken as far away as Berkeley. The explosion was heard and felt throughout the entire Bay Area. Many people mistook it for an earthquake. Seismographs as far away as Nevada detected it and gave it a 3.4 on the Richter scale.

Fortunately, the Navy’s foresight it picking a relatively isolated town paid off. Port Chicago took the brunt of the explosion. Virtually every building in town was damaged, including the theater, where a wall buckled during a bombing sequence in a movie called China. No locals were killed, but 119 were injured.

As for the depot … there wasn’t much left. The 1,200-foot long pier was gone, just matchsticks and kindling wood. No piece of the 12-ton locomotive on the pier was ever found, and only a few pieces of the EA Bryan would be recovered. The Quinalt Victory had been blown out of the water, spun 180 degrees, and dropped back in, hopelessly wrecked. A nearby Coast Guard barge and been thrown 200 yards up the river and sunk. Buildings on the base proper a mile away were heavily damaged. And all 320 men who had the misfortune to be on the pier were killed. Only 51 bodies and body parts were ever recovered and identified.

No one at the base was killed, although 390 were injured. After the blast, things were relatively calm. The men reacted according to their training, applying first aid, fighting fires, and so on. One group even managed to extinguish a boxcar fire that if left unchecked, could have triggered a further string of explosions.

Clean-up was no fun. On sailor recalled, “Man, it was awful; that was a sight. You’d see a shoe with a foot in it and then you would remember how you’d joked about who was gonna be the first one out of the hold.” Of the 320 dead, 202 were black enlisted men. Combined with the injured back at the base, this accounted for 20 percent of the black casualties of the war.

The surviving seaman refused to resume loading munitions a few weeks later. As one put it, “I’ve got a chance over there with the enemy—but I ain’t got a chance in that hold.” Fifty were later convicted of mutiny. This lead to a civil rights case that is responsible for the explosion’s slim historical legacy.

The exact cause of the explosion was never determined. A court of inquiry determined the possible causes, in order of decreasing probability, to be: 1) a super-sensitive element detonating during normal handling; 2) detonation due to careless or rough handling; 3) failure of a loading boom; 4) the locomotive colliding with a boxcar; 5) an accident involving the mooring lines of the Quinalt Victory; and 6) sabotage.

There was no direct evidence of sabotage, but the court noted, “It cannot be ignored as a possibility.” Conspiracy theorists later claimed that the explosion was in fact nuclear, detonated by the government to test the effectiveness of delivering the atomic bomb by ship. This theory, however, is short on evidence and long on absurdity.

Port Chicago was repaired and rebuilt after the explosion, although the government compensation didn’t cover the cost of the repairs to many buildings. A Mississippi congressman successfully lobbied to reduce the compensation limit from $5,000 per household to $3,000 when he discovered that families of the dead seaman would also be eligible for these monies.

Today, the town of Port Chicago itself has long since been forgotten. The Navy bought it out and razed it in 1968. The base, renamed the Concord Naval Weapons Station, swallowed up the town site. The street grid pattern remains visible, but the town name itself lives on only in the name of a street, and a few war protests. You’d think that the site of the biggest non-nuclear human-made explosion in U.S. history would merit something better.

Both images: Public Domain

I can never, ever get enough monsters for my RPGs. Never. I will fill entire bookshelves, binders, and hard drives with nothing but monsters. I suspect I’m not alone, so check out this gallery of creatures from the upcoming Pathfinder Bestiary 5.

If you’re somehow not convinced that five volumes of Pathfinder monsters are truly necessary, Paizo publisher Eric Mona makes a pretty convincing argument:

When we started working on Bestiary 5, even I was a little bit skeptical. We’d already produced four hardcover Bestiaries, each with more than 300 monsters. Were there really enough cool monsters to fill a fifth monster book? It turns out I needn’t have worried.

Between original creatures that debuted in Pathfinder Adventure Path adventures and Campaign Setting volumes like the hideous hag eye ooze [pictured above, art by Jason Rainville] or maggotlike grimslake to wholly new creatures that fill important mechanical niches like new demodands, golems, and mythic monsters, to a raft of creatures designed to work with the psychic magic system introduced in the recent Occult Adventures hardcover (like five new “esoteric” dragons: astral, dream, etheric, nightmare, and occult), we had no shortage of amazing fantasy critters.

