Introduction

The Game
Transformers: War for Cybertron is a third person shooter released in 2010, to help kick off the new Aligned continuity that Hasbro has launched for the Transformers franchise. The game itself completely takes place on Cybertron, the homeworld of the Transformers, and features no whiny humans at all. The Autobots would not admit to being ecstatic about this development, but their constant merry drinking says more than enough there.

The biggest thing that sets War for Cybertron apart from Transformers games that came before it is that it's actually fun to play. The transformation mechanics are smooth, the action is high-impact, the shooting is fun, and the payoffs from blowing up other giant robots are extremely satisfying. The game is by no means perfect, with plenty of balance issues and a couple annoying bugs, but it's a very solid game that's easy to just play and have a very good time with. Myself and my buddy TheLastRoboKy definitely appreciate this focus on old-fashioned fun, so we're tearing through it and hauling other folks along for the ride. For their amusement or ours, that part hasn't been decided yet.

The players
The main Campaign is 3-person co-op, and to the amusement of everyone who's not us (well, us included, sometimes), the two mainstays live on opposite ends of the world.

Coolguy(e): Based in Kansas, USA.

TheLastRoboKy: Based in New South Wales, Australia.

Approximate geological distance: 15,000 miles.

The ever-rotating thirds
These are clueless rubes we've convinced to come along with us as we violate China's ban on time travel.

MooseOnTehLoose: Spent most of Episode 1 drunk.

Squid(Killermari): Exploits include forgetting how to transform and using her melee weapon on an explosive barrel.

Sparkly Noises: Played totally blind. I think he has all of 10 minutes experience with this game prior to playing with us.

Jet Jaguar (Jet Jaggar): Probably the most competent player so far. He sure made me look like an asshole at times.

Deiterbomber: Still not convinced he was paying attention half the time.

PoptartsNinja: Violated physics on multiple occasions.

RaspberryCommie: Crushed programming bugs with his melee weapon. Twice.

Senario: The original 'too old for this shit'.

GenericProphets (GeneralRobutts): Wins the 'best impersonation' award for his imitation of Ironhide.

The LP
The LP will be in video format with voice recorded 'in the heat of things'. The videos will largely be uncut. This means all of our deaths and failures will be displayed for all to see. I say 'largely' uncut because if we screw up too much we will probably re-record some sections. We are playing the PC version on Steam, mostly because that's where everyone we know has the game. This game got some half-interesting DLC from Activision after its release, but it was console only because Bobby Kotick. We're going to be going through the Campaign, and then we'll probably do a couple Escalation (co-op survival) matches on each of the 2 maps that we have access to. If there's a lot of response we might organize some Team Deathmatch games but I'll be honest the TDM in this game isn't the best. Spoiler etiquette should be standard, put it in tags if it's not covered in a video we've put up. There's not really any big twists or surprises in the game though, so spoiler activity should hopefully be kept to a minimum simply because there's not much to say.

I'm going to be trying for Wednesday and Sunday updates, but since RoboKy and I are so far away from eachother we can't promise the moon.

Game-specific information such as lore, character dossiers, etc will be below the videos. Feel free to ask any questions you have about the anatomy of the lore and I'll answer as best I can.



Note: Blip links are encoded at 2000 bitrate constant, which I found to be the best balance between performance and size after about a half-dozen test encodes. GamersTube links are encoded to be 500MB even, and thus the quality will fluctuate a bit from video to video.

Decepticon Campaign

: Blip, Polsy, Youtube

: blip, Polsy, Youtube

: Blip, Polsy, Youtube

: Blip, Polsy, Youtube

: Blip, Polsy, Youtube

Bonus material:
Run 1 on Escalation (Remnant), starring Coolguy, TheLastRoboky, Squid, and Deiter: Blip, Polsy, Youtube

Runs 2 and 3 on Escalation (Remnant), starring Coolguy, TheLastRoboKy, Torlon, and Senario: Blip, Polsy, Youtube

Run 4 on Escalation (Remnant), starring Coolguy, TheLastRoboKy, PoptartsNinja, and MooseOnTehLoose: Blip, Polsy Youtube <-- If you watch only one Escalation video, make it this one.

