That's cool. I disagree. It's made for a fun a little accessory with various toys. Plus, blast effects now.

 

Is Cityspeaking a McGuffin? I honestly don't even know what it is or what it's supposed to do.

 

No, a Macguffin is something that the characters want that drives the plot (I said the Matrix but the reason I hate it has nothing to do with its stasis as a Macguffin in the movie). As a character trait, City Speaking isn't a Macguffin but could be a Plot Device or Deus ex Machina depending on how easily it solves problems for the characters.

 

I mean it's a practice of Transformers with psychic abilities serving the public by communicating with the citybots/titans that they work and live in.

I think its pretty cool idea, maybe a bit dumb for making the Titans effectively mute but it does add to their grandeur, being so large with thoughts and processes so vast not just ANYBODY can walk up and chat.

It's a coin toss concept I suppose, depends on the writing.

 

No, all the mcguffins in TFPrime made sense, because they were either weapons or tools that were sent to Earth or attracted to it because it was really Unicron.

The Golden Disk is the most confusing mactuffin to me, because it just comes out of nowhere and it's never really explained and then just disappears without any explanation.

 

The Enigma of Combination.

 

I'd honestly be fine with the Enigma if it wasn't some ancient piece of technology and rather some new invention to unlock mass-shifting in combiners to let them become giant rather than just being the sum of their parts.

I've liked the idea of in Sci-Fi that "some ancient tech from the past is more advance that needs rediscovered" as the next guy, but I'd like it if some more substantial stuff like combining was a modern advancement rather than just "better guns" or "better space travel".

 

If the Enigma functioned more like a Cyber Key or a Powermaster and unlocked the combining functionality of a character I think it could work. It would be a nightmare toy-wise, but I think that would be a way to make it work in-universe.

 

FORCE CHIP - COMBINATION

 

The Enigma of Combination is my least favourite.

I'm surprised people are trying to find ways in which it could have worked and I just hard disagree. It works by not existing in the first place.

Like what, it takes a device makes a Transformers' body into a leg? A robot can be made to turn into a leg and connect into a torso with 80s toy engineering, you don't need a device to plug in to suddenly make someone turn into a leg.

Oh yeah, I forgot about the Magic Talisman. I like that they decided to be original by having something called the Magic Talisman be Unicron's off-switch instead of the Matrix.

 

Well... The Talisman was the thing that signifies that Cade was now one of the knights, its implied the robot that died at the beginning handed it down to him, I forgot if it was because he was dying or it was because he was already searching for someone to give it to. So when Cade 'activated' the thing it was a sign to the other knights that not all of them agreed on killing Optimus, thus saving him.

It does do stuff through out the movie, it kept Cade alive until he could reach the Ship under the sea.

Although I agree, throwing it away was a dumb move.

 

The matrix got new powers?
When exactly?

 

I was in part referring to the various changes and reimaginings of "the matrix" across various TF media and incarnations, but limiting just to the G1 cartoon, and just off the top of my head:

* can beef up a Hot Rod and blow up a Unicron,
* can be an repository for the knowledge/wisdom/personalities of all previous holders,
* can power up and mess up Decepticons who screw around with it
* can cure a universe-worth of hate plague
* once used up, can still work as a spare key for Vector Sigma.

 

Well thank you for elaborating even though I’m not exactly sure I would agree with your depiction of the events and since it all happened within the same body of fiction and fairly close to each other

But not everyone sees things the same ways so to each their own

 

I specifically hate the Enigma of combination and City Speaking as it just gimps everyone who isn't the "special".

But hey at least they haven't done the whole JJ Abrams mystery box shit yet..... yet. That stuff is just too tempting for some writers.

 

whatever that "aura of invincibility" was called Megatron brought back from his dimension hopping shenanigans in Cyberverse. Maybe I wasn't paying attention, but I don't get why Megs shared it with the Autobots when he wasn't intending on upgolding their truce anyway.

A good number of Japanese TF shows also have some out of left field hissatsu special moves and power-ups, like the handholding of doom from Headmasters or the Burning Convoy from the BW2 ova, not to mention all the typical shonen anime "power of friendship" tomfoolery.

 

TFP is gold

Nope. Bumblebee didn't shot a blaster with that. He didn't use the powers of the saber, and if the sword was stuck in the ground, he wouldn't be able to take it off there

Give examples. Bcs til where I remember all of them were used in TFP until the last episode

Different of Bayverse in which:
-The AllSpark was supposed to be what gives life to Transformers and what can save Cybertron. With that destroyed, their race is just in extinction. Doomed. Yet, they forget about it in dotm and aoe. I mean, why would they rebuild Cybertron? They can fix the cities and a few things, but there is no energon for them (energon, what movies are always forgetting that exist and TFs need that to live). It's like rebuilding our cities when our planet doesn't have a single liter of water anymore. And in aoe they say TFs were build, mainly with the beginning scene, while it was stated previously the allspark gave life to them
-The matrix of leadership: after rotf that thing was useless, they just used that to revive Sentinel and nothing more. In the last 2 movies that didn't even appear.
And until today I have no idea what that staff was supposed to do

 

I don't like that thing either. I prefer the idea that Combiners are made by Cybertronian technology, science, not with a magic object that can turn any cybertronian into a combiner in a second
Macguffins like the ones of dotm and aoe are good bcs they are something different. They are the own cybertronian technology instead of some old magical artifact.

 

Nearly every episode can be your example. It's hack writing. I'm not going to go in depth of these Macguffins because they are merely shallow as a pond, it's how they were used. TFP didn't care about developing it's own worldbuilding or characters. It's the fact that they relied on the latest gimmick of the week. It really rivals G1's gimmick episodes, except that was an 80's cartoon designed to sell toys, TFP was made to be a more cohesive narrative story. These Macguffins failed because they had no endgame, they were only made do a cool thing and move on. Compare that to a show like Armada which started out similarly with the Mini-cons, they started out as an gimmick of the week but then actually had an endgame backstory.

This shows people still unconditionally put TFP on a pedestal without acknowledging it's failures.

 

This shows that people really like a show that they like, no need to be so stuck up about it.

If people can say stuff like G1, Beast Machines, the movies or any others are the greats show/media we've ever gotten, I don't see how someone saying they think Prime is great is that big an issue.