[TRANSFORMERS: REACTIVATE], WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR (REDUX)
Foreword
All the information in this document is sourced to the best of my ability, keeping in mind confidentiality and privacy of any Certain Affinity, Splash Damage, Digital Extremes or other employees. All discoveries are cited to the person who discovered them to the best of my ability, if you see your name on this document and want it removed, my Discord is nembertonvine. If you have any inquiries, don’t hesitate to DM me.
Of course, do not harass anyone mentioned in this document, especially developers.
Any leaks mentioned in this document should be taken with a grain of salt, however I am confident in both Robo and Luna and can say with relative certainty that their information is legitimate.
All dates and times posted in this document are assumed to be GMT unless otherwise stated.
Timeline
2017
October 15th, Leyou Technologies entered into an agreement to invest $10 million into Certain Affinity to start work on a Transformers game.
October 30th, The deal is completed, and Certain Affinity gets to work.
These details are mentioned in their 2017 Annual Report.
2018
August 24th, Venturebeat interviewed Max Hoberman, CEO of Certain Affinity. In this interview he mentions that they are still working on the Transformers game.
2019
January 7th, The loan from Leyou Technologies was increased from $15 million to $33 million to further develop the game.
These details are mentioned in their 2018 Annual Report.
January 30th, An article from Gamebiz that talked about Certain Affinity’s new Toronto studio mentioned that the Transformers project is still in development.
July 25th, “Bumblebee” on TFW2005 finds several job listings that could possibly be for the game.
August 3rd, Leyou Technologies publicly announced the game at the Chinajoy 2019 convention. They confirm that the game will be Free-to-Play and released on PC and Consoles.
August 22nd, Max Hoberman is asked whether Transformers Online would be China exclusive. He said that nothing Certain Affinity is currently working on is China exclusive or focused on China.
September 3rd, Max Hoberman said that they’re ramping up to something big after being asked about Transformers.
September 17th, Another CA employee mentioned a project they were working on that was going to be announced soon.
(They went onto work on New World, but it's possible that at the time they worked on TF.)
September 24th, A Fall of Cybertron Optimus figure is spotted on a CA employee’s desk.
December 31st, The game is briefly mentioned to still be in development by Leyou, and it's also stated that some of the mentioned projects are nearing completion and are expected to launch in 2020. It is unknown if Transformers was intended to be one of these.
These details are mentioned in the 2019 Annual Report.
2020
May 10th, “jungle penguins” on TFW2005 found a resume from a Certain Affinity employee calling the game “Transformers Impact”.
July 6th, Leyou put a further $10 million into Certain Affinity, the loan document stated that the game’s development was going well and the Open Beta for the game was approximately 70% done. The increase in funding was to give CA the resources needed to finish and release the Open Beta.
August 21st, Bumblebee on TFW2005 found another job listing for Certain Affinity, that of a “Development Director” for a Free-to-Play game and managing a successful Open Beta launch.
August 22nd, Leyou released their 2020 interim results, which states that they have brought in Splash Damage to assist with development. An exact date for Splash Damage being brought onto the project is unknown, but it seems to have been in the range of July-August.
August 27th, Tencent proposes an agreement to acquire Leyou Technologies.
November 25th, The license agreement between Hasbro and Leyou was released, featuring a slideshow presentation of “Transformers: Impact” which was presumably a pitch for the game. The license agreement also mentioned that the new deadline for the Open Beta was October 2021. I have compiled the entire slideshow here.
December 23rd, The deal between Tencent and Leyou is finalized, and Leyou is bought out.
2021
August 8th, The name “Transformers: Rise” is discovered to be included in the description of a podcast episode with a Certain Affinity developer. A Chinese Linkedin is discovered at the same time which also has this name.
August 10th, For a brief time, the domain “transformersrise.com” is registered to a Chinese company believed to be Leyou Technologies.
August 25th, It was revealed that after the Tencent buyout, Leyou faced a mass exodus including the CEO. Some employees also accused Leyou of purchasing several IPs with zero intentions of releasing complete games, and just wanted them to dress itself up for a sale.
September 14th, A video tour of Certain Affinity’s Toronto studio is posted, at 0:24 a DVD Boxset of G1 can be seen in clear view of the camera.
