Uh...Shuttershock wrote:At this point, I think we can really take or leave the Aligned model. Aside from Cliff's horns and Bee's disappearing voice, there's very little to connect the games to Prime.
Uh...Shuttershock wrote:At this point, I think we can really take or leave the Aligned model. Aside from Cliff's horns and Bee's disappearing voice, there's very little to connect the games to Prime.
Shadowman wrote:This is Sabrblade we're talking about. His ability to store trivial information about TV shows is downright superhuman.
Caelus wrote:My wife pointed out something interesting about the prehistoric Predacons. I said that everyone was complaining because transforming for them mostly consisted of them just standing up-right. She essentially said, 'So? That's what our ancestors did.'
Sabrblade wrote:Uh...Shuttershock wrote:At this point, I think we can really take or leave the Aligned model. Aside from Cliff's horns and Bee's disappearing voice, there's very little to connect the games to Prime.
Sabrblade wrote:Uh...Shuttershock wrote:At this point, I think we can really take or leave the Aligned model. Aside from Cliff's horns and Bee's disappearing voice, there's very little to connect the games to Prime.
Shadowman wrote:This is Sabrblade we're talking about. His ability to store trivial information about TV shows is downright superhuman.
Caelus wrote:My wife pointed out something interesting about the prehistoric Predacons. I said that everyone was complaining because transforming for them mostly consisted of them just standing up-right. She essentially said, 'So? That's what our ancestors did.'
Sabrblade wrote:It's Hasbro's fault for granting so much leeway and creative freedom to each individual branch instead of picking one design aesthetic and asking each branch to kindly stick to that.
But hey, just goes to show how little Hasbro cares about visual consistency compared to how much the fans do.
At least they all got Cybertron's Core and the Nemesis looking them same across the board:
It's obvious that they wanted them to all be the same story, but the variety of looks have put off many to the very idea.
And yet, Beast Machines and G1 have staggeringly different aesthetics yet so many will argue to the grave that those two are connected.
From a storytelling perspective, it was a bad idea for Hasbro to first give us WFC and then Prime immediately after. Doing that was the equivalent of watching Beast Machines immediately after the first three episodes of G1.
If they could just publish that Binder of Revelation of theirs (cuz that Covenant of Primus book was hardly an acceptable substitute), fans could consider that the true canon of Aligned and discard all other games, books, cartoons, comics, etc. (WFC/FOC and Prime included in that mass discarding).
Sabrblade wrote:And yet, Beast Machines and G1 have staggeringly different aesthetics yet so many will argue to the grave that those two are connected.
At leat that game has the benefit of keeping WFC/FOC and AOE as separate alternate universes rather than foolishly putting them together.Shuttershock wrote:See also "Rise of the Dark Spark", which amounts to a cheap knock off Cybertron game being forcibly lashed to the movie universe in spite of drastically different art styles and directions.
Shadowman wrote:This is Sabrblade we're talking about. His ability to store trivial information about TV shows is downright superhuman.
Caelus wrote:My wife pointed out something interesting about the prehistoric Predacons. I said that everyone was complaining because transforming for them mostly consisted of them just standing up-right. She essentially said, 'So? That's what our ancestors did.'
Seibertron wrote:Sabrblade wrote:And yet, Beast Machines and G1 have staggeringly different aesthetics yet so many will argue to the grave that those two are connected.
That's an interesting point ... one of which I'm sure there are many fans who equally despise the fact that Beast Machines is the swan song to G1. I could care less either way. At the time, it was really nice to see the Beast Wars era tie-in with G1. There had never been a precedent of multi-universes in the world of Transformers yet so it made sense at the time, hence the acceptance of many fans. But these days, with so many multi-universes of Transformers that if Hasbro says "this is all the same continuity", they had better dot their i's and cross their t's. Otherwise, it's just back to basics with fans connecting the dots.
Hasbro needs a story editor who oversees all of the different iterations of the Transformers and does their damnedest to make everything flow together that is supposed to.
Sabrblade wrote:At leat that game has the benefit of keeping WFC/FOC and AOE as separate alternate universes rather than foolishly putting them together.Shuttershock wrote:See also "Rise of the Dark Spark", which amounts to a cheap knock off Cybertron game being forcibly lashed to the movie universe in spite of drastically different art styles and directions.
