For those of you who didn’t know (basically everyone in the world except for me) Monday marked the 28th anniversary of the first episode of the original G1 Transformers cartoon series. Naturally, I was thinking about the legacy the franchise as a whole has made for itself, and what lies ahead in the future. There was one idea in particular that I just couldn’t shake off, and I realized that this needed to happen: A Beast Wars video game.
Beast Wars was a spin-off of the G1 cartoon that lead to multiple series in both the U.S. and Japan. It took place in the same continuity as the 1980s series, but instead of robots transforming into vehicles, the show featured robots transforming into animals. It was a very strange concept, but it did extremely well for itself. This is the Transformers series that many people from my generation remember the most. I personally didn’t watch it much, but the toys that were based off of the show were amazing.
After seeing the success of both War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron (two highly praised Transformers video games), a Beast Wars video game would undoubtedly continue the trend of hardcore Transformers games…if it was done correctly. These are my ideas as to how this would be a success.
High Moon Studios would have to develop the Beast Wars game
High Moon Studios is the sole reason we have the opportunity to play two hardcore, triple-A Transformers video games. Not only did they work harmoniously with Hasbro to develop and market them, but you can just tell by playing the games that they were made for fans, by fans. The development team really put their heart and soul into them; from the gameplay to the narration of the stories, High Moon captured every essence of Transformers that we know and love. If a Beast Wars game was to exist, it would need a team that has a true love for the Transformers franchise, not a group of developers who are doing it for the money.
Make it a deep and immersive single-player experience
My favorite part of Fall of Cybertron is the online multiplayer. The class system makes every match unique, and the option to customize your very own Transformers character is any fan’s dream come true. However, this only works because there are four distinct vehicle types: cars, tanks, trucks, and jets. With Beast Wars, there aren’t specific animal models. There are gorillas, hawks, dinosaurs, wasps, rams, even wolfs with wings; it would be very difficult to mold multiple classes around such a diverse array of animals. To avoid this problem, a Beast Wars game would have to be purely single player with an immersive progression system. In many ways, Fall of Cybertron has already accomplished this. There are multiple upgrades that can be added to the characters and weapons, and they all stay through future play throughs. Let’s add to this, though. Let’s make the game open world, where you can receive missions from popular characters from the series. Maybe add an RPG-like progression system (similar to Borderlands 2), so while two different players will be in control of the same character, the play styles could be radically different.
Let players choose who they want to play as
Before the game even starts, players should be given the chance to choose from a list of Beast Wars characters who have a unique ability and skill set, similar to the way Borderlands works. If a Beast Wars game was going to be a single-player only experience, giving players the option to make their unique variation of a particular would be gold.
Gamenomics & Comicology 