Why is Aligned such a mess?

Discussion in 'Transformers Earthspark and Cartoon Discussion' started by Megano, Jun 22, 2016.

  1. bellpeppers

    bellpeppers A Meat Popsicle

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    Because (mis)Aligned was an afterthought, and HASBROP thought that they could get away with linking a G1 Continuity Family video game to it without anyone noticing because they apparently think their audiences are dumb.
    Right down to telling people that the fictions really, really do sync up and all we have to do is squint to see it.
     
  2. SPLIT LIP

    SPLIT LIP Be strong enough to be gentle

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    I mean, that's not how it went at all, and we have proof. (that has been posted) Aligned was always meant to be a G1-ny styled continuity with the games as the starting point. The games weren't supposed to be G1-continuity family, they were supposed to start their own continuity. It's everything else that deliberately went away from that style and established continuity and fucked it all up, which forced FOC to desperately try and play catch up, but failed when Prime took the few possible links it could've made with that game and ignored them.

    Hasbro clearly didn't/doesn't take aligned seriously, or they would've never let that happen. They had exactly two outlets to really kick off aligned, WFC and Prime, and the two were totally incompatible. They should've micormanage dteh shit out of the cartoon to make it play nice with the game's story, which wouldn't have been difficult considering the game's story was uber simple and it's lore about as vague if no moreso than prime's own.

    But nope. I honestly believe the only person who ever took aligned seriously was the guy who named it.
     
  3. Probe

    Probe Well-Known Member

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    Aligned was basically just a brand wide style guide (with like one IDW comic actually trying to connect anything).

    Getting mad that it wasn't a strict continuity might just be taking these things too seriously.
     
  4. That Guy

    That Guy Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, my take away from the press and convention discussions was always about the Aligned Bible. I thought the idea was that it was a continuity family, where everything branches off of the brand bible, but is beholden to itself.
     
  5. PredaconElder

    PredaconElder Well-Known Member

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    Given that Hasbro spent several hundred thousand dollars on the story bible laying out all the details, I don't think it was ever suppose to be a set of loose guidelines or a simple style guide like you suggest. And Alvarez's statements @ TFCON lay out it was very much a shared universe attempt like Marvel/DC.
     
  6. LordGigaIce

    LordGigaIce A Chair!

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    Rik Alvarez was the point man. That's why.
     
  7. SPLIT LIP

    SPLIT LIP Be strong enough to be gentle

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    Do you have anything to substantiate this? Because they made a universe bible for the continuity.
     
  8. Matrixbeast

    Matrixbeast Here comes a thought

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    Why did they make Aligned anyway?
    If it was clear that Prime wasn't interested in following their set path, and Hasbro (Or whomever) wasn't going to reign them in and tell them to, why bother trying to keep the whole thing together and not just either cut Prime from it's continuity or just discontinue the Aligned universe?
     
  9. WhiteMocha

    WhiteMocha Well-Known Member

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    One amusing (to me, at least) footnote in regard to Aligned is that they went out of their way to say it was not part of the TF multiverse... it was its own standalone thing. And then Takara goes and creates the Grand Galvatron gift set, a set specifically centered around the idea of pulling together characters from across the multiverse... and one of those is Breakdown. :)  Sure, Takara's continuities are different, but I think it just shows that in the staff franchise, no matter how much you try to set one continuity apart, it still just ends up getting lumped in as yet another parallel universe. Which is how it should be, in my opinion... parallel universes are a workable system for the franchise, why not just stick with it?

    As for Aligned itself, it mostly holds together fine (or as well as any other TF continuity) if you think of it as just encompassing Prime and RiD (and Rescue Bots, too!). I wish they had just left the games out of the mix, and let those be their own separate continuity. That's how I prefer to think of the lines now.

    EDIT: I'm mostly thinking of this in regard to the shows and toy lines. I'm not familiar with any of the associated side media like the comics, novelization, or whatnot. I'm sure those add another layer of complication to everything.
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2016
  10. Nevermore

    Nevermore It's self-perpetuating a parahumanoidarianised!