2022
October 17th, Bumblebee on TFW2005 posted a compilation of findings from various people on the Rise Discord regarding the game. Credit to That1rev for finding the model.
(Found by Rev)
October 19th, Luna posted a tweet that unknown to the public at the time was teasing the cutscenes.
November 4th, Luna posts a video talking about how he’s seen cutscenes and talks about what he saw in them. He also talks about a Linkedin for an employee at Digital Domain (The same company who did the CGI trailers for FoC) who has a Transformers game commercial from Certain Affinity listed as one of his projects.
November 5th-10th, Following a vote in Luna’s discord, Luna decided he will release the cutscenes and posted teasers during this timespan.
November 11th, Luna posts the two cutscenes, one featuring Starscream and the other featuring Ratchet. The ones I have linked are the raw files, devoid of Luna’s watermark.
November 12th, Max Hoberman the CEO of Certain Affinity allegedly followed Luna on Twitter for roughly an hour.
November 12-13th, Luna also posted a series of small images from the game’s UI.
November 13th, The first takedowns start happening on Twitter, and Megatron’s design is posted by Luna.
November 14th, The initial source of the cutscenes is discovered to be on a developer’s website. The Lead Narrative Designer which Bumblebee posted about on October 17th. It is presumed that Luna found the cutscenes at that point, as the information Bumblebee posted was compiled by prominent members of Luna’s Discord as well as the Lead Narrative Designer resume only being on the website. I also checked the PDF of their resume, and discovered it was made in July 2020.
November 14th at 21:45, The cutscenes and Megatron’s render are removed from the website. However soon after we found a script of the first cutscene with some minor differences, including calling the enemies of the game “The Rasp” and “Legion”. After that, I found a piece of art for the character of “Delvin” who is mentioned in both the script and the Ratchet cutscene.
November 15th, Luna’s video discussing the script was taken down by Hasbro.
November 17th, I managed to get into contact with the Lead Narrative Designer, however he requested that our conversation remain private and I will respect his wishes. He could not say much due to being under NDA, but the tone of his message felt to me as he was saying the game had been canceled.
November 19th, In a now deleted video Luna discussed several weapon names and types, including both firearms and melee weapons.
November 20th, Robo revealed in a now deleted video that Splash Damage and Digital Extremes have taken over the project, and Certain Affinity are no longer working on it. Which explains previous discrepancies and rumors of cancellation. After this revelation, the community went back to Linkedin and found several Splash Damage developers that were possibly working on the project.
*
*This is from a resume, and the PDF metadata for this resume reveals it was created in September 2022, so whatever Fortress is, they were working on it in September.
November 22nd, It was discovered that the Lead VFX Artist mentioned above was on a podcast at some point in mid-late 2021. The podcast had been released in January 2022, and in it he mentioned that he was working on a Free-to-Play game that would be coming out next year. Here is a transcript of the relevant portion.
November 23rd, Since the Splash Damage reveal, I had been conducting research and linking developers to each other. I linked 17 developers together who had been working on an unannounced project, most of whom joined the company in August 2020, which seems to be around the time the project was taken over. Some of these developers had connections to the Lead VFX Artist and had joined the company after his previous projects, meaning the only thing they would’ve worked on together with him would be this looter-shooter.
There is also this Production Director, whose description matches the 100+ developer size of “Fortress” and repeatedly mentions Live Service gameplay.
This director is directly linked to this person, who worked for Athlon Games, the western publishing arm of Leyou prior to the Tencent buyout. Athlon was merged into Splash Damage following the Tencent buyout, and their Linkedin mentions the game.
As for Digital Extremes I was not able to concretely link them to the project however if they are working on the game, they seem to be working on it with their External Projects division, a special branch for assisting in the development and publishing of various games. We know they will be at the Game Awards to showcase one of these projects being developed by Airship Syndicate.
November 24th, Robo posts a new video, this time talking about the game’s possible plot.
November 25th, While I talked with Robo, he received character renders from his source, and for a couple minutes changed his profile picture to Optimus Prime as proof to me.