And, as has become a tradition for Paizo, we’ve heavily researched the mythology and legends of the real world to tease out amazing “real” creatures like Chile’s cherufe, Finland’s etainen, Slavic household spirits like domovoi, dvorovoi, and ovinniks, and scores of others. Add in a heaping helping of cryptids like grays, reptoids, and orang pendak, and you end up with a book that not only convinced me, but that I think will convince everyone else as well. My skepticism is cured, but the problems for my player characters are only just beginning.

Guys. Nightmare dragons. (Sadly, not pictured.)

Lipika Aeon (Lord of Karma) by Eric Belisle.

Annunaki by Eric Belisle.

Death Coach by Jorge Fares.

Deep One by Dave Allsop.

Ghoran by Aleksey Bayura.

Gray by Maichol Quinto.

Orang-Pendak by Daniel Lopez.

Wihsaak Sahkil by Jose Parodi.

Sha by Ben Wootten.

Xiao by Namanja Stankovic.

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The UE Boom Bluetooth speaker is the best you can buy, according to Gizmodo, and Amazon and Best Buy have marked it down to $100 today, the best price we’ve ever seen by a solid margin. [UE Boom, $100. More colors available at Best Buy]

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Whether you’re hoping a build a new PC this holiday season, or just save on upgrades for your existing rig, you’ll want to check out today’s stellar Amazon’s Gold Box.

If you use a computer, there’s almost certainly something in here for you. My personal favorite is a 960GB SSD for $220, which is the best price we’ve ever seen for an SSD in that capacity. If you want the full list, be sure to head over to Amazon, and make your selections before they sell out. [Amazon PC Component Gold Box]

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It’s 2015, and your headphones shouldn’t need wires anymore. Luckily, Amazon’s taking half off the usual price of these 4.5 star-rated Sony on-ears, the best price we’ve ever seen. [Sony MDRXB950BT/B Extra Bass Bluetooth Headset, $98]

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Today only, J. Crew Factory has taken 50% off everything they sell, and you can add on promo code GETGIFTING at checkout for free shipping anywhere in the continental US, no minimum purchase required. [50% off + Free Shipping at J. Crew Factory]

Panasonic’s Arc5 line of electric shavers is decidedly high-end, but Amazon is offering an amazing $100 off coupon today, bringing this model down to an all-time low price. Just be sure to clip the coupon before you add it to your cart. [Panasonic ES-LV61-A Arc5 Electric Shaver Wet/Dry with Multi-Flex Pivoting Head for Men, $124 after $100 Off Digital Coupon]

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While Xbox One Bundles will be getting discounts and tons of extras games and accessories on Black Friday, it seems like the best deal you can hope for on a PS4 is a straightforward $50 discount. Of course, you never want to rule out the possibility of surprise deal later on, but if you don’t feel like waiting, that $50 discount is available today over on eBay, with no sales tax for most buyers. [PS4 Uncharted Bundle, $300]

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Tragically, there are no calculator watches to be had here, but Amazon is offering big savings on a variety of Casio timepieces, today only. [Casio Watch Gold Box]

Sporting a lower price and a built-in touchscreen, the GoPro Hero4 Silver might actually a better choice than the Hero4 Black for most consumers. And with a $100 discount, it’s even more enticing. [GoPro Hero 4 Silver Edition Camcorder, $300]

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The One Where Amazon Sold the Complete Friends Blu-ray For An All-Time Low Price. Great gift idea, available today only. [Friends: The Complete Series, $60]

http://www.amazon.com/Friends-The-Co...

If you’re a fan of sports games, today’s your lucky day.

