It disgusts me when we live in a world where communication is easier than it's ever been, and people just... don't. And then we wind up with disjointed jank like this as a result.
IIRC High Moon's games were just meant to be a sort of evergreen G1 prequel. Like... not overtly referencing any specific version of G1, just a sort of general broad slice "prequel."
It just so happens that Hasbro was planning Aligned while it was in development and they asked High Moon if they could integrate it into what they had planned, and HM said "yes."
But it shows how slapdash everything is. WfC has its own style, certainly, but it does feel like what it was planned to be, a sort of G1 prequel story/game.
And then Rescue Bots apparently wasn't supposed to be an Aligned thing, and got put in anyway. RiD '15 always was supposed to be part of it... but still aggressively did their own thing in terms of both art and story.
The only part of Aligned that felt like it was meant to be there the whole time was Prime, and even then the show runners and writers were famously frustrated by Hasbro's insistence they stick to the Binder, and would do their own thing when they wanted.
In a way it's all very true to G1, where you had a central premise but each piece of media was kind of separate. The kids books, the comic, the cartoon.
Only that was the mid 80s, when (consumer) internet and widespread cell phone usage weren't things. Aligned kicked off in 2010, well into the era of email, texting, and Skype. Like you said, how do you not get everyone on the same page when it's that easy to?
I guess actually starting a fresh continuity from the ground up and not cobbling it all together from various independent creative projects would have helped, but here we are.
It's kind of funny. Even RiD '01, which was meant to be a stopgap filler line mostly populated by repaints from other lines, had more cohesion. Hasbro's always been confident in reinventing things every few years, and most of these continuities have cohesion behind them.
The one time that didn't happen and it's the time Hasbro goes all "THIS IS THE NEW FOREVER STORY, GUYS!"
Like I donno, maybe make sure everything actually is internally consistent before declaring something the new forever lore?
I mean, I kinda like reading about it, but just the fact that they've spent the last 20 years trying to build this pantheon without any semblance of an idea of what they're doing... well, I guess they had an idea, once, but... sheesh.
IIRC Furman and some FP dudes were the ones who kind of slowly built the idea of the Thirteen in the background.
Hasbro deciding they liked the idea and were going to canonize their official version of it all wasn't bad. Not at all. And the idea of a pantheon of divine beings, or even a brotherhood of notable societal founders has roots in multiple religions and mythologies. There was always fertile ground there.
But ffs Aaron. I know you weren't a super nerd about this stuff, and in a lot of ways that was a boon to your era... but if you're doing something like this? You kinda have to be a super nerd?
Not knowing who Logos was does make sense since he only existed in a Takara-exclusive story that hadn't even been fully translated at the time, but how does the head of the Transformers brand team, in 2010, not know who the Last Autobot is?
I'm not even a Marvel G1 fan, and I knew back then at the age of 23. Just... jeeze. I know this comes off like Comic Book Guy levels of snark, but my point is you kinda have to go to that level of nerdom for what the Covenant/Aligned was supposed to do.
Just... know the lore you're trying to synthesize. Do your research. TFWiki existed back then. It was super easy to do deep dive on this stuff.
I remember when just being a Matrix bearer made you special.
Guess those times are long gone now.
I've always been fascinated by history. It's what I focused on academically. It's what I teach professionally. I've always been drawn to the idea of eras being defined by notable figures. Monarchs, Presidents, Prime Ministers. This can get a bit too navel gaze-y if you go down the "great man" route, but it's still incredibly useful to examine eras as they were defined by notable leaders who shaped society, culture, and politics.
All of this is to say that I loved the idea of the lineage of Primes, and the possible stories you could tell there. The Great War and Optimus and Rodimus' stories were obviously front and centre, but you could go "ok Sentinel, Nova, Guaridan... these were Primes. They must have been worthy and did stuff." And that's fascinating because you can then go back and fill in that backstory as you need it, and it creates this tapestry of Cybertronian history. Different eras of Primes, how they were alike, how they were different. Marvel and Sunbow, and even DW, each left a lot ground that could be explored.
And yeah, tied into that was the idea that being a Matrix bearer and Prime was special, and that Optimus was part of that lineage which made him special.
And I dig all of that.
One of the elements post-Aligned that stuck that I really hate was that this wasn't enough. Optimus was too special to merely be one in a long line of Primes, no. All of the other Primes had to be bad or even false, and no one short of robot god himself could bestow the Matrix on him.
It all just seems so limiting. This once potentially endless lineage of Cyberyronian history defined by worthy Primes who were each different, that added weight to the idea that Optimus had access to their collective wisdom, got tossed in favour of a limited "Optimus is the Chosen One and the Most Special Boy" story.
It's one reason I dig IDW2, even if most people never gave it the time of day. It really tosses a lot of that Aligned and IDW1 stuff and re-engaged with the idea that there is this long lineage of Primes that Optimus is a part of, and Optimus choosing to accept that burden is what makes him special. I think IDW2 is the first continuity since Marvel G1 where Optimus actually gets the Matrix from Sentinel. Which is kinda wild to think about.
It's a shame that, like TFO, IDW2 didn't really go anywhere. So the bits from it that I think actually work didn't get picked up by future adaptations.
Instead we're stuck with "Optimus is Robot Jesus."
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