November 26th, Robo told me that the Bumblebee image Luna posted previously does indeed match what he (Robo) has. Also Luna posted a 20 minute long video going in-depth on various game mechanics, which will be explained later in this document.
November 29th, We found a resume from April 2022 from a Motion Capture actress who was doing Mocap for a Transformers game from Splash Damage. We also found an older version of the resume from March 2022 which didn’t have Transformers on it, which narrows down the time period in which her work on Transformers happened.
November 29th at 23:26, We also discovered from their 2019 Annual Report that the Digital Domain trailer was made in 2019, and was planned to be shown at E3 2020.
November 30th, We found another actor who did Mocap for the game, along with some others that may have worked on it but we have nothing definitive for.
December 1st, Tom Henderson of Insider Gaming writes an article about the Splash Damage transfer. He contacts Splash Damage asking for comment, to which they said they could not comment on rumors or speculation.
December 2nd, Robo posted a new video, revealing several designs and announcing his collaboration with Luna. The in-game map is also teased at the end, with a distorted image of it being shown along with the coordinates for New York at the end of the video, which is highlighted on the map. Due to the amount of space they take up, I will put smaller versions of these designs here, and you can see the full versions in this Imgur album.
December 2nd at 20:00, Luna posted the full resolution map on Twitter.
December 5th, The resume containing “Fortress” is changed to no longer mention it. But, whatever game Fortress is is still in active development.
DECEMBER 8TH, THE GAME IS ANNOUNCED AT THE GAME AWARDS UNDER THE NEW TITLE OF “TRANSFORMERS: REACTIVATE”.
December 9th, I looked on the “Fortress” developer’s Linkedin, and confirmed that it had actually been Transformers.
December 13th, The game is confirmed to be in UE4, with the trailer having been made in UE5.
December 17th, Robo posts a new video discussing the story and revealing brand new in-game screenshots. A Twitter account by the name of “Transformers Reactivate News” posts a never before seen screenshot showing the character roster, this image is dated “October 2018”.
December 21st, Luna posts a slew of new screenshots from when Certain Affinity were still working on the game.
December 22nd, Luna posts a slew of weapons from when Certain Affinity were working on the game.
Story
The following plot synopsis is a combination of information provided by both Robo and Luna, as such some of it may be inaccurate and as with everything in this document, is subject to change upon the game’s release.
The game starts out with you playing as an overpowered version of Optimus Prime before everything hits the fan. Afterwards, a weapon is unleashed upon Earth which acts as an EMP which takes most Transformers offline and humanity is almost extinct. (It seems that you have an option of 3 Transformers to pick from at this point, however I only have information on Bumblebee) A small group of human resistance members find Bumblebee and manage to repair him, Bumblebee helps them on the first few missions of the game. During these missions Bumblebee encounters Decepticons who are either still offline due to the EMP or unable to fight, these Decepticons are taken in and repaired by Bumblebee and the human resistance. The Autobots and Decepticons decide to join sides in order to fight back against this common enemy.
The main force the Autobots and Decepticons are fighting against in the game is a nanomachine virus that can infect machines and use them to do its bidding, like a zombie virus. Over the course of the game you would discover that the virus is more of an techno-organic species that had invaded Earth and that the main villain of the game were Quintessence descendants who intended to terraform the entirety of Earth to make it their new base of operations.
The enemies of the game were originally called “Twisted” however when a new writer came in they were renamed to “Legion” which is a name mentioned in the Starscream script.
Gameplay
The following information is mostly compiled from Luna’s video about gameplay, as always this information is subject to change, especially as I cannot be too confident about how old this information is. Each part of gameplay has been separated into parts in the same manner as Luna’s video for ease for referral and writing. For a very brief summary, it is essentially just Warframe.
Core Game Loop
You will be destroying enemies with canon Transformers of your choice, you’ll be collecting loot as you progress through the game in the form of Resources, Weapons and Mods. Your focus is to become more and more powerful via upgrading and customizing your Transformers with Mods and obtaining newer, more powerful weapons.
