Longtime Transformers followers will recognize the setting for Activision's latest announcement as neither the world of Michael Bay's "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," nor the 1980s cartoon series. Instead, "Transformers: War for Cybertron" flashes back to the pre-Earth lives of the Autobots and Decepticons on their home planet.
The actual date of the events shown in the trailer isn't specified, but it is labeled as "prior to first contact with Earth." The game's story may or may not take place in continuity established in Dreamwave and IDW's Transformers comics, but the events shown look a lot like the 2002 series "Transformers: The War Within," which followed a young archivist robot named Optronix's rise to becoming the Autobot leader Optimus Prime.
The war mentioned in the title is the one fought between the Autobots and Decepticons, which taxes the giant robot-factory-planet's energy and resources. If the vehicle forms of the characters don't look familiar, it's because they haven't yet made it to Earth and assumed human truck and jet fighter shapes.
The Cybertron civil war era is a sensible place to set a new game, since it runs no risk of colliding with the two Bay films. It will also be interesting to see which elements of Transformers history it sticks with regarding the Allspark, the Quintessons and/or the state of Cybertron at the close of the war -- if it even makes it that far.
What do you think of the new trailer for "Transformers: War for Cybertron"? Was setting a game way back in TF history a good call? Share your reactions in the comment section below.