An Illustrated Tour of Transformers Fall of Cybertron Locales, Interview with Matt Tieger

It was a busy weekend at New York Comic Con where we brought you a teaser trailer that showed off Grimlock from the Transformers Fall of Cybertron, but do not let that stop Game Informer from releasing more content, who is doing a month-long peek into the game.

The magazine released an illustrated tour of the game's locales including Cybertron as a whole, Iacon, Space Bridge, as well as Soundwave's Lair, and oh, Nemesis and the Ark.

STORY
In the game's preview in the Game Informer magazine, it is revealed the game mainly takes place in a flashback. The opening scene is when the Autobots launch the Ark to leave the once-lively planet, and are given chase by Megatron in the Nemesis.

The Decepticons eventually catch up and board the Autobot ship and a big fight ensues, leading to a fateful event hinted at one of the magazine's covers.

In two separate videos, Game Informer sat down with High Moon Studios' Game Director Matt Tieger, where in the first video, he talks about the changes of the video game.

As they have said before, Transformers Fall of Cybertron is not a direct sequel to Transformers War for Cybertron, meaning that it is not necessary to know the backstory of the previous game.

First of all, the game is now streamlined with the Autobot and Decepticon campaigns progressing in one timeline, with an Autobot-centric timeline in the first third of the game, Decepticon in the second, and Autobot again in the last.

This allows for a superb gameplay executed on a superb story while Mr. Tieger says that War for Cybertron had a "really good story...that we executed okay on."

GAMEPLAY
This, Mr. Tieger says, will remove most of the repetitive gameplay that was considered one of the core issues of the first game.

The developers addressed a lot of the criticisms. There were a lot of things going on in the game, which they simplified and drilled down into the fun parts of the game.

"Variety is king," Mr. Tieger tells Game Informer.

Skills and abilities are now simpler. While they used to be two buttons, they are just now one button called "Tactical Modifier" and it is context-based. It was found that a lot of people found skills and abilities too confusing, so this solves the issue and streamlines gameplay.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The artificial intelligence of the game is much better now, which was another complaint. Unfortunately, improving AI sacrifices cooperative gameplay. "I love co-op," Mr. Tieger says.

"It was not an easy decision to make, by any stretch, but I think it was the right one."

The AI is so advanced, perhaps, that the enemies change based on if their role is patrol, attack, or defense, giving the player an indication of what their enemies are planning. These enemies are also unique to the character you are playing and are specifically designed for that board. This is unlike War for Cybertron, which just had reskinned enemies for each board.

GRIMLOCK
What is Grimlock doing in this game? There is a pretty good explanation from Mr. Tieger in last part of the video, but it all boils down to two words, really: "space" and "T-Rex."

"Who doesn't want to play as a space T-Rex?"

TIEG'S ENTRY INTO THE INDUSTRY
The second video covers how Mr. Tieger got into the video gaming industry at all. To sum it up, he originally was a marine biologist and was when he was close to completing his PhD, he decided it was not for him. Knowing he was always a geek, he decided to join the video gaming industry. It is lengthy, but interesting if you want to know where he comes from and his career progression.