A few funny Seeker conversations we moved too fast to see in Chapter 2: Blip, Polsy

A failed take of the Omega Supreme fight. My mic is turned off here, but the fight still remains awesome and it's already up, so whatever: Blip, Polsy

Autobot Campaign

: Blip, Polsy, Youtube

: Blip, Polsy, Youtube

: Blip, Polsy, Youtube

: Blip, Polsy, Youtube

: blip, Polsy, Youtube


Bonus Material:
Broken Hope Escalation Run 1, starring Coolguy, TheLastRoboKy, TehWarsmith, and Jet Jaguar: Blip, Polsy, Youtube

Broken Hope Escalation Run 2, starring Coolguy, TheLastRoboKy, Veloxyll, and GenericProphets (GeneralRobutts): Blip, Polsy, Youtube

Broken Hope Escalation run 3, starring Coolguy, TheLastRoboKy, TehWarsmith, and Torlon: Blip, Polsy. Bonus: Torlon's POV Blip, Polsy, Youtube

PoptartsNinja rides the blast waves in the Kaon Death Race and lives to tell the tale: Youtube


Grand Finale: Hard Mode Boss Rush starring Coolguye, TheLastRoboKy, and PoptartsNinja: Blip (2), Polsy (2), Youtube (2)

This about does it for us this time, everybody. Thank you very much to everyone who's watched, everyone who's posted, everyone who's come along. You all have made this an amazing experience for me. I'm not sure when we'll see eachother again, but may the roads rise up to meet you and the winds always be with you and your loved ones until next time. Till then - we're signing off.

Lore

The 'new bit' of the continuity Hasbro has established in WfC is that it's actually supposed to be a continuity. With a canon. This is a real departure because in every other iteration of the Transformers, the writers are basically told to do whatever the hell they want since the series doesn't relate to anything else. Currently, the stuff in the so-dubbed Aligned continuity is the Prime cartoons, the novel Exodus, and War for Cybertron. As you might expect from a team of writers who have only lived by the Law of Awesome for the last 25 years or so, there's already a bunch of major inconsistencies between some products. Specifically, between Exodus and War for Cybertron. I bring up some relevant points in the videos, but you can get more detail here.

Pre-War era:
A long time ago, the 13 original Transformers were created by Primus, the god-entity of Cybertron. They crawled their way out of the Well of All Sparks (a Spark is roughly equivalent to a Transformer's soul) and started to subjugate Cybertron's surface as the dominate life form. As the Transformers spread and more Cybertronians were created from the Well of All Sparks, ideological rifts appeared between the 13 original Transformers, which fueled a big conflict. The particulars are extremely unclear, but after a lot of fighting, things settled down and Cybertron was organized into a caste system. As each Cybertronian crawled out of the Well, they were assigned a caste and a guild that would govern them for the rest of their lives.

Roughly a million years passed with this government in place, with privileged overclasses exploiting the numerous underclasses, many of which did not even have a name. Illegal gladiatorial deathmatches sprang up in the bigger cities, especially Kaon, a massive industrial city swarming with the downtrodden. The Cybertronian Senate turned a blind eye to them, seeing them as a steam valve to let out pent-up class tensions. Some also used them to make political prisoners disappear.

Out of these pit fights came a particularly charismatic and powerful miner who came to the conclusion that the caste system as a horrible idea, the Cybertronian Senate was out of touch, and the appointed leaders, the Primes, were corrupt douchebags. He had no name, but as his influence among his fellow gladiators grew, he committed a fairly serious crime by taking a name. And not just any name, but a name inspired by one of the Original 13 - Megatron, after Megatronius. He started very loudly preaching for the end of the caste system and a reform for a free society. _{(I'm Sparticus)}

Eventually, Megatron's rhetoric caught the attention of a librarian in the capitol city of Iacon named Orion Pax. Pax risked his own safety by discussing Megatron's ideologies over the local equivalent of e-mail. Eventually, the two agreed to meet in Kaon.

The meeting was very tense due to the increased number of bombings and terrorist activities that were being performed in Megatron's name by the 'Decepticons'. Megatron fiercely disavowed the violence, but the seething hostility Pax received from Megatron's allies in Kaon (including Barricade and Soundwave) made his denials seem somewhat hollow. Still, the two verbally tussled for a long time, and in the end Pax agreed to get Megatron an audience with the Senate to advance his ideals.

