Transformers: Fall of Cybertron Exclusive Art of the Apocalypse Preview - Dinobots, Combaticons, Scenes, Vehicles, More!

[Jason X]

Yeah, the explanation of the Dinobots having dinosaur forms works just fine for me, and it builds on Grimlock and Swoop having Cybertronian alt modes in the DS version of WFC.

If I had to pick one thing to NOT like about the way the Dinobots are being handled it would be not being able to control when Grimlock transforms, but even the idea of the rage meter is kinda cool.

Oh, and the "Slug" is just stupider than stupid.

[Breaker]

The whole space bridge to send a probe to prehistoric Earth thing works two fold. The main reason is to get Dinobots into the game, the other reason is to cement Shockwave's place as a major villain. From the descriptions I read were going to see some disturbing scenes in his fortress and even Tim Turi said he feels bad to what happens to Sludge. Also the whole space bridge thing sets up for what we already know about space bridges and adds some weight to the Transformers crash landing on Earth in the first place. Instead of it just being a random occurrence.

 

Long story short Im cool with it. If you think the Dinobots on Cybertron is dumb then think of it like this: we are getting a video game where you can play as a Dinobot. And it will be awesome. View the cube as half full.

[Blitz-Wing]

I've always been a 'view the glass as half capacity' kind of guy. Not trying to take away from the premise, and I'm sure many are excited about Dinobots being in the game. It simply doesn't work for me :shrug

[ohht]

I'm surprised they even bothered to explain the dinosaur alt modes; I figured it was just fanservice. Mind you I'm all for fanservice, but not when it's to the detriment of plot.

 

Still excited for the game, though.

[Blitz-Wing]

I'm surprised they even bothered to explain the dinosaur alt modes; I figured it was just fanservice. Mind you I'm all for fanservice, but not when it's to the detriment of plot.

 

Still excited for the game, though.

 

We have a winner

[Tramp]

I've always been a 'view the glass as half capacity' kind of guy. Not trying to take away from the premise, and I'm sure many are excited about Dinobots being in the game. It simply doesn't work for me :shrug

 

I'm surprised they even bothered to explain the dinosaur alt modes; I figured it was just fanservice. Mind you I'm all for fanservice, but not when it's to the detriment of plot.

 

Still excited for the game, though.

 

 

I'm surprised they even bothered to explain the dinosaur alt modes; I figured it was just fanservice. Mind you I'm all for fanservice, but not when it's to the detriment of plot.

 

Still excited for the game, though.

 

We have a winner

Luckily they did explain it though, and in such a way where it adds a lot of detail and richness to the plot instead of being detrimental. IF they had just "thrown" the Dinobots in there with dinosaur modes without any sort of explanation for "how" they have those modes, then yes, it would be confusing and detrimental. But, by giving a very logical and (IMO) well thought out reason for them to have those modes, it add a lot to the plot instead of being detrimental.

 

This article here goes into much further detail.

Here's an excerpt that details the story behind the Dinobots:

 

MT: One of the things - this is Kelvin's favourite story [Kelvin is the US PR guy sitting in with Matt] - is when we were originally starting the project Grimlock was important to me. He was important to me for the reasons I've delineated earlier. But we went to Hasbro, they were putting this giant binder together… this canon of what the Transformers brand was going forward and frankly the Dinobots didn't really fit for sort of the reason you mentioned.

 

There wasn't really a cosmology that made sense about their origin story and a couple of other reasons. But I pitched so passionately and so hard. I said, 'We gotta have 'em, they're super important for what we're doing. And I had a scratch story for why they were that form and we worked together to hash together something a little tighter and ultimately they said, 'You know what, they're back in'. And now they're really important again. So that for me was honestly the big victory when it comes to Transformers.

 

So the story is that Cybertron is dying, it's functionally a dead planet. It's a big computer system, technically it's a transformer itself, right. The Universe transformer called Primus. And the events that happened in War For Cybertron caused the planet to shut down, caused the computer system to stop working. To reboot itself. But the scale of reboot is millions of years of shutting down, which would then cause all the transformers on the planet to die because they need the energon that comes from the core of the planet.

 

OK, so that's the history lesson on the last game. So bring in a really cool character, Shockwave. And, um…. it sounds like you know a lot about Transformers, right?

 

GC: We know too much.

 

MT: OK great, perfect. So Shockwave in my opinion…

 

GC: Shockwave is one of our favourite characters, we openly wept when we saw what they'd done to him in the last movie.

