While ostensibly about awards, as the name implies, for years now most people tune into The Game Awards for all the trailers and reveals rather than to find out what title won what... uhh, the title. In this year's show, one of the biggest surprises was a cinematic trailer announcing Transformers: Reactivate, revealing a game that had effectively gone unleaked.
Sort of. In the past few weeks, some leaked preliminary cutscenes leaked from a project called Transformers Rise - not to be confused with the upcoming movie, Rise of the Beasts. The embattled game project had switched developers and reportedly been cancelled at one point, with a lot of rumors swirling about its story, genre, setting and more.
Ever since the High Moon Studios era of Transformers games came to an end, the popular toy franchise that spawned hugely successful cartoons, movies and comics went rather underrepresented on our consoles and PCs, aside of a few blips like Transformers: Battlegrounds. Multiple game projects cropped up over the years only to be cancelled each time.
The prevailing assumption among the fanbase after the "Rise" cutscene leaks was that yet another project got quietly axed, and what assets they had began to float around the internet. That's why the reveal of Transformers: Reactivate came as such a shock during The Game Awards.
To be fair, one of the reasons. The cinematic trailer, showing a group of human resistance fighters trying to awaken - or, well, reactivate - a wounded and dormant Cybertronian, interspersed with scenes of a brutal alien invasion has thrown quite the curveball at Transformers fans.
If you're not hugely into the franchise, its lore or its characters, it may seem fairly run of the mill. Big glowing metal spaceships, cities being wrecked, robots with car bits having a bit of a shootout - it's all standard stuff, right? Not so. Even before we address the leaked Rise cutscenes being from Reactivate, there is some oddness going on.
First things first; Reactivate does not seem to take place in any existing Transformers continuity, rather taking place in its own timeline. That said, the IP is no stranger to time travel and hopping between dimensions. The Autobot being reactivated by the humans in the cinematic seems to be Bumblebee, and appearing in the trailer is also Ratchet and possibly Ironhide.
Those in the audience paying attention, or scouring the high resolution stills on the game's official website, will also notice Shockwave standing, apparently inactive, in the background of the human base. Looking fairly similar to his G1 design and not like the weird, semi-organic red glowing alien baddies causing a mess in the city implies we won't be shooting at Decepticons this time around.
Leaked information aligns with this - the cutscene from "Rise" shows off Starscream (Voiced by Steve Blum!), Shockwave and Soundwave seemingly teaming up with the human resistance forces, viewing a recording of Optimus Prime talking about a weakness the Autobots found in this new, unnamed enemy. Other leaked information calls the invading faction the "Legion", whatever that means.
In another cheeky easter egg, the damaged head of the Statue of Liberty on the game's key art has some writing on the side that reads "Are all dead?" in reference to what is possibly the most famous Transformers comic book cover art of all time.
Very little is know about Reactivate as far as official information goes. Developer Splash Damage, previously responsible for Gears Tactics and multiplayer work as co-developer on several AAA titles, describes Transformers: Reactivate as a 1-4 player online coop shooter. The developers have teased a closed beta taking place sometime in 2023, with no release date announced.
Leaked info - granted, for Rise, but it's increasingly apparent that Rise and Reactivate are one and the same - fail to give many more specifics but do narrow down the genre to an MMO-esque looter shooter. If we were a cynical bunch, we'd interpret that as the game being a Destiny clone reskinned to look like Crysis 2, with some Transformers thrown in.
The prospect of a self-contained Transformers continuity set on Earth during an alien invasion when the invading aliens are not the Cybertronians (or, at least, the usual ones) is definitely an unusual and interesting prospect. A story exploring an apocalyptic alien war where both Autobots and Decepticons are forced to team up with each other and humanity to fight off an entirely new alien faction isn't something the franchise has really explored in its decades-long history.
Our guess is as good as anyone's where all of this will go, and chances are it will still be a while before we learn more about Reactive, the Legion, and how all of this fits together. If nothing else, we're definitely looking forward to that closed beta.