During the Senate meeting, the Senators initially started out extremely hostile to the idea, but slowly softened as time went on. Pax advanced the idea of autonomous robots controlling their own destiny, coining the term 'Autobot' to describe it. Megatron points out the severity of the violence their world is facing, and finally the High Councilmember Halogen concedes that the two of them have a point. He tasks them to retrieve the Matrix of Leadership, and re-dubs Orion Pax to be Optimus Prime for the task.

Megatron loses it and is immediately convinced that this has been Optimus's plan all along. He murders Halogen in the Council chambers and is about to turn on Optimus when he is barely convinced to leave the chambers in peace as a final gesture of civility.

Thus began the brutal civil war for Cybertron.

What's wrong with this picture?
There's a few inconsistencies with the above description (this is how the novel tells the story) and War for Cybertron. We haven't even started yet and already we're in a lore quagmire, oh boy.

• The entire reason Optimus is promoted to Prime (the leader of all Cybertron) in the Council chambers in the book is because of some behind-the-scenes agitation by Starscream, which involved the kidnapping and imprisonment of the previous Prime, Sentinel (also known as Zeta in WfC). Sentinel had been missing for months by the time Optimus and Megatron went before the Council. In the game, Sentinel/Zeta is active and well up until the events of the game. As the Council had an active leader, there would be very little reason for them to offer the Prime position to Optimus. However, the game implies that the Council still offered Optimus the position, but he turned it down. Megatron still flipped his shit, though, and will at one point reference the grudge that stems from it. That take on things raises the question of why the Council would replace Zeta, who was put there by the same caste system that they were supposed to uphold. That said, the game drops a few hints that Zeta isn't that great at this whole leadership thing.
  
• As implied above, Starscream joins the Decepticons before the civil war breaks out in the novel, after being disgusted by a display of cowardice by Sentinel Prime. In the game, Starscream has been neutral for quite some time after the war has started, and is only convinced to join the Decepticons when Megatron murders the shit out of his station's garrison.
  

Synopsis of Chapters thus far
If you ever ask yourself WHY?? when reading about the inconsistencies, the answer is all pretty much the same: To make the game more fun and engaging in the time they had to tell the story. The novel tells a great story, but there's too much to put into a 10 hour game. Some concessions were made to make the game better, which is really the right thing to do. It will be interesting to see how Hasbro explains away the plot clusterfuck, though.

: Megatron, frustrated at the stalemate he's gotten himself into with the Autobots, launches a determined assault on Trypticon Station, a holding zone for Dark Energon under the protection of Starscream. He rams a warship directly into the station and slaughters his way through Starscream's soldiers to the holding chamber, where he seizes control of the Dark Energon on the station. Starscream is both terrified and intrigued to see Megatron control the power, and offers to serve Megatron in the hopes of eventually usurping the power.
Inconsistencies: In the book, Starscream has been a Decepticon for a while by this point. Dark Energon is also not Megatron's first choice as superweapon, nor is he as initially excited about it in the book as he is in the game. He initially tried to assault the Well of All Sparks to capture the AllSpark, the MacGuffin needed to create new Transformers. The Autobots dealt with the problem by launching the AllSpark into deep space and preserving the grinding stalemate. Megatron then captured Dark Energon by sending Starscream on a far-off mission and seizing the station while he was away. In fact, the entire capture of the station is done off-screen and Starscream just returns to the station to find his men shredded and torn. He and Megatron have a very awkward conversation where Megatron accuses Starscream of lying by omission by not telling him about Dark Energon. Starscream somehow convinces Megatron that he was just following orders not to use it, when really he had been expressly keeping it as a trump card in case Megatron ever turned on him.

: Megatron now has possession of Dark Energon, but there is nowhere near enough to wage a decisive war against the Autobots. Starscream, convinced that Megatron is on the winning side, volunteers his knowledge of the production subsystems to fix that problem. Megatron orders him to carry it out, so Starscream and his cronies, Thundercracker and Skywarp, fly to Cybertron immediately. After fighting their way through a defensive detachment deployed by Zeta Prime and some of Cybertron's own defenses, they finally succeed in reactivating Dark Energon production. Megatron is pleased and turns his attention to the last bastion of Autobot power on the planet, the political capitol of Iacon.
Inconsistencies: This chapter is one of the few that has no major inconsistencies with the book. Some details are different; Thundercracker and Skywarp are not explicitly said to be with Starscream, but it's not hard to imagine them coming along.