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    Alvarez' statements also read very one-sided, butthurt and seriously that guy was just begging to be unemployable for the rest of his life with that panel.
     
  11. flamepanther

    flamepanther Interested, but not really

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    Because the sum of everything before Aligned is a fustercluck of internally-inconsistent continuities, conflicting mythologies, unanswered questions, and repeated resets. Dispensing with all that by creating a franchise bible and history outline sounded like a good idea at the time.
     
  12. bellpeppers

    bellpeppers A Meat Popsicle

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    No.
    They were (2) separate entities, developed separately.
    High Moon made it ABUNDANTLY clear that theirs was a G1 (Cont. Family) game. That's why the G1 likenesses.
    HASBRO re-purposed it at the last minute for their so-called Aligned Continuity- never mind the story inconsistencies.
    Don't forget the visual inconsistencies.

    And doesn't it take longer to develop a game than a TV show? If that's the case, it's PRIME that would have deviated from WfC. Yet they insisted PRIME was the anchor.

    No, the game came first, HASBRO developed PRIME after and decided to retcon the 2 and hope nobody noticed. And when people did they insisted that it all lines up.

    I am surprised you don't remember. It's all we talked about at the time.
    And no- I'm don't go by the whole "because they say so" routine, otherwise there would be no discussion about why it was such a fustercluck.
     
  13. BumblebeeFan71

    BumblebeeFan71 Loyal Starscream Follower

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    I pretty much like to use this term to describe the Aligned Continuity, "The Aligned Continuity is pretty much Hasbro trying to put together a puzzle but their smashing in pieces that don't even fit in the first place."

    Yeah I know that I always reference the Aligned Continuity but that's mainly my writer side talking that delves into headcanon territory but I still acknowledge it is a mess and do not use it as a guide as a timeline due to all the contradictions.
     
  14. Cha Chi

    Cha Chi Minimondomayhem

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    This has been talked about a few times on tfw. Here i am again.

    To me Aligned is not a mess. What do people expect that hasbro runs the same cartoon for 8 years and every game and comic fits perfectly into it? OK but this a childrens show, a child starts watching at 6 years old and by the time they 14 they have long since lost interest... There is only so long a show can hold ones attention before it has to be renewed. Why RID is not like Prime.

    Other thing is Hasbro has been engaging all these different creative studios and individuals for their projects which have renewed. The intrest to these creatives seriously weakens if you say it look like this and thats the story. Prime team didn't have an ending for what happens at the end of the epic journey that takes place in aligned, they had to write that part from bits and pieces which were already there from the previous. Creative freedon(good thing) allowed them to change parts, but really these were just minor details.

    Subtract Rescue bots and Rid(load a balls) and aligned is just fine.

    They made aligned because everyone knows G1 and they wanted to move away from it and refine the story, further the story and fit everything together. They wanted to have consistency between all the modern projects they were undertaking. I think that is clear to see. Bumblebee not talking which varies but is there in them...

    I love aligned, it is whole universe fully layed out for tfs. G1 until recently wasn't ever so full and complete.
     
  15. Starscream Gaga

    Starscream Gaga Protoformed This Way

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    I know a lot of people say that the Aligned should be considered as a continuity family like the various G1 media (Sunbow, Marvel, Japanese cartoon, IDW, etc.) but the logic kind of falls apart when you consider that the very first entry into the "Aligned continuity" was a game that the developers CLEARLY intended as a G1 prequel.

    Seriously, just listen to or read the developer interviews. They had no intention on it being related to anything bar G1. Not only that, but a grand total of three characters aren't directly G1 characters, and of those three only one is playable in story mode (and has a design based on a G1 character of the same name anyway), while the other two consist of a multiplayer-only character and a DLC character.

    It also had zero new characters, unless we generously include Zeta Prime (although the name and role as the Prime before Optimus was taken from references in IDW, it was his first ever actual appearance). Literally no new media has done that before.
     
  16. bellpeppers

    bellpeppers A Meat Popsicle

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    And to add to that, HASBRO insisted that it all fit together as one, which also takes away from the 'family' thing.
     
  17. Autobot Burnout

    Autobot Burnout ...and I'll whisper "No."