PlayStation 4

• Madden NFL 16 ($28) | Walmart
• FIFA 16 ($28) | Walmart

Xbox One

• FIFA 16 ($28) | Walmart
• Madden NFL 16 ($28) | Walmart

PlayStation 3

• FIFA 16 ($28) | Walmart
• Madden NFL 16 ($28) | Walmart

Xbox 360

• Madden NFL 16 ($28) | Walmart
• FIFA 16 ($28) | Walmart

Guitar Hero Live isn’t even a month old, but you can already save $30 on your copy, complete with a guitar controller. [Guitar Hero Live, $70]

If you need to refresh your Star Wars knowledge before you see The Force Awakens, both trilogies are on sale for $35 today on Blu-ray. Just let it in.

Star Wars Trilogy Episodes IV-VI ($35) | Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E9PMMX0/...

Star Wars Trilogy Episodes I-III ($35) | Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E9PMML2/...

We’ve seen car chargers with more ports and more power, but this one is so small, it’ll look like it’s built into your car. [Aukey Dual-Port Car Charger, $6 with code WZE6JCXG]

http://www.amazon.com/Charger-Aukey-...

Audio Technica’s venerable ATH-M50x took home the crown in a recent Kinja Co-Op for best headphones, and BuyDig will sell you a pair for $115 today in black or white. [Audio Technica ATH-M50X Headphones, $115 with code PROAUDIO. Also in white]

http://co-op.kinja.com/the-best-headp...

If you’re planning a holiday trip, this discounted gift card can save you $30 on your stay at any Hyatt brand hotel. That’ll be enough for a couple bottles of water from the mini bar! [$200 Hyatt Gift Card, $170]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1117013344...

I used to chop garlic by hand, and I think deep down, I was hoping I’d cut my finger off just so I’d have an excuse to stop. That all changed when I bought a garlic press, which minces a clove in a matter of seconds, and does a far better job of it than I could do with a knife. [Professional Stainless Steel Garlic Press Complete Bundle with Silicone Tube Peeler, $9 with code 25NLO83R]

http://www.amazon.com/Stainless-X-Ch...

This isn’t the first time Amazon’s had a sale like this, but if your car’s wiper blades are a little worn down, you can replace them both for just $22 today.

All you have to do is add any two Valeo frameless wiper blades (shipped and sold by Amazon) to your cart, and their total price will automatically drop to $22 at checkout. If you can’t remember what sizes your car requires, Amazon has a built-in tool at the top of the page to filter the options. [Buy Any Two Valeo Wiper Blades For $22]

Working late at your desk? You don’t need to burn the candle at both ends; you just need this LED desk lamp. The $30 lamp includes five color temperature settings, seven brightness settings, and even a USB charging port for your phone. [TaoTronics Dimmable LED Table Lamp w/ USB Charging Port, $30]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VUTAFR8/...

KMASHI makes some of the most popular battery packs we’ve ever posted, and their 15,000mAh model is down to a jaw-dropping $13 today on Amazon. Even if you’re all stocked up on battery packs, this would make a great gift for less tech-savvy friends and family members. [KMASHI 15000mAh External Battery Power Bank, $13 with code DNWS3612]

http://www.amazon.com/KMASHI-15000mA...

http://bestsellers.kinja.com/bestsellers-km...

Tech

Storage

• SanDisk Ultra Fit 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive ($28) | Amazon
• SanDisk Ultra Flair USB 3.0 128GB Flash Drive ($28) | Amazon
• SanDisk Ultra Flair USB 3.0 64GB Flash Drive ($18) | Amazon
• ORICO Tool Free USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure for 2.5” SATA HDD and SSD ($7) | Amazon | Use code 2VU65O2X
• Inateck UASP Enhanced 2.5” USB 3.0 HDD SSD External Case with USB 3.0 Cable, Black ($13) | Amazon | Use code VV2CAFJS

Power

• OLALA G3 10400mAh Power Bank Charger and Lightning Cable ($19) | Amazon | Use code WUSM2PZY