 

MT: (laughs) He's pretty different in the game. He's a very pivotal story character. So here's the way I look at the Decepticons, I think of the four main characters in the Decepticons: Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, and Shockwave. By the way, which is incredibly confusing to non-Transformers fans because everybody starts with an 'S'. But think about it all in terms of loyalty. Starscream is loyal to Starscream, right? Soundwave is loyal to Megatron, and Shockwave is loyal to Cybertron.

 

So each of those characters and the things that they're doing is really based on loyalty in this game. Starscream, all things he does is all about Starscream. Soundwave all the things he does is all about Megatron. And Shockwave everything he's doing… he happens to be a Decepticon because that's the most logical choice at this point but really his loyalties lie towards Cybertron.

 

So he hatches this plan, he discovers this ancient, long forgotten technology - space bridges. The ability to open up wormholes in space, it's how the ancients used to travel and it's kind of a lost technology. Well, he's the mad scientist. He uncovers that technology and starts looking around the cosmos. Energon, I believe, is not just energy. It's not just crude oil, it's life force. It is a combination of raw energy and life.

 

So he's looking through the cosmos, he's trying to find more energon sources. Because what he wants to do is find enough energy to reboot Cybertron and get it back online. That's what he cares about. He spies Earth. The Earth that he spies, 65 million years ago is when dinosaurs are still stomping around. He doesn't find the Earth when humans are around, he finds primordial Earth, ancient Earth. And what he finds is this planet teeming with life and he can basically suck all that life energy out of the planet, killing the Earth and rebooting Cybertron. Which again comes back to what his loyalty is to Cybertron. He has no compunction about destroying a planet to save his own.

 

And in his investigations he sends probes through and he sees these lifeforms, these dinosaurs. He's also, as I've said, the mad scientist. So he captures a few Autobots and frankly he experiments. In this cosmology he's the progenitor of the Insecticons. There are some denizens of Cybertron in the below ground areas that he then converts into the known Insections. The next evolution of that is that some Autobots get captured - Grimlock and his team - and get converted into these dinosaur forms.

 

And the reason he does this is his philosophy is, 'I'm going to remove a lot of their brain processing power and put it all into raw combat power and therefore control them.' Obviously that never works, right? But what it does do for me personally is it gives a really great explanation for why Grimlock, who is the strongest of them, has the most work done to him and also has the problems vocalising his thoughts.

 

He's not stupid, he's not a dumb guy in anyway. I think of Grimlock as a person with a really bad stutter. It has nothing to do with how they think, it just has to do with getting the words out sometimes.

 

GC: As you implied earlier there is no single universe or canon in Transformers, it's a very fractured thing. My perspective coming from the UK is that the comics were the most important background for the characters, not the cartoon - which I think is the reverse of the situation in the US. But particularly in the early UK comics the Dinobots were this sort of elite commando squad. Grimlock never spoke funny, he wasn't stupid. But it seems like you've taken the later comic book approach where he's fully intelligent but he still has the vocal tick?

 

MT: You've actually nailed it. We really talked at length about it and the cartoon Grimlock was just… almost unloveable.

 

GC: Exactly, as kid I hated him. Why… how could a robot be like that?

 

MT: Yes, so now we have Shockwave trying to control him and him breaking out of that. His power, turning into the… he's a unique character in the game. One of the things in this game that's really special is the variety of what you can do. And we've really embraced the characters and made their abilities inherent in them. Grimlock is the only character in the game that you can't transform whenever you want.

 

The reason that is, is that he builds up rage. When he kills enemies - this is a very common game mechanic, right? - when you kill enough enemies you absorb some energon and then you go into rage and that allows you to trigger your transformation when you want to, when it's full.

 

But thematically what that does for me is that it ties it back into he's not entirely in control of himself. He's a bit of a Hulk character, you know? And so that also for me ties back into he's… where he has difficulty processing is a little bit in the emotional side, not in the cognitive reasoning side.

 

He's smart, he's tactical, he's intelligent. He just… his rage gets a hold of him sometimes. And on occasion he'll say things like, 'I can't process….' I'm paraphrasing here, something because of what Shockwave did to him. That is a much more adult, much more interesting, in my opinion…

 

GC: Yes, that seems a very neat way of handling it all. But will he still say things like, 'Me Grimlock!'?

 

MT: I think he might have one line from a campy point of view, but that's like a one-off. It's like in the last one Ironhide said the universal greeting from the animated movie. Frankly it's a little out of Ironhide's character, but it's like, 'OK, we'll just put that one in there'. It's not 45 minutes of Grimlock saying, 'Me Grimlock, smash'. That's not our game.