: Megatron succeeds in fully weaponizing Dark Energon and launches a scheme to infect the core of Cybertron with the the power, starving the Autobots while allowing his Decepticons to flourish. To get through the heavily shielded gate, Megatron launches a ferocious assault on Iacon, intent on stealing the key to the gate from right under Zeta Prime's nose. Zeta, showing a rare bit of foresight, predicted Megatron's ruse and took the Omega Key under his protection. Megatron rampages through Iacon and forces his way into Zeta's stronghold in the Iacon vaults for a climactic battle. Even after the battle, though, Zeta has one more trick up his sleeve...
Inconsistencies: The entire plan surrounding the core is radically different in the novel. Instead of confronting the core directly, Megatron seeks control of the Plasma Energy Chamber, which will give a conduit to pump Dark Energon into the core remotely. To use it, he needs the Code Keys of Justice and Power. Soundwave locates the Code Key of Power in the High Council building, and Megatron orders Starscream to steal it, which the Seeker does handily. Starscream chooses this time to go to Sentinel (Zeta) Prime and tell him that he has a chance to redeem himself for his earlier cowardice by killing Megatron. Sentinel jumps at the chance and engages Megatron viciously, but Megatron beats him in single combat and rips the Code Key of Justice out of Sentinel's chest.

: Zeta Prime is a broken heap, but the half-competent Autobot leader still has one more trick in store for Megatron. The device he coveted activated the true Omega Key - an utterly massive Autobot guardian named Omega Supreme. Megatron immediately takes to hunting the titan, but soon finds himself the hunted. He, Soundwave, and Breakdown play a deadly game of cat and mouse with Omega Supreme, eventually luring him to an Autobot fortification for a climactic showdown in the heart of Iacon.
Inconsistencies: Like before, Megatron doesn't need the Core directly, only the Plasma Energy Chamber that gives him a conduit to it. Using the Code Keys of Justice and Power, Megatron opens the Plasma Energy Chamber and starts tinkering with it. Unbeknownst to him, the Chamber is actually a part of Omega Supreme, who detects the intrusion and transforms into spaceship mode to escape. In the book, Omega shows no interest whatsoever in attacking Megatron, beyond nearly crushing him to death during his transformation sequence. Omega tries to escape into space, but is pursued and eventually shot down by Starscream and his Seekers.

: Omega Supreme is grounded after a massive pounding by captured Iacon ion turrets. Megatron, never one to leave a job half done, jumps down after him. Together with Breakdown and Soundwave, they stand alone against the Autobot behemoth.
Inconsistencies: Omega Supreme did not fight against a small, elite squad of Decepticons, nor did he fight alone. In fact, there was a pitched battle at Omega Supreme's crash site, with Megatron leading a large force of Dark Energon-infused gladiators and Optimus rushing to the rescue with anyone he could muster. Omega put up a fantastic fight, murdering the shit out of no fewer than 4 Decepticon berserkers before Megatron blew out one of Omega's legs, jumped up to his chest, and ripped out the Plasma Energy Chamber he needed.

: As Megatron's savage beating of basically every Autobot hero sinks in, the Iacon resistance finally gets some leadership in the form of Optimus. Upon hearing of Zeta Prime's apparent demise, he drafts Ratchet and Bumblebee into a high-risk mission, racing through the occupied streets of Iacon in a bid to restore the Autobot logistics and give them a fighting chance.
Inconsistencies: Jesus. Okay, firstly, Iacon was never directly assaulted in the novel, so it didn't need to be reclaimed by a small group of misfits. Secondly, Bumblebee is almost completely mute in the Aligned continuity, having lost his vocoder to a different savage beating by Megatron himself in the fight for the AllSpark. Thirdly, Sentinel Zeta Prime has been a total bum by this point, getting captured by Starscream and later murdered by Megatron deep behind enemy lines in Kaon, so Optimus has long since accepted his position as Prime by this point. Lastly, Optimus, nor any of his close lieutenants, ever had a rough tussle with the boss of this level at any point in the book. This chapter is a continuity nightmare and I only regret that we'll probably never see the Chippendale's show that would be Hasbro trying to explain it away.

: Optimus refuses to back down from his plans to save Zeta Prime, and orchestrates a plan to get themselves captured by the Decepticons. Perhaps getting a little more than he bargained on, Optimus quickly finds himself deep in the belly of the prisons of Kaon - a brutal death camp with Soundwave as warden.
Inconsistencies: Fairly minor. In the book, there was no plan to be captured or anything like that, Optimus just got a few friends and stormed the place. Soundwave was not present at the time (and thus they never saw him), and Optimus's accomplices were Jazz and Prowl, not Bumblebee and Sideswipe.