That game even had G1 as another separate world from the G1-inspired WFC/FOC, so even regardless of whether or not WFC/FOC was a part of Aligned, Rise of the Dark Spark hammers in the fact that WFC/FOC is a different reality from G1.
I agree with this, but... sadly, Hasbro just doesn't care as much as we do. "Continuity" to Hasbro means what "Continuity Family" means to us.Seibertron wrote:Hasbro needs a story editor who oversees all of the different iterations of the Transformers and does their damnedest to make everything flow together that is supposed to.
Shadowman wrote:This is Sabrblade we're talking about. His ability to store trivial information about TV shows is downright superhuman.
Caelus wrote:My wife pointed out something interesting about the prehistoric Predacons. I said that everyone was complaining because transforming for them mostly consisted of them just standing up-right. She essentially said, 'So? That's what our ancestors did.'
Sabrblade wrote:I agree with this, but... sadly, Hasbro just doesn't care as much as we do. "Continuity" to Hasbro means what "Continuity Family" means to us.Seibertron wrote:Hasbro needs a story editor who oversees all of the different iterations of the Transformers and does their damnedest to make everything flow together that is supposed to.
However, let me ask you this. Would you have been more accepting to the idea of Prime and WFC being related if we started with WFC first, then got more media that continued onward from where WFC left off, with all of the fiction being released in chronological order, and then several years later, after a LARGE amount of the story had been told, we got finally Prime, at which point we would have seen the evolution of aesthetics from G1-based to Movie/Animated-based occur over time (as we did with G1 --> Beast Wars --> Beast Machines)... instead of how we got them with us jumping from WFC straight into Prime?
Sabrblade wrote:I agree with this, but... sadly, Hasbro just doesn't care as much as we do. "Continuity" to Hasbro means what "Continuity Family" means to us.Seibertron wrote:Hasbro needs a story editor who oversees all of the different iterations of the Transformers and does their damnedest to make everything flow together that is supposed to.
However, let me ask you this. Would you have been more accepting to the idea of Prime and WFC being related if we started with WFC first, then got more media that continued onward from where WFC left off, with all of the fiction being released in chronological order, and then several years later, after a LARGE amount of the story had been told (the launch from Cybertron, the space-faring plant-hopping journey, the long-awaited arrival on Earth, the establishing of the Autobot's Earth base, etc.), we then got finally Prime, at which point we would have seen the evolution of aesthetics from G1-based to Movie/Animated-based occur over time (as we did with G1 --> Beast Wars --> Beast Machines)... instead of how we got the two as we did with us jumping from WFC straight into Prime?
Seibertron wrote:Sabrblade wrote:I agree with this, but... sadly, Hasbro just doesn't care as much as we do. "Continuity" to Hasbro means what "Continuity Family" means to us.Seibertron wrote:Hasbro needs a story editor who oversees all of the different iterations of the Transformers and does their damnedest to make everything flow together that is supposed to.
However, let me ask you this. Would you have been more accepting to the idea of Prime and WFC being related if we started with WFC first, then got more media that continued onward from where WFC left off, with all of the fiction being released in chronological order, and then several years later, after a LARGE amount of the story had been told (the launch from Cybertron, the space-faring plant-hopping journey, the long-awaited arrival on Earth, the establishing of the Autobot's Earth base, etc.), we then got finally Prime, at which point we would have seen the evolution of aesthetics from G1-based to Movie/Animated-based occur over time (as we did with G1 --> Beast Wars --> Beast Machines)... instead of how we got the two as we did with us jumping from WFC straight into Prime?
That sounds less appealing to me. I'm just not into WFC/FOC being part of Transformers Prime. It was unnecessary. They should have used WFC/FOC to give G1 fans a modern retelling of G1 that should have tied in with IDW. That would have been wonderful, could have tied in with the current Generations toy line, kept similar aesthetics, and probably have been much more accepted. But to try to force WFC/FOC into Prime instead of a G1 Universe just has seemed silly since day one to me. Mind you, WFC/FOC was rolled out before the new Hasbro team came onboard so the idea of working with IDW to come up with ways to tie in Generations just wasn't around (even though I'd been saying it since day one of Classics toys and IDW comics).