Audio

• UE - BOOM Wireless Bluetooth Speaker ($100) | Best Buy
• Sony MDRXB950BT/B Extra Bass Bluetooth Headset ($98) | Amazon
• Audio-Technica ATH-M50x Monitor Headphones w/ Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 AI ($185) | Adorama
• JLAB JBuds Hi-Fi Noise-Reducing Ear Buds with Mic ($5) | Amazon
• Takamine GD51-NAT G Series Acoustic Guitar ($198) | World Music | Use code BF-Takamine51
• Takamine G Series NEX Acoustic Guitar ($198) | World Music | Use code BF-Takamine51
• Inateck Dual-Driver Portable Wireless Bluetooth Speaker with Stand Function ($20) | Amazon | Use code 2YAPC8BW
• Pacuwi Portable Stereo Bluetooth Speaker Multi-function with 4000mAh Power Bank Compatible for iPhone ($19) | Amazon | Use code 3REW5WIC
• Syllable G600 Stereo Bluetooth 4.0 Headphone Headset ($25) | Amazon | Promo code 2AW9LOFH

Home Theater

• Samsung UN50J5200 50-Inch Full HD 1080p Smart LED TV ($450) | eBay
• URC R50 Digital Universal Remote Control ($37) | meh
• One For All 4Device Universal Remote ($15) | Best Buy

Computers & Accessories

• The Dell Business Pre Black Friday Sale is Live
• ViewSonic 27-Inch LED-Lit LCD Monitor, Full HD 1080p, 3ms, HDMI/DVI/VGA, Speakers, VESA ($171) | Amazon
• LG Electronics 8X USB 2.0 Ultra Slim Portable DVD Rewriter, External Drive ($20) | Amazon
• TP-LINK Dual Band Wireless Gigabit Router with MU-MIMO Technology (Archer C2600) ($189) | Amazon
• Linksys WirelessN Range Extender ($30) | Best Buy

PC Parts

• AMD FD8350FRHKBOX FX-8350 FX-Series 8-Core Black Edition Processor ($129) | Amazon
• EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB K|NGP|N ACX 2.0+, Whisper Silent, Customized Overclocking Graphics Card ($499) | Amazon
• Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 4GB GDDR5 PCiE Graphics Card ($470) | Amazon
• SanDisk Ultra II 960GB SATA III 2.5-Inch 7mm Height SSD ($220) | Amazon
• Transcend 512GB MLC SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5” SSD ($132) | Amazon
• Transcend 256GB MLC SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5” SSD ($67) | Amazon
• WD Green 2TB Desktop Hard Drive ($64) | Amazon
• Cooler Master Hyper T4 CPU Cooler with 4 Direct Contact Heatpipes ($20) | Amazon
• Rosewill ATX 12V 750-Watt 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Power Supply Hive-750 ($67) | Amazon
• CORSAIR Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory ($68) | Newegg
• AMD FX-4350 Quad-Core CPU, Gigabyte 760G MOBO w/ ATI Radeon Graphics, 8GB MEM, 120GB SSD, 1TB HDD, Case w/ 480W PSU ($240) | Newegg | After $10 Rebate
• Corsair Carbide Series 330R Titanium Edition Quiet Mid-Tower Case ($75) | Amazon
• Thermaltake Core V1 Mini ITX Cube Gaming Computer Case ($40) | Amazon
• DEEPCOOL TESSERACT WH Mid Tower Computer Case ($26) | Newegg

Mobile Devices

• Anker Bluetooth Selfie Stick ($6) | Amazon | Promo code HFEVEGJH
• 1byone iPhone 6/6s (4.7”) Genuine Leather Wallet Case ($10) | Amazon | Use code 4N8T2Y9Q
• Mpow Freetalk Bluetooth 4.0 Headset Car Earpiece ($19) | Amazon | Use code 9F6E8O7Y
• Premium Tempered Glass Screen Protector for iPad Air ($9) | Amazon | Use code W8D8MQWQ

Photography

• GoPro Hero 4 Silver Edition Camcorder ($300) | Rakuten

Home

• Dyson V6 Slim Cordless Vacuum ($199) | Walmart
• HoMedics Brethe Air Cleaner Air Purifier ($130) | Best Buy
• Honeywell 0.17 Cu. Ft. Security Safe ($40) | Best Buy
• Etekcity Wireless Doorbell Kit with 1000ft Operating Range ($14) | Amazon | Use code 2MPP223P
• Etekcity 3-in-1 Motion Sensor Activated LED Night Light & Handheld Flashlight & Power Failure Emergency Lamp ($14) | Amazon | Use code SENSOR2F
• Pedy Comfort Carrier Soft-Sided Pet Carrier ($11) | Amazon