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    That was not the point of Aligned. From the outset, the whole concept of what Aligned was supposed to be was nailing down a solid foundation, a launching point, that all future series would 'branch out' from. They did not necessarily need to be more similar than dissimilar to the origin point (WFC/FOC) so long as they shared key setting details to tie back to said beginning part - thus Hasbro could reboot a series without the need to reinvent the whole mythos all over again.

    Thanks to the idiots behind Prime not wanting to play with everybody else, they ultimately destroyed it all by the main entry - Prime - completely disregarding the very thing it was supposed to be spearheading, leaving the only linear continuity timeline in shambles because it just wouldn't adhere to ANYTHING established outside of its dev team. Dark Energon, the entire plot point driving element of the games, is similar in name and color only, going from a corruptive manufactured substance to suddenly crystalized god blood that raises zombies and absolutely nothing else of interest. Soundwave inexplicably exists during the early period of the war as both the talkative G1-based FOC form and the mute toothpick-thin guy from Prime. Hell, even how Prime becomes a Prime does not line up - in WFC he rejected being made a Prime initially but reluctantly takes up the mantle as the Last Prime after Zeta's death, yet in the cartoon he makes a decent fillibuster speech and the council just hands him the title.

    It's only made worse in how Megatron in the video games doesn't bother with politics and immediately ignites the war with his Decepticon followers, whereas in the cartoon he somehow goes from a Sparticus type figure to becoming a politician and inexplicably just throws it all away by demanding to be made a Prime, something he never expressed interest in at any other point in the show before or after, and if you think about it all he would've needed to DO to get the position was make the same speech Orion did five minutes later, rendering the very title of Prime utterly worthless in the process because at no point during all that is it explained what being made a Prime is actually supposed to mean. Megatron in the games doesn't bother with that crap because it's just part of a broken system to begin with - the whole government in his mind needs to be torn down and replaced, but of course he succumbed to the allure of total power and generally would be just as bad if not worse than the very system he sought to destroy in the first place.

    And yet pretty much EVERYTHING after Prime has been 100% G1 based or more movie stuff, with the exception of RID which isn't even making it past two seasons last I checked and they shoved the Windblade design in it wholesale.

    No, they didn't even do that. They literally refuse to acknowledge that the Nemesis in their show is Trypticon regardless of the fact the series supposedly preceding it - FOC - there is a five minute cut scene of Megatron forcing a comatose Trypticon into that ship, a one-way ordeal, and the Nemesis in FOC was specifically ordered to look like the ship in the cartoon. What makes it worse is to this day nobody knows what the hell the alternative they are implying even was.

    Except RID is officially a continuation of Prime, so...no, you can't just ignore it :lol 

    Again, that isn't what Aligned was supposed to do. There is a plethora of origin stories for G1 itself already and each series prior to Prime had to go over the same background territory, so Aligned was meant to establish one concrete launching point all future series would share. These would branch off as to be sub-continuities in their own right, still carrying the established core fundamentals like Dark Energon being a manufactured substance and Op. Prime having the damn Matrix by the time he leaves Cybertron.

    The cartoon couldn't even manage to stick to bare essential guidelines.

    Funny, because guess who thinks Bumblebee is still mute



    Plus, BB talking only happens at the tail end of Prime, which is why he starts being able to talk at the beginning of RID. Bumblebee LOSES the ability to talk between WFC and FOC when Hasbro forced High Moon to try and make it more in line with the direction Prime veered off in to try and salvage the situation in vain.

    You do realize Aligned ends with RID, right? There literally isn't even another cartoon reboot for a whole new continuity planned once it ends.

    Didn't they try to retcon Zeta into being Sentinel Zeta Prime or something stupid like that? :lol 

    And to be perfectly fair, despite being a pure G1 homage wank fest both in WFC and FOC, as the origin point for a series the games were far from unsuitable for being the launching point for any non-G1 series given it ends with the Ark and Nemesis being sucked into the wormhole/spacebridge thing - except for the part where Starscream actually isn't on either ship but on Cybertron when this happens so there is the one problem of getting him back to scheming literally behind Megsy's back. Otherwise, any new characters could be explained by merely being on the ships and always off screen, and Optimus ended up changing bodies between games anyway so eveybody getting redesigned in a successor series was not going to be unprecidented.