Unlocking New Transformers
You will need 3 main components in order to unlock a new Transformer, first is the Transformer’s blueprint. Then will need “Tech Specs” which can be found during missions as well as in special Transformer Chests and crafting resources which can be found in chests, enemy drops and end of mission rewards. Then once you have gathered these you can pay premium currency to rush the crafting or outright purchase a new Transformer without any grinding in the in-game store with premium currency.
There’s also a tracker on the UI for your progress on completing a new Transformer.
Progression
You will gain XP by killing enemies and completing missions, this XP will increase your Transformer’s level, leveling grants minor stat increases and access to certain weapons and also unlocks abilities for you to use in gameplay.
You upgrade your Transformers with the “Linked-In” mechanic which increases your Upgrade Rank, this will grant a new Mod slot and a new Specialization slot on alternating levels, as well as a new Specialization. You will need to be Level 30 in order to start upgrading.
Mods
Mods are attached to different body parts of your Transformer in Robot and/or Alt modes. Certain Mods can only be put on certain slots, such as a turret Mod only being allowed to be put on a turret slot, mods are also dependent on the type of Transformer you are using. There is an item that you can craft and/or purchase which can be used to change the designation of a desired Mod.
Mods have randomly generated statues and values, Mods are dropped in-game but can only be equipped out of mission in the menus. Any unwanted Mods can be sold or dismantled into crafting materials. Mods will mostly focus on stat increases and “perks” that are different from Specializations.
Specializations
Specializations are unique passive bonuses that are linked to your Transformer’s type. These bonuses are bigger than mods and should have a large effect on how your Transformer performs and plays like. Specializations are locked to the specific Transformer, but can be put onto any of their Specialization slots which are unlocked via increasing their Upgrade Rank. Once a Specialization is put onto your Transformer it is locked onto it, however there is an item that can be crafted and/or purchased to reset a Specialization.
Weapon Unlocking
Weapons will be dropped by enemies, stronger enemies giving stronger weapons. Later on in the game you will be able to craft your own weapons. You cannot purchase weapons, however there are consumables that can be used to reset Mods or increase the power cap of the weapon. Weapons are dropped in-game but can only be equipped in the main menu, you will be alerted in-game when you obtain a weapon but you will only find out what it is at the mission results screen. Unwanted weapons can be sold via the Marketplace or dismantled for resources.
Weapon Names
We know of the following weapon names and types:
“Shock Carbine Rifle” - Assault Rifle
“Metalstorm” - SMG
“Scorcher” - Flamethrower
“Magnetic Grenade Launcher” - Grenade Launcher
“Gravatic Maul” - Hammer
“Energon Gauntlets” - Gauntlets
Weapon Progression
Weapons only have one component that can be upgraded. Every time your Upgrade Rank is increased it opens a new Augmentation slot on your weapon. Mods on weapons are randomized so it is encouraged to obtain as many as you can for ideal Mods. Once your hit Late/Endgame you will reach a certain Account Level that allows you to craft weapons, a player crafted weapon will have no Mods when initially crafted but you can unlock the ability to use the Mods off recycled weapons or random Mods obtained from dismantled items and consumables that you can slot into your empty Augmentation slots.
Obtaining Loot
There is no shared loot between players and you will never be shown your full loot drops until you complete the mission. Resources will be obtained in chests over the course of the mission and dropped by defeated enemies. There is no end of mission chest like in Destiny.
Cosmetics
Some cosmetics will be purchasable within the store, and some will be in the Battle Pass of the season. Cosmetics will be things such as color swaps, weapons and Transformer attachments, skins for Transformers and weapons, gestures, emotes, emojis, emissives, lights, car horns, voiceover packs and Guild-specific items like decorations for a Guild’s hanger.
Zones
There will be various Zones with sectors within these Zones, within sectors you will have a path that links story missions together for easier following, alongside this will be non-story missions for Quests or alternate gamemodes. Story missions will generally last longer than non-story missions with more multi-stage objectives throughout. Alternate gamemodes will be part of some non-story missions. Mission objectives will scale appropriately with the amount of players within your party, which has a maximum of 4. Once you have completed the story, the non-story missions will be your main source of replayability.
Quests
Quests will provide easy to-do lists for players. They will have dailies, weeklies and special Quests for the Season’s content.
Gamemodes
There are various Gamemodes that will presumably be featