I think it could possibly work because a game where cybertron’s corrupt senate is the main bad guy is kinda a fun idea
Certainly if they went the 2005-IDW era Orion Pax career of a cop. We could start with an act 1 of Orion as a cop, doing some sort of investigation of some kind, then we start to have him see through the cracks and it ultimately lead him into contact with Megatron as they try to take down the government, then leading to a final boss battle with Megatron. Bonus points if they adapted something similar to Autocracy as part of it.
*immediately imagines an 8-bit pixelated OP running around and squashing cybertronians in the Robot Kingdom like Mario*
It absolutely could. Pre-war doesn't mean pre-conflict, and if they picked lesser known characters and had smaller stakes I think it'd be awesome to explore an interactive Cybertron that's not a war-torn, militarized world. Problem is developing a pre-war Cybertron that doesn't feel trite or ill-concieved.