Aligned continuity family

Optimus Prime's depiction in Hasbro's brand bible at the center of the aligned continuity family.

The Aligned continuity family was launched in 2010 with the intention of being the foundation of most Transformers projects for the decade to come. Its core is the "Binder of Revelation", a 354-page brand bible co-written by Aaron Archer, Rik Alvarez and other Transformer experts from Hasbro and the fandom, charting billions of years worth of history for the Transformers. The family currently comprises the War for Cybertron, Fall of Cybertron, Prime, Rescue Bots, and 2015 Robots in Disguise franchises, and it has some influence on Hall of Fame character portrayal.

Hasbro has not given this family an official title. We have derived the name "Aligned" from Hasbro statements referring to this as a new "aligned continuity". Hasbro considered the whole continuity "a bit of an animal to define."

Creative vision

The Aligned venture appears to be Hasbro's attempt at synthesizing a grand unified continuity out of all of the previous lore. An expression of this can be seen in the Hall of Fame profiles, one of which was officially confirmed as being "based off of" Aligned continuity. That one and several others present each character as an amalgam of traits from disparate continuities, ranging from Generation 1 to the Unicron Trilogy to the live-action film series and more (see below).

This is a significant departure from Hasbro's previous forays into meta-continuity, which preserved the integrity of old timelines as separate, coexistent universes within a single multiverse. In that schema, the Aligned family would be simply one more universal stream added to the mix, beholden to preestablished concepts like multiversal singularities. But when asked about how a certain singularity would relate to the new fiction, Hasbro replied, "Anything you know from past generations of the brand may or may not be factual in the new continuity." At BotCon 2011, the multiverse was referred to as a "separate universe."

Where, exactly, this left the Aligned fiction in relation to the rest of the multiverse was unclear. Other contemporary fiction continued to tell stories set in older universes, so it seemed at least that Aligned material was never meant to supersede the continuities from which it drew upon. The Aligned universe had also been involved in crossovers with older universes, meaning that it was not entirely separate from the rest of Transformers fiction.

In 2015, The Complete AllSpark Almanac and the Facebook blogs Andromeda - Axiom Nexus News Reporter and Ask Vector Prime gave the Aligned continuity family the in-story designation of "Uniend" and an in-fiction explanation as to why this particular universal cluster had been separate from the rest of the multiverse. This explanation essentially retconned out most of the earlier statements made about the Aligned continuity; for all intents and purposes Aligned fiction is now just a "normal" universal cluster.

Continuities

Hasbro consistently refers to all Aligned fiction as one "continuity," and while different storylines may appear to contradict each other, "reasons for the confusion will be revealed." However, that ideal is hampered by the fact that various elements of the fiction have separate creative teams with distinct visions that sometimes conflict. For that reason, this wiki takes the more cautious route of calling it a "continuity family." The brand bible's description in Transformers Vault states it paints the Transformers history in broad strokes, so as to give creators the necessary flexibility when crafting their stories, a belief echoed by statements made at BotCon 2011: Archer spoke of a "squint test" where everything can be seen as one family of stories, where only fans would see differences. Branches of fiction include:

Hall of Fame profiles

In May 2010, before any Aligned franchises had launched, Hasbro announced a "Transformers Hall of Fame" honoring characters and people associated with the Transformers brand. The spot for one inductee was put to a fan-vote: Five character profiles were published on Hasbro.com, and users could cast a vote for one of them. Most of them were described with a combination of traits from various continuities; for example, Jazz is pictured in his Generation 1 form but described as a "Cyber-Ninja" like his Animated incarnation. Soundwave, also looking like his Generation 1 self, is said to have a mysterious origin like his Cybertron counterpart, his partners are called "Mini-Cons" instead of "Mini-Cassettes," and he has his live-action movie incarnation's vulnerability to simultaneous sonic booms. Later, a Hasbro Q&A answer stated that Jazz's entry is based on Aligned continuity. The character does appear in War for Cybertron fiction, but with no particularly Cyber-Ninja-like attributes.

War for Cybertron, Rise of the Dark Spark, and Fall of Cybertron video games

Created by High Moon Studios under Game Director Matt Tieger with tie-in games by Next Level Games and Vicarious Visions, War for Cybertron's aesthetics and characterizations are heavily based on Generation 1; for example, Bumblebee and Soundwave speak words, despite both being quasi-mute in the Prime cartoon. Set in the ancient days of the Cybertronian war, the games' plot focuses on Megatron's quest to harness Dark Energon, which ends up corrupting the planet itself and leaving it uninhabitable for millions of years. Those events overlap a large portion of the simultaneously-released Transformers: Exodus novel, but they differ in many details. Two years later, War for Cybertron was followed by its sequel, Fall of Cybertron. Two years later still saw the release of the Rise of the Dark Spark games, which cross over with the Age of Extinction cast.