Beauty & Grooming

• Panasonic ES-LV61-A Arc5 Electric Shaver Wet/Dry with Multi-Flex Pivoting Head for Men ($118) | Amazon | Clip $100 Off Digital Coupon

Kitchen

• Keurig K10 Mini Plus Brewing System ($79) | Amazon
• Travel Mug and Thermos Set ($10) | Sears
• Homdox Small Lemon Squeezer-Professional Lemon Juice Press ($8) | Amazon | Use code C7XEDZJ6
  
• Magicfly Salt & Pepper Grinder Set ($9) | Amazon | Use code ICGVKOV7
• MIU COLOR® Salad Spinner fit for 2 to 4 persons ($12) | Amazon | Use code LDQDYY7B

Apparel

• Take an Extra 50% Off at J. Crew Factory w/ Code GETGIFTING
• Marmot Calen Insulated Jacket - Women’s ($60) | REI
• OXA Small Durable Messenger Bag ($16) | Amazon | Use code LIQ2TPFJ
• Men’s Nike Air Max TR180 Training Shoes ($60) | Finishline
• Amazon has Select Casio Watches on sale from $44.99 to $129.99

Camping & Outdoors

• Morakniv Bushcraft Survival Knife w/ Fire Starter & Sheath ($45) | Woot
• BYB Super Bright COB LED Camping Lantern Flashlight ($10) | Amazon | Use code SCVBGNTN
• Headlamp YKS Adjustable Beam Focus LED Headlamp ($11) | Amazon | Use code KLCG2CN2
• YKS Canvas Hammock (79 Inch × 34 Inch, 330 Pounds Maximum Capacity) ($21) | Amazon | Use code LWH2H9MA
• Silicone Foldable Water Bottle ($12) | Amazon | Promo code N2D34RC6

Tools & Auto

• Gerber Shard Keychain Tool ($4) | Amazon
• Makita MAC700 Big Bore 2.0 HP Air Compressor ($199) | Amazon
• i-drill Accessory Super Kit (300-Piece) ($60) | Home Depot
• Esky Rear View Camera, 2-LED Night Vision with 180 Degress Viewing and Esky 4.3 Inch Foldable Color LCD Car Backup Monitor Screen ($26) | Amazon | Use code RXFC2EV3
• DBPOWER 400A Peak 12000mAh Portable Car Jump Starter 2 USB ports ($43) | Amazon | Use code VWJ93LKS
• VonHaus Mini Handheld Circular Miter Saw with Angled Cross Cut Guide ($72) | Amazon
• Honda 21 in. Nexite Deck Electric Start Gas Mower with Versamow Technology ($399) | Home Depot
• Viper Digital Smartphone Remote Start System with Geek Squad Installation ($300) | Best Buy

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Send deal submissions to Deals@Gawker and all other inquiries to Shane@Gawker

On June 17, 1939, Eugen Weidmann—a slick, handsome 31-year-old German—became the last person to be publicly executed via guillotine in France. His journey toward being a trivia-question answer started with a kidnapping gone awry, and spiraled into a deadly crime spree that spanned half of 1937.

But the abduction, and subsequent killing, of Jean de Koven, a young American dancer who was staying in Paris with her aunt that summer, wasn’t Weidmann’s first crime. Not by a long shot. He began stealing as a youth, and kept it up into adulthood, eventually serving time in both Canada and his native Germany.

While he was in prison in Germany, just across the border from France, he met the various men who’d join him as accomplices in his grandest, and most sinister, criminal endeavors. The gang decided robbing rich tourists would be their ticket to easy street—so they rented a villa near Paris to serve as their home base. After a bungled first attempt, it became clear that their theft targets would have to die if their greed-driven scheme would succeed.

Enter Jean de Koven. While visiting Paris in July 1937, Jean met a good-looking man with a German accent who called himself “Bobby.” They made a date, but the 22-year-old tourist never returned to her hotel after. Her body wasn’t found until four months later (along with her camera, which produced photos that helped ID her killer). In the meantime, though, someone who clearly didn’t have a good grasp of Jean’s signature cashed her traveler’s checks.

And then came the other victims, some of whom did not fit the “rich-tourist profile” by any means: “a woman lured by the false offer of a position as governess, a chauffeur, a publicity agent, a real estate broker, and a man Weidmann had met as an inmate in a German prison.” Weidmann didn’t have a type, other than “person with stuff to steal,” but he had preferred method, which was a single shot to the back of the neck.

Eventually, he was captured at his suburban villa, but he didn’t go down easy; police had to clobber him with a hammer to subdue him. Eventually, though, he confessed. Unlike many high-profile cases of the era—think the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and murder, for instance—Weidmann’s trial isn’t what made the most headlines, even though as the ringleader of the gang he received the harshest punishment. Rather, it was his June 1939 execution, which was so dramatic it changed history.

It was held in the early morning, after the bars around the prison St. Pierre in Versailles had closed. But things ran behind schedule, partially because of the sheer size of the keyed-up crowd that assembled ’round the guillotine. As Life Magazine wrote at the time, all present were more than eager to “experience the exquisite excitement of seeing a man have his head cut off.” And the delay meant they had an unusually clear view of the action thanks to the “bright daylight” of summer.

The International Herald Tribune described the scene in vivid detail, remarking on the “catcalls and jests” and “cheering and whistling” that came from the gathered, probably not-entirely-sober masses. And, eventually, the spectacle began:

Each time the prison door moved the semi-circle of officials and reporters re­acted, and heads were bared in anti­cipation. The first three times it was a policeman or functionary who stepped out. The fourth time it was Weidmann.

His eyes were tightly shut, his face flushed and his cheeks sunken. His thin blue shirt had been cut away across his chest, and his shoulders ap­peared startlingly white against the dark polished wood of the machine upon which he was pushed. The knife dropped 10 seconds after the prisoner passed through the doors.

Because of the time of day, the event was widely photographed and even filmed (see below; it’s a brief but dramatic bit of footage). Unfortunately, the camera stopped recording before the aftermath, which apparently included women soaking up spots of Weidmann’s blood with their hankies as gruesome souvenirs.

The two most compelling legacies of Weidmann’s execution: a young Christopher Lee was among the spectators. The 17-year-old was visiting a friend in Paris at the time, and of course he was curious about the macabre event. (Alas, no photos of teenage Lee taking in this gory spectacle exist, so we’re free to imagine the look on his face.)

Of less pop-culture interest, however, is the fact that Weidmann’s public beheading via guillotine was the very last one in France, ending a tradition that stretched back to 1792. (The boisterous, photo-snapping crowd, no doubt, had something to do with that.)

But France wasn’t able to let go of its beloved head-chopper juuuust yet; it was still used in private executions until 1977, when the death penalty was finally outlawed.

From top: Eugen Weidmann after receiving the death sentence on April 1, 1939 (AP Photo); Eugen Weidmann at his trial (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A truly great fantasy fairy tale movie is a rare thing. In the ‘80s, films like The Dark Crystal, The Neverending Story and Labyrinth made the cut. Guillermo del Toro’s early films, The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, are worthy additions. And next year, we may need to add a new one to the pantheon.

It’s called A Monster Calls, directed by Juan Antonio Bayona (who did The Impossible and The Orphanage) based on the book by Patrick Ness, who also wrote the screenplay. Despite it not being released until October 2016, this first teaser trailer just came out and it looks fantastic.

That’s a hell of a cast too. Felicity Jones, Liam Neeson and Sigourney Weaver, plus Toby Kebbel is in there as well. So what’s this about? Well, a young boy (Lewis MacDougall) is dealing with not just his classmates bullying him, but his mother (Jones) being ill. This really messes with his head and, to cope, he “escapes into a fantastical world of monsters and fairy tales that explore courage, loss, and faith.”

A Monster Calls opens October 14, 2016.

[Focus]

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

Jamie Mathieson wrote two of the best episodes of Doctor Who’s last season, Flatline and Mummy on the Orient Express. Now he has his own series coming to E4, the UK channel that was home to Misfits, and its all about multi-universe shenanigans.

http://io9.com/the-channel-th...

The show—originally called Alt—follows two best friends, Danny and Milo (played by Blake Harrison and George Webster), who find themselves drifting apart as their lives change, until they are forced to go on the run across multiple parallel universes as they’re chased by a reality-hopping assassin. Although Mathieson wrote the pilot and co-wrote the first episode, the rest of the four-episode series will be written by Harry and Jack Williams, who wrote the BBC and Starz’s The Missing.

There’s some pretty interesting talent behind the show, but I can’t help but be excited for more sci-fi from the mind of Jamie Mathieson. That remix of the Magic Roundabout theme in the trailer is so delightfully weird I hope it’s the show’s actual theme tune.

Tripped will air on E4 in the UK on December 8th. (Thanks to David Alexander McDonald for the correction!)

[Via Den of Geek]

With the release of this weekend’s final Hunger Games film, the story of Katniss Everdeen is over. What isn’t over, though, is a demand for more of this franchise, both from fans and movie executives.

Producer Nina Jacobson told io9 recently that while she would be open to doing another movie in this franchise, it would have to come from the mind of author Suzanne Collins. “For me, Hunger Games is Katniss and we’ve told her story,” she said. “[But] any time Suzanne Collins wants to tell more stories from the world, sign me up.”

Francis Lawrence however, has an idea. He directed the last three films in the franchise and thinks there’s really only one way you could go with another movie: Backward.

“The interesting part of the story for me is to go back 75 years earlier and see how everything became the way it is,” Lawrence told Entertainment Weekly. “I’m sure if Suzanne [Collins] were to get inspired and decide there’s another story that’s important for her to tell that exists within the world of Panem and whether about the Dark Days, another character, or another set of Games, whatever that could be, I’m sure it would be great. And I’d loved to be involved, absolutely.”

The Hunger Games books and movies tell the story of the 74th and 75th annual Hunger Games, an event created to keep the citizen of Panem under the grasp of the evil Capitol. A story set at the beginning of that, explaining how the Games were created, is definitely an intriguing idea. Will it happen? Time will tell.

[Entertainment Weekly]

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

“Well, is any of this written down? Can I find this?” Kathleen Kennedy, current president of Lucasfilm, asked George Lucas after he told her one of his earliest inspirations for Star Wars. “No,” Lucas said. “It’s all in my head.”

Most of Lucas’ inspirations for the iconic franchise are obvious and well-documented, like Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, and action and sci-fi serials like Flash Gordon. One of the biggest inspirations, however, is something Lucas doesn’t talk about too often. Something more personal. In fact, his long time producing partner didn’t even really know about it, as she described above in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.

The issue was a conflict Lucas had with his father, George Sr. The elder Lucas ran an office supply store in Northern California, and he hoped his son would take over. The young George Lucas preferred fantasy, adrenaline, and drag racing. “I said, ‘I will never go to work every day doing the same thing day in and day out,’” Lucas told USA Today in 2008.

The theme of rejecting a father’s wishes is embedded deep in Star Wars. Luke refuses to join his father’s side, Anakin rejects the Jedi way of his mentor. It’s a story that Lucas wanted to continue in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but Disney didn’t necessarily agree.

“The issue was, ultimately, they looked at the stories and they said, ‘We want to make something for the fans,’” Lucas said in a new CBS interview. “So, I said, all I want to do is tell a story of what happened – it started here and went there. It’s all about generations, and issues of fathers and sons and grandfathers. It’s a family soap opera.”

To be fair, we don’t know that The Force Awakens isn’t about the descendants of Skywalker. In fact, most rumor hunters believe it is. Lucas definitely sounds a little upset that he was so far out of the development.

Case in point? He isn’t even named on the official poster. However, director J.J. Abrams agrees that was an issue.

“I don’t know why it isn’t on the poster, but it’s a valid point. I’m sure that that will be a credit in the film,” the director told EW. “We are standing on the shoulders of Episodes I through VI.

Seems like, after nearly forty years, the tables have turned and Lucas, finally, finds himself in the father role.

[CBS, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today]

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.