:With Iacon secure and his stupidity throughly worked out after the half-cocked plan to rescue Zeta Prime, Optimus Prime finally turns to the minor problem of the corrupting cancer eating away at the core of his world. Gathering a few homies, Optimus Prime sets out to the Omega Gate that shields access to the core, intent on rescuing Omega Supreme and purging the corruption from Cybertron.
Inconsistencies: The book has the journey to the core being extremely uneventful. Omega didn't need to be rescued (Ratchet was already working on him back at base), and Megatron didn't bother stationing any units on the route since the Dark Energon was so intense he didn't think any Autobots would be hardcore enough to get through it. Also, instead of Ironhide and Warpath, Optimus's homies were Jetfire and Bumblebee.

: Finding that the core of Cybertron is beyond his help, Optimus Prime orders the evacuation of the planet. Megatron, reneging on his offered deal in the Kaon arena, uses a massive orbital cannon to rain fire from heaven on the escaping Autobot starships. Optimus, somehow NOT seeing this coming, frantically orders the Aerialbot leader, Silverbolt, to throw every remaining jet jock into a last-ditch assault on the station.
Inconsistencies: Optimus was already airborne when the cannon started firing, so he commandeered the Eight Track, rammed it into the station, and stormed aboard with a few homies, intent on murdering the shit out of everything that moved. Air Raid and Silverbolt were also completely absent in the novel. For all intents and purposes, Jetfire was the only flier the Autobots had around.

: Trypticon's orbital rampage has been stopped, but it's only been traded for a ground-side rampage by the Decepticon titan. Optimus rushes to the crash site to confront the massive destroyer directly.
Inconsistencies: Optimus left Cybertron on the Ark promptly after downing Trypticon Station, leaving Ultra Magnus and the Wreckers to hold off Trypticon, along with a few other very prominent Autobots (such as Ironhide). Also, unlike the game, the fight results in Trypticon backing off to transform into the Nemesis, allowing Megatron and a large detachment of Decepticons to follow the Ark into space. Megatron leaves Shockwave in charge of Cybertron while he's gone, sternly telling the scientist to finish the extermination of the Autobots by the time he returns.


Dossiers of Major Characters thus far


Megatron: The leader of the Decepticons and a former nameless pit fighter, hell-bent on restoring Cybertron to its Golden Age around the time of the Original 13. Exactly how he intends to do this gets more murky the more lore you read. He initially agrees with Optimus about autonomy being the way. Some other comics have him later saying the caste system is the right way. The game implies he's just an autocrat and doesn't care about the specific organization as long as everyone's following his orders.
Defensive Power: Hover: User jumps up slightly and hovers in the air. Attack power is drastically increased during use.
Offensive Power: Drain: User drains health from all nearby enemies.


Barricade: Barricade's former life was as the manager of the gladitorial pit where Megatron got his start. He handled day-to-day operations and didn't appear to have a job outside of his very illegal one overseeing banned death matches. Despite his dark job description, he was apparently really cool to the gladiators. Where many bosses would tell gladiators to throw fights and get bashed up, Barricade just let things roll and looked after the gladiators as much as he could. As a result, he gets a lot more latitude in being lippy with Megatron than many of the other Decepticons.
Defensive Power: Barrier: Creates a bulletproof Energon shield in front of the user. The shield is not solid and may be walked through freely.
Offensive Power: Shockwave: Creates a massive concussion around the user, pushing back and damaging enemies.


Brawl: Brawl is another former gladiator who narrowly lost a match to Megatron in the pit. It was apparently the first time he'd ever lost, and he became fast friends with Megatron afterward. An interesting distinction between Brawl in the game and Brawl in many other continuities is that he is traditionally a mindless haze of rage and hate. In the Aligned continuity, he loves fighting but has enough of a head to be a competent pilot and field marshal.
Defensive Power: Dash: User dashes. (Really, what were you expecting?)
Offensive Power: Whirlwind: User draws a melee weapon and swings it in a tornado motion, brutalizing anyone within striking distance. User walking speed doubles while in use.