Comic Books

• Transformers: War for Cybertron (2010) — A partial adaptation of the novel Transformers: Exodus.
• Transformers: Prime (2010) — A graphic novel prequel to the television series, later released as four issues.
• Transformers: Prime (2011) — A Prime cartoon adaptation series with screenshots from the series.
• Transformers: Fall of Cybertron (2012) — A digital-first prequel/tie-in to the video game, focusing on the Dinobots.
• Transformers Prime: Rage of the Dinobots (2012–2013) — A four-part mini-series which continues the Dinobots' story and leads into the television series' third season.
• Transformers Prime: Beast Hunters (2013) — An eight-part maxi-series depicting the Dinobots' efforts to survive on a desolate Cybertron.
• Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015–2016) — A six-issue series tying in the second Robots in Disguise TV series.

Novels

Written by Alex Irvine, Transformers: Exodus describes the beginning of the war and then, as mentioned above, covers the same ground as the War for Cybertron games with many differing details. (Hasbro did take a small stab at reconciliation by declaring Optimus Prime's predecessor in the games, "Zeta Prime," and the one in the novel, "Sentinel Prime," to be the same individual, "Sentinel Zeta Prime.") Irvine also wrote the War for Cybertron comic and the apocryphal short story Bumblebee at Tyger Pax, both set in the novel's pre-game period. The comic contains no major discrepancies, other than maintaining the "Sentinel Prime" name, but the short story features Bumblebee losing his ability to speak words before the game events. Transformers: Exiles continues the saga immediately post-Cybertron, as Exodus ends shortly after the events of Fall of Cybertron, while Transformers: Retribution continues to explore the gap between the Cybertron games and Prime series. Meanwhile, the Transformers: The Covenant of Primus book presents much of the ancient history of Cybertron in the Aligned continuity, including the history of the Aligned Thirteen.

Generations toy bios

A handful of toys were created directly from War for Cybertron designs and sold as part of the Generations toyline. While lacking the phrase "War for Cybertron" on their packaging, the release of the first wave was timed within days of the games and novel, and their on-package bios are basically in sync with that fiction as well. Megatron's, for example, focuses on his penchant for upgrading his body with "bleeding-edge" technology, which may be an allusion to his lustful utilization of Dark Energon. Bumblebee's says he was once a "chatterbox" but is now a "silent warrior", which appears to be a bridge between his War for Cybertron and then-upcoming Prime portrayals; however, it's not strictly accurate because in Prime he can still vocalize, just not in words. Later Generations toys made from Fall of Cybertron designs WOULD feature the phrase "Fall of Cybertron."

Prime cartoon

Overseen by the team of Jeff Kline, Duane Capizzi, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman, this show is set on modern-day Earth with a unique aesthetic somewhere between the live-action film series and Animated. Released five months after War for Cybertron, it also features Dark Energon as a primary plot element, but it seems to be a more mysterious substance with the added quality of being able to reanimate corpses. Also, strangely, Megatron is able to create an army of such creatures by crashing Dark Energon into the dead world of Cybertron, despite the reason for the planet's demise in War for Cybertron being its complete infection with the stuff. It was stated at BotCon 2011 that Dark Energon's nature differed because of the modern era of the show, as opposed to the ancient setting of the novel and games. The producers also iterated that while they strive to maintain continuity, ultimately leeway was allowed if it served the story.

A prequel comic written by Mike Johnson shows events on Cybertron immediately before the cartoon, incorporating the Exodus notion of space bridges being a lost art and Megatron's backstory as a Kaonian miner. Titan Comics also published a magazine tied in to the cartoon.

Online and Universe online games

Developed by NetDragon and Jagex for their respective Eastern and Western markets, the Transformers Online and Transformers Universe online games were to tie into Prime aesthetically and broaden the universe. However, both games were discontinued shortly after their initial release, leaving them largely unconnected to the rest of the Aligned continuity family outside of a few passing references.

Prime game

Transformers: Prime - The Game was published by Activision for Nintendo gaming systems. It was released on October 30, 2012.

Rescue Bots cartoon

Developed by Nicole Dubuc, Brian Hohlfeld and Jeff Kline, this series is aimed at a much younger audience than the Prime cartoon, though according to Jeff Kline, the two shows inhabit the same continuity. It follows a team of Rescue Bots who land on Earth and are assigned by Optimus Prime to work with a human family of rescue workers on an island off the coast of Maine. This setting was chosen so that the much darker themes of Prime could play out without affecting the events of Rescue Bots. Optimus Prime and Bumblebee occasionally make guest appearances, apparently taking time out from the events of Prime to do so. There is a timeskip between seasons 3 and 4, done in part to avoid having to deal with certain events in the Prime cartoon that would have been difficult to ignore otherwise.