Seibertron wrote:It's like Hasbro's right on the very edge of getting "it" and just won't reach over and grab it. So, it doesn't surprise me if they made the aligned continuity a mess. I'd hate to be the guy they hire to come in with a catch all story that goes back and fixes everything and ties up all the loose ends, that would be a hellish job.
The multiple mediums thing did make it difficult to follow, which goes to show how ambitious and confident Hasbro felt in the whole thing, believing fans would be willing to play all of the games, watch all the shows, read all the books, follow all the comics, etc. Evidently, though, their expectations were too high, and ironically almost none of the people behind this whole project are even at Hasbro anymore.Shuttershock wrote:If it means a proper evolution of characters over time and a seeing the stories of people we grow to love (and hate) go all the way to the end, then absolutely yes. But you'd almost have to stick to one medium to do that.
To me, the problem of aligned universes across multiple forms of media is that you might not get the whole story if you ONLY play games or ONLY watch the show or ONLY read the comics. And because of the different demographics and tones of each medium (not to mention development time), there will certainly be inconsistencies between the characters.
Shadowman wrote:This is Sabrblade we're talking about. His ability to store trivial information about TV shows is downright superhuman.
Caelus wrote:My wife pointed out something interesting about the prehistoric Predacons. I said that everyone was complaining because transforming for them mostly consisted of them just standing up-right. She essentially said, 'So? That's what our ancestors did.'
Sabrblade wrote:The multiple mediums thing did make it difficult to follow, which goes to show how ambitious and confident Hasbro felt in the whole thing, believing fans would be willing to play all of the games, watch all the shows, read all the books, follow all the comics, etc. Evidently, though, their expectations were too high, and ironically almost none of the people behind this whole project are even at Hasbro anymore.Shuttershock wrote:If it means a proper evolution of characters over time and a seeing the stories of people we grow to love (and hate) go all the way to the end, then absolutely yes. But you'd almost have to stick to one medium to do that.
To me, the problem of aligned universes across multiple forms of media is that you might not get the whole story if you ONLY play games or ONLY watch the show or ONLY read the comics. And because of the different demographics and tones of each medium (not to mention development time), there will certainly be inconsistencies between the characters.
But, from a business standpoint, it made sense for them to want to broaden their horizons rather than stifle themselves into just one or two mediums. It's just that not every fan was willing to goal along with their visions and goals for a multimedia world. And sadly, that unwillingness seems to fit within the same mindset as those fans who look down upon new and different ideas that steer the brand further away from its G1 roots, and that mindset can simply be summed up as this: "The Transformers fandom is resistent to 'change'."
Think about it. Every time Hasbro or Takara does something that pays homage to the past (like the G1-based Generations or Masterpieces, or the occasional Beast Wars or Unicron Trilogy nod), they get praised for it. But every time something new and strikingly different from G1 enters the scene (like Beast Wars at first, Beast Machines still, Animated, the movies, Prime, or the upcoming RID series), it receives far less praise and more ridicule than the aforementioned tributes to the past do.
Take Prime Wheeljack, for instance. When asked by the Prime creators which character they could use for a Wrecker/warrior type, Hasbro said Wheeljack. It was a new take on an older concept that was redone from the ground up, minus his visual look being a decent throwback to the original. Yet, just because he wasn't exactly like G1 Wheeljack in personality, he got bashed by a huge amount of the fandom that also wrongfully accused him of being a knockoff of G1 Drift (which is completely ludicrous since Drift was never a Wrecker nor had any real personality whatsoever at that point, unlike Wheeljack who was oozing with personality) and wrote off the character simply for his being different.
Bottom line, a large part of the fandom is stuck in the past while Hasbro wants to keep moving forward. That's partly why Hasbro keeps showing resistance to making a new G1 cartoon or a new G1-based movie, leaving only things like comics and video games being allowed to rehash G1. Hasbro very obviously is trying to get away from G1 in their most mainstream media, though being willing enough to throw in some nods and small homages here and there, but more willing to make things look and be new and distinct on their own, without having to constantly fall back on the decades-old media.