Starscream: Starscream is right up there with Megatron and Optimus Prime as far as recognizable Transformers. He's sneaky, conniving, power-hungry, and has all the humility of a politician right before election day. He's always agreed to be the master of Trypticon Station, the aging hulk that Megatron took in Chapter 1, but in the book he is also captain of Sentinel Zeta Prime's bodyguard detail. There's also hints dropped that Starscream is very old and used to be a very heavy hitter back during the more frontier days of Cybertron, when he was basically the master of everything that flies.
Defensive Power: Hover: User jumps up slightly and hovers in the air. Attack power is drastically increased during use.
Offensive Power: Shockwave: Creates a massive concussion around the user, pushing back and damaging enemies.


Skywarp: You basically can't talk about Skywarp without mentioning Starscream. Skywarp owes his entire identity to the guy. Skywarp's primary job is as Starscream's strong man, the dumb brute to go do a job when Starscream is too disinterested or lazy. And dumb he is, Skywarp manages to insult himself twice in Chapter 2 alone. There's also a reason he looks so much like Starscream. In the Animated continuity, Skywarp is one of a small army of clones that Starscream made of himself, presumably because he was bored. Each clone is supposed to take a specific personality trait from Starscream, and in Skywarp's case it's 'cowardice'. This obviously doesn't jive with the violent brute Skywarp is in WfC. Transformers!
Defensive Power: Cloaking: User becomes imperceptible to enemies for a short time. Attacking ends the effect.
Offensive Power: Whirlwind: User draws a melee weapon and swings it in a tornado motion, brutalizing anyone within striking distance. User walking speed doubles while in use.


Thundercracker: Again, you essentially can't talk about Thundercracker without talking about Starscream. He primarily handles analysis and other sciencey stuff for Starscream, again because Starscream is usually too lazy or impatient to do it himself. Between Skywarp's simplicity and Starscream's impatience, Thundercracker usually goes ignored even when he has something really important to say. Thundercracker also notes that he and Skywarp look the same, which is a reference to the fact that Thundercracker is another Starscream clone from the Animated series, representing Starscream's ego. Which, again, doesn't jive with the relatively quiet, level-headed, nerdy sort that we see in WfC. Transformers!
Defensive Power: Dash: User dashes. (Really, what were you expecting?)
Offensive Power: Spawn Sentry: User creates a sentry gun just above their head. The sentry is armed with what amounts to a Neutron Assault Rifle and can see through Cloak.


Breakdown: Twitchy, skittish, and arrogant, Breakdown constantly seems assured of both his victory and his death. His history on Cybertron is a big mystery, even his joining with the Decepticons is never really explained. Still, he remains one of the few Decepticons with both the fighting cred and the lack of impulse control to yell at Megatron for his seemingly suicidal tactics...and get away with it.
Defensive Power: Dash: User dashes. (Really, what were you expecting?)
Offensive Power: Shockwave: Creates a massive concussion around the user, pushing back and damaging enemies.


Soundwave: Megatron's rock solid right-hand man, Soundwave is yet another ex-gladiator that met Megatron in the murderous pits of Kaon. Unlike many of the gladiators, though, Soundwave doesn't appear to have been there by choice. There is a subtle implication that he's a political prisoner that someone in Iacon was hoping to get rid of. Soundwave, not one to die easily, survived the pits and now serves as Megatron's spymaster, his calm exterior masking a cutting hatred for the order the Autobots stand for.
Defensive Power: Barrier: Creates a bulletproof Energon shield in front of the user. The shield is not solid and may be walked through freely.
Offensive Power: Spawn Sentry: User creates a sentry gun just above their head. The sentry is armed with what amounts to a Neutron Assault Rifle and can see through Cloak.


Optimus: A former Iacon librarian, Optimus was originally inspired by Megatron to go into politics, trying to reform the caste system into a more republican government. He coined the term 'Autobot' as a contraction of 'autonomous robot' and gave the faction its name. Firmly believing in the right of all sentients to choose their own destiny, he is initially reluctant to break with tradition and lead, but eventually accepts when there is suddenly no other choice.
Defensive Power: Dash: User dashes. (Really, what were you expecting?)
Offensive Power: The Power of FriendshipWarcry: Drastically increases offensive and defensive power for the user and any allies in a small radius.