2015 Robots in Disguise cartoon

Robots in Disguise is a direct sequel to the Prime cartoon. It follows Bumblebee leading a new team of Autobots back to Earth to re-capture Decepticon criminals.

Rescue Bots Academy cartoon

Serving as a direct sequel to Transformers: Rescue Bots, Transformers: Rescue Bots Academy will follow the first class of the new Rescue Bot Training Academy, learning from the more experienced Rescue Bots how to respond to emergency situations and become heroes. It is set to debut in the fall of 2018.

Clashing visions

At a 2015 convention in Charlotte, Rik Alvarez claimed that the Aligned plan had been compromised from the start: while High Moon Studios were on board, the Prime creators didn't want to be tied to previous material (and have themselves said they wanted to get away from the "Binder of Revelation" and do their own thing and the studio, not fully controlled by Hasbro, was unfamiliar with most of the lore); IDW Publishing couldn't shift to a mostly-Aligned schedule for logistical reasons. The original idea for the MMOG fell apart due to constant team changes; Universe made it into beta testing three years late and never got off the ground; the Universe team later declared that their game was not part of the Aligned continuity at all. He made a further claim that Prime was going overbudget and that Rescue Bots was plonked into Aligned continuity by the studio against the "Binder of Revelation".

Prime's staff had plotted out three years of material and done them all before the end of season 2 ("Which is pretty typical") so they had to reconfigure. The Beast Hunters revamp was given to them late in the day and they weren't too happy about it. A perfect storm of this bad blood, major changes to what the third season was originally planned to do, Aaron Archer moving up and being replaced by a new guy with new ideas, miscommunication and bad blood between toy designers and Prime team, and ballooning Prime budget led to an early demise for the show. Alvarez claims it also killed the "Binder" and future show plans. Andrew Hall weighed in to confirm this lined up with what he'd heard from other people and that much of this is part of the big ball o' fun that comes from working for large corporations.

Following the end of the Prime show, future writers have abandoned the Binder of Revelation altogether, forging a radically different direction for the continuity timeline than originally intended. Robots in Disguise, the first show produced since the demise of Prime, chose to disregard auxiliary works of fiction such as the War for Cybertron games in favour of a new narrative based entirely on continuing forward from the Prime cartoon. Most prominently, this led to the introduction of a Grimlock whose appearance and personality varied wildly from the Grimlock introduced in the video games, an irreconcilable dichotomy that carried over to other characters who reused names such as Sideswipe and Kickback (See Grimlock's page for more on this). While this change led to greater narrative freedom moving into the future, it also created no small amount of controversy among fans, who were initially confused at how these radically different characterizations were supposed to fit into what had been a tightly plotted universe.

Notes

• Instead of giving this continuity family an official name, Hasbro has instead referred to it with brief descriptors such as "new aligned," "aligned," "modern," and "War for Cybertron/Exodus." VP of Intellectual Property Development Aaron Archer said at a BotCon 2010 panel that he had considered naming it "Epochs" but then decided not to.
• The subtitle-less Transformers toyline launched in 2010 and its companion line, Generations, share some of the Aligned spirit, since they likewise contain characters and concepts from previous franchises with little separation. But the only real connection between those toylines and Aligned material is the small number of previously-mentioned War for Cybertron-inspired toys. Hasbro has referred to the Power Core Combiners subline as "exist[ing] in the modern world continuity," but the context of that statement doesn't suggest a specific reference to Aligned.
• The Hubworld Transformers: Prime TV special featured footage of BotCon attendees taking a Transformers quiz, with the questions being what Optimus Prime's original name was, what his job had been, and which soap opera was the Autobots' favorite. The soap opera (As the Kitchen Sinks) is from the original The Transformers cartoon, but the "correct" answers to the first two questions were said to be "Orion Pax" and "data clerk." Aligned continuity is the only source where both of those ideas are true. This seems to reflect Hasbro's current policy of treating Aligned material as the default Transformers "truth." Something similar occurred during the Dreamwave era, where DK's Transformers: The Ultimate Guide treated that continuity as the default "truth," so this is not a completely new phenomenon.
• By surface appearances, the Aligned continuity appears to have influenced the IDW Generation 1 continuity, with James Roberts introducing elements into his work such as the Optimus-Megatron backstory, with Optimus as a civil servant swayed by Megatron's rhetoric, a Ratchet starting to feel his advanced age, and the idea of alternate mode determining social and racial position. Amazingly, however, this is all complete coincidence; Roberts is not overly familiar with what's going on in the Aligned universe, and originated these ideas on his own.
  • On the other hand, the use of War for Cybertron character designs in the More than Meets the Eye and Robots in Disguise series is intentional, and given how closely editor John Barber and Hasbro work together, some cross-pollination of ideas would be unsurprising.

See also

• Aligned timeline