I feel like I can't find a straight answer online. Is the Wfc and FoC games a prequel to Transformers Prime or not? and if so why does bumblebee in the games look G1 and in the Prime cartoon look bayverse. Among a lot of other differences...
Technically yes... But also no. The idea was to have books, a tv show, and games that were all in one continuity. However, not a soul at Hasbro cared about this "shared timeline" and the idea was all but scrapped. The end result is a bunch of stories said to be in the "Aligned" continuity that constantly contradict one another.
Back around 2010, the Hasbro Transformers team's New Big Thing was a freshly-created story bible nicknamed the "Binder of Revelation", which drew upon lots of previous stories to create what they envisioned as the new, singular lore for the brand. Their intention was that all new Transformers stories (including both WFC/FOC and the Prime cartoon) would be based on the Binder - "aligned" with each other - hence the term Aligned continuity, which the fandom drew from Hasbro Q&A answers at the time. Basically, since the various stories were all based on the same lore in the Binder, they could theoretically fit together into a singular timeline. However, despite the requirement for everything to be based on the Binder, Hasbro did allow individual creative teams a fair amount of freedom in the name of good storytelling, both in terms of visual aesthetic and also story details. For example, WFC and FOC were allowed to have a G1-inspired look that stands in contrast to the more movie-inspired aesthetic of the Prime cartoon. The line Hasbro gave in Q&As was that they had a "squint test" - if stories matched up if you squint, that was good enough. So WFC/FOC and Prime perhaps aren't in the exact same universe - there's intentional differences between them - but they are part of a group of linked stories that kinda-sorta match up if you don't worry about the precise details.
Which of course made the whole production bible completely worthless. The thing literally sits in a drawer somewhere collecting dust as we speak.
Probably for the better in my opinion. Transformers is one of the few franchises that is regularly changed and therefore isn't as constrained to expectations like say star wars is. (excuse my grammar here and punctuation here, Im typing fast)
Ah a man of culture I see. Reference to Rick and Morty? And it's so refreshing to finally get a clear explanation why FOC and WFC had their entire rosters of characters but Prime cartoon made it seem like they all died??
yes I love rick and morty haha and yeah, but at same time its very discouraging to know it was handled so poorly