Ratchet: A long-suffering medic, Ratchet is one of the few Cybertronians who seems to actually understand their anatomy. He's been a staunch Autobot from the beginning, and is credited with multiple high-risk repair jobs, such as repairing Bumblebee's vocoder and welding Ironhide's face shut after it was nearly melted in the fight to defend Omega Supreme. Ratchet is thoughtful, curious, and utterly committed to the art of healing, and sometimes gets offended when other Transformers make light of the repair process.
Defensive Power: Barrier: Creates a bulletproof Energon shield in front of the user. The shield is not solid and may be walked through freely.
Offensive Power: Spawn Sentry: User creates a sentry gun just above their head. The sentry is armed with what amounts to a Neutron Assault Rifle and can see through Cloak.


Bumblebee: FUCK BUMBLEBEE
Defensive Power: Dash: User dashes. (Really, what were you expecting?)
Offensive Power: Shockwave: Creates a massive concussion around the user, pushing back and damaging enemies.


Sideswipe: Sideswipe has a zest for battle so strong it sometimes seems like he'd be more at home alongside Breakdown and Brawl than Bumblebee and Optimus. He's pretty lippy and has some mildly amusing banter with Air Raid, and is credited in the book with helping Optimus destroy Bruticus Maximus, one of the Combaticons made by Shockwave.
Defensive Power: Dash: User dashes. (Really, what were you expecting?)
Offensive Power: Whirlwind: User draws a melee weapon and swings it in a tornado motion, brutalizing anyone within striking distance. User walking speed doubles while in use.


Warpath: Brash, loud, and boisterous, Warpath is another Autobot that seems to like fighting a little too much for his own good. Up until his recruitment for the core expedition, Warpath was an utterly generic and almost unknown Autobot, the only appearance in either the novel or the game being the short cameo we showed on the way to the Decagon. Somehow his flashy but effective movements got Optimus's attention, though.
Defensive Power: Barrier: Creates a bulletproof Energon shield in front of the user. The shield is not solid and may be walked through freely.
Offensive Power: Shockwave: Creates a massive concussion around the user, pushing back and damaging enemies.


Ironhide: Ironhide is one of the most senior Autobot soldiers on the battlefield, having fought almost since the first days of the war after the Decepticons invaded his home city of Praxus. He was initially very skeptical of Optimus and his leadership, but slowly came to trust him when Optimus showed a preference for getting stuck in to leading from the back.
Defensive Power: Dash: User dashes. (Really, what were you expecting?)
Offensive Power: Whirlwind: User draws a melee weapon and swings it in a tornado motion, brutalizing anyone within striking distance. User walking speed doubles while in use.


Silverbolt: Completely absent in the novel, Silverbolt's biggest gimmick is being an Aerialbot who is afraid of heights. Exactly how sharp this fear is never gets explored in this game, only getting a passing comment from Air Raid. Despite this contradiction, he is a solid commander with a good mix of audacity and focus.
Defensive Power: Barrier: Creates a bulletproof Energon shield in front of the user. The shield is not solid and may be walked through freely.
Offensive Power: Shockwave: Creates a massive concussion around the user, pushing back and damaging enemies.


Jetfire: I introduced him in the first chapter with "Oh hey, look: it's a racial stereotype." It still fits. Jetfire is a minor celebrity in the Transformers universe for his constantly shifting accent. Over the last 20 years, he has had a General American accent, a Russian accent, a Cockney accent, and, now, an Australian accent. In this continuity, Jetfire is a Decepticon defector and an old friend of Starscream, though they had a serious falling out over Starscream's decision to support Megatron. He remains one of the most hard-working scientists on Cybertron, though, and shows an incredible engineering prowess, getting drafted Aerialbots to build the Eight Track from salvage in a matter of days.
Defensive Power: Hover: User jumps up slightly and hovers in the air. Attack power is drastically increased during use.
Offensive Power: Spawn Sentry: User creates a sentry gun just above their head. The sentry is armed with what amounts to a Neutron Assault Rifle and can see through Cloak.


Air Raid: Again absent in the novel, Air Raid often resembles that guy on a basketball court who is scoring a ton of points but has no idea how to pass the ball. He's clearly skilled and devoted, but he's a hot dog and quickly loses his concept of the larger picture. He grudgingly admits that Silverbolt is good at the leadership job he wanted, but does so in the most immature way possible.
Defensive Power: Cloaking: User becomes imperceptible to enemies for a short time. Attacking ends the effect.
Offensive Power: Whirlwind: User draws a melee weapon and swings it in a tornado motion, brutalizing anyone within striking distance. User walking speed doubles while in use.