And I'm right there with ya on just about all those points (save for Prime Wheeljack, as I did like him and he did overcome those definite character flaws). It just pains me to see how much of this fandom is so grounded in G1 that all else less appealing (not completely unappealing, but still inferior to a degree). It honestly makes me wonder how different things would be if Classics, Universe (2008), and Generations (and by extension, a huge amount of third parties) never existed, as I honestly feel as though those lines have played a huge part in keeping the brand anchored in the past rather than being completely free to sail off on nonstop course into the future.Shuttershock wrote:You make a lot of good points. I grew up on Beast Wars, Machines and Armada, so I'm kind of adrift with styles and willing to let artistic choices be fluid. Nowadays I'm more of a story/character hound, so style is less important than substance. I don't like the movies because I don't feel the characters or their struggles have depth. Animated has great storylines once you get past the pallet and some of the rougher elements. I didn't like Prime Wheeljack because he's was a smug unbeatable loner, but those were his character flaws to overcome or not.
I'm not calling you out or saying you're wrong, just giving you the perspective of a fan not tied to G1 or resistant to the prospect of change.
Shadowman wrote:This is Sabrblade we're talking about. His ability to store trivial information about TV shows is downright superhuman.
Caelus wrote:My wife pointed out something interesting about the prehistoric Predacons. I said that everyone was complaining because transforming for them mostly consisted of them just standing up-right. She essentially said, 'So? That's what our ancestors did.'
Flashwave wrote:Ah, Continuity...
The thing to be kept in mind, I think, is that all of these stories were written independently and simultaneously by different people and companies. You'll never iron out inconsistancies, becase High Moon, IDW, and the Prime producers (who was that?) were not all talking to each other, and Hasbro was not leaning over their shoulders telling them what to write.
In general, that seems to be the preferred way, or that's the impression I am getting. Hasbro lays out the basics in the Production Bibles, and then like kids on Christmas, tells the writing staff to "Go Play", hoping maybe to spark ifferent imaginatiions and play patterns. Maybe their being too lassiaz-faire (my apologies to the French for butchering that) but it seems like I've read on here about other toylines/manufacturers controlling the story too much that the writing comes out robotic.
Sabrblade wrote:And I'm right there with ya on just about all those points (save for Prime Wheeljack, as I did like him and he did overcome those definite character flaws). It just pains me to see how much of this fandom is so grounded in G1 that all else less appealing (not completely unappealing, but still inferior to a degree). It honestly makes me wonder how different things would be if Classics, Universe (2008), and Generations (and by extension, a huge amount of third parties) never existed, as I honestly feel as though those lines have played a huge part in keeping the brand anchored in the past rather than being completely free to sail off on nonstop course into the future.Shuttershock wrote:You make a lot of good points. I grew up on Beast Wars, Machines and Armada, so I'm kind of adrift with styles and willing to let artistic choices be fluid. Nowadays I'm more of a story/character hound, so style is less important than substance. I don't like the movies because I don't feel the characters or their struggles have depth. Animated has great storylines once you get past the pallet and some of the rougher elements. I didn't like Prime Wheeljack because he's was a smug unbeatable loner, but those were his character flaws to overcome or not.
I'm not calling you out or saying you're wrong, just giving you the perspective of a fan not tied to G1 or resistant to the prospect of change.
I didn't participate, but I did learn a few things just reading through. I've been confused by the Aligned stuff since the get-go, perhaps that's why I never got into it much. I never finished either of the games, nor the Prime series. I also thought WFC would be better as a pre-G1 setting, rather than for Prime. I also have the comics mentioned earlier, and I agree that they were rather weak. Nonetheless, they are there, and the aforementioned wish for a person to edit everything together or come in and write some backstory or fill-in to connect all the dots officially, could use that comic story as a basis. But there needs to be a LOT of character development.Seibertron wrote:My $40 investment into an early batch of these Tiny Titans has turned into a good investment for our discussion. Thanks everyone for making it worth my while! Love to see all of us discussing our views on all of this.
Shadowman wrote:This is Sabrblade we're talking about. His ability to store trivial information about TV shows is downright superhuman.
Caelus wrote:My wife pointed out something interesting about the prehistoric Predacons. I said that everyone was complaining because transforming for them mostly consisted of them just standing up-right. She essentially said, 'So? That's what our ancestors did.'
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