Transformers: War for Cybertron Preview

by Hilary Goldstein IGN

When you pop in the disc, you'll be given a choice: Autobot or Decepticon campaign. The Decepticon campaign takes place first, but you can play them in either order. And while the two are tied together, you won't be playing the same scenarios from different sides. These are two separate stories and whichever side you choose believes they are the good guys.

"The story that we put together, we wanted to be more mature," Tieger said. "We wanted to be grittier and darker and dangerous. That meant taking those characters and figuring out who they were." Tieger views Optimus Prime, the Autobot leader, as someone who "doesn't really want to be the guy in charge." But at this critical moment in Transformers history, he is "coming to the conclusion that he is the right guy and even if he doesn't want it, he is the savior of their race. I wanted to [explore those] reasons a little deeper in this story."

Tieger looks forward to how fans will react as the Transformers mythos is given a little added depth. "What's fun for me is exploring some relationships that really haven't been explored," he says. "Who is Starscream and why does he sign up with Megatron? And why does Megatron keep him around? We explore [those questions] in the first level of the Decepticon campaign."


Tieger and High Moon Studios have an interesting take on Megatron, who figures prominently in the Decepticon storyline. "I never really understood why Megatron was evil. He's just evil. Okay, but why is he evil? What I believe comes across in our game is that Megatron is the hero. That's what he believes. What he is doing and why he does what he does, he believes is the right thing to do. He just has such a force of will and determination that he believes that the end justifies the means. What he's doing and why he's doing it is a very clear objective for him. He's bringing Cybertron back to former glory. Cybertron has fallen from what he believes it should be and he is going to reset things. That's not evil in his mind."

At the start of each level, you're given a choice to play as one of three different Transformers. The selection changes with each level and those levels are crafted specifically to fit those Autobots or Decepticons' skill sets. In terms of the gameplay, War for Cybertron has been compared to Gears of War. In fact, the trailer clearly shows some moments where Transformers take cover.

Though the prospects of a great single-player Transformers campaign are tantalizing, Tieger doesn't want gamers to think the multiplayer component is being thrown together. "I love multiplayer," he says. "As a studio, we are huge multiplayer gamers. Multiplayer is a huge portion of what we're going to give gamers. It's been part of our development process since the first day we started developing this game. The level of commitment behind multiplayer is very large. The experience we give you is as big as Cybertron in my mind."

All the talk in the world really doesn't mean a thing. The proof is in the gameplay. "It's all about how it feels under your thumb," Tieger concedes. There is definitely a lot of promise in Transformers: War for Cybertron, but I have to see it to truly believe it. Hopefully Activision will soon show us that there really is more than meets the eye when it comes to licensed games.
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Gears of war with transformers?

Hmm.. yeah sounds like it could work. Thanks for posting this! I'll have to keep an eye out, I've been waiting to see if they'd ever bring out a decent transformers game, perhaps this will be it?