    It was the Prime cartoon's intentional undermining of its own assigned origin that wrecked Aligned, not helped by that hillariously crap Covenant of Primus that just made up new characters for the members of the Thirteen not already established...yet still managed to fuck up by having The Fallen not turn against his brethren through Unicron's seduction of promised power (in a series where Unicron exists!) but some love triangle bullshit that makes 'Megatron + us" turn evil out of becoming some internet emo edgelord douche over the one girl's death. Oh, and then establishing Prime as literally Cybertronian Jesus of the Thirteen because the fact he always resurrects these days wasn't special enough, so they went and made him a reincarnated demigod so he was even more special and perfect.
     
  18. flamepanther

    flamepanther Interested, but not really

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    FWIW, Hasbro has never acknowledged continuity "families" to begin with. Those are sort of a fandom/TFWiki/FunPub concept. Hasbro always talks about continuities when things are supposed to actually line up, and mythologies when they're not. Aligned was meant to be a "broad strokes" continuity (e.g. Doctor Who) where things mostly line up, but the details can be fudged or glossed over. But obviously it's gone far beyond just fudging minor events by now.
     
  19. Autobot Burnout

    Autobot Burnout ...and I'll whisper "No."

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    I'mma just link a previous post of mine where I prove otherwise in terms of G1:
    http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/trans...d-you-least-enjoy-revised-7.html#post13566998

    And follow up with proof of all other recognized continuities.

    [​IMG]

    The ever-glorious Voyager Inferno tends to have the fact it is in fact an updated G2 version as he has a water cannon. The box, however, properly denotes this as well as the timeline being styled to suit - particuarly notable because other than the Legends G2 tank Megatron from the same period, this toy is the only time G2 ever shows up in Universe 2.0 and thus the only package to have the timeline denote its obscure period.

    [​IMG]

    Uni. 2.0 Cheetor, which denotes Beast Wars as its own thing, even though continuity wise it actually is still G1.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Somewhat overlooked, this is proof RID is recognized as its own period as Predacon Bruticus was one of the more oddball entries into RID, being a formerly canceled Beast Machines mold (though for the Universe 2.0 version I think this was actually a repainted Cybertron Scourge? Inferno was the only new Voyager mold of the line, I know that much).

    [​IMG]

    Universe 2.0 Hot Shot card back - not only denotes it is from Armada, but that the Unicron Trilogy is an official concept.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Uni. 2.0 Overload is actually a bit of an in-joke on multiple levels. At face value, he represents the only entry from the Cybertron series in the line with that timeline graphic (whereas Vector Prime and Heavy Load got earlier releases in new decos before the whole 25th stuff started getting added to the packaging).

    But it's his bio that really makes it special:
    [​IMG]

    For those who don't get it, the joke is this is actually the Cybertron version of ARMADA Overload, who spontaneously just came to existence late in that show's run at the same time Prime was resurrected just in time to combine in super mode and blast Nemesis Prime into oblivion. Except after that point he kind of just existed as a background character and rarely even spoke in combination sequences (which were more or less 'OVERLOAD, COMBINE!') and just sort of...existed. So this is retconning him offscreen during Cybertron as going around trying to understand why he exists in the first place :lol 

    There's also THIS scene from the end of the Cybertron cartoon.
    [​IMG]


    But these are still proof of recognized continuity families nonetheless, because there actually aren't that many of them truth be told:

    - G1, Beast Wars/Machines
    - RID
    - The Unicron Trilogy; Armada, Energon, Cybertron (it should be noted Cybertron was initially its own separate thing, evidenced early on by how Optimus is shocked about being able to combine when he's been doing it for three entire series by that point. The callback scene from Cybertron's final episode above? Not in the original Galaxy Force final episode, Hasbro added it.)
    -
    Movie
    - Animated
    - Aligned
     
  20. SPLIT LIP

    SPLIT LIP Be strong enough to be gentle

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