Thursday afternoon’s Transformers panel at the San Diego Comic-Con featured several reveals of new toys and plans for the franchise in the coming months — but it also featured Matt Tieger of High Moon Studios, the developers behind Transformers: War for Cybertron. And he got showered with robotic love.
The panel was mostly Hasbro designers, but Tieg held his own
While new toys received the biggest cheers from the fans in attendance, the applause for WfC was not much less enthusiastic. Hasbro’s Aaron Archer, seated next to Tieg, said as Hasbro does a bit of a reboot with the whole franchise, “we are reintroducing all the core elements, and this game is really our first foray into retelling that story from the ground up. They made really something special — a fully transformable planet, dynamic characters, the whole thing.”
Aaron Archer (left, in blue) and Matt Tieger (center, in tan)
Matt — who invited the crowd to simply call him “Tieg” — said “it was a more than a little nervewracking” to redesign these iconic characters, but Aaron Archer described High Moon as “reverent” in their approaches to the character redesigns. Meanwhile, Tieg said he grabbed the opportunity to go where his inner fan told him to go. “Let’s go back to 1984, let’s go back to G1 and start there. We did our best to bring that back.” Going back even further, to Cybertron itself, was not an idea they explored half-heartedly. “Everyone has had 25 years to imagine what that place could be,” said Tieg. “That first cartoon from G1 has about a minute of Cybertron, maybe? But it was such a special minute – everybody’s been built up for those 25 years, and we couldn’t fail.”
Aaron addresses the crowd while Tieg stares into your soul.
The High Moon team also had their own dreams, according to Tieg. “From the first minute, it was ‘they’re gonna make toys, right?’” he said. “We said, ‘Hey, don’t get crazy – make a good game, make a good game.’ But it obviously felt great to see the toy dream come true — and designs for Soundwave and Megatron were shown. Bumblebee and Optimus are already out, and Archer said there are currently no plans to make more toys based on the game, but that could change based on the kind of feedback Hasbro gets.
Soundwave and Megatron were confirmed with slides; no release dates yet.
Maybe emboldened by the crowd’s approval, Matt wrapped up his theories about making a game both for TF fans and gamers by saying, “I’ll stick my neck out and say we were extremely successful” in delivering to the fans, and he was thrilled to see that gamers also connected with it, particularly enjoying multiplayer. “We put a lot of chips on that…and the gaming community has been rabid.”
Most of the Q&A session was comprised of questions for Tieg with a healthy dose of praise. One attendee said War for Cybertron was “’what we G1 fans have wanted for a long time,” and another admitted he worked on the Xbox team and rarely felt the need to buy games — but he was happy to pay money for WfC!
Tieg tackled a few valid questions: Why wasn’t Peter Cullen used for Ironhide’s voice? Because the characters were reimagined, and while they didn’t want to mess with Optimus, they took creative liberties with other characters. Will Zeta Prime and Dead End appear as DLC, as one website suggested they might? “Hasbro, Activision, and High Moon Studios are completely behind this game,” said Tieg, “and if the game continues to go on the track it’s going, we will continue to support it.”
And when asked about a common criticism — that the game doesn’t have enough ammo since enemies don’t drop it — Tieg said that issue didn’t come up during focus testing (and honestly, I didn’t find it a problem either) — but “It is not outside the realm of something we could patch” by putting more ammo in crates, maybe 300 units instead of 100 units. He described that as “not a big change” that could be implemented. He didn’t say if it would happen, of course, but it sounds like they’re aware and listening.
The panel was only an hour so about a dozen people never had a chance to reach the Q&A microphone. If you’re one of them, take heart and tune in — Tieg will be on my podcast next week and he says he’s up for your questions.
(As usual, thanks to Kat for the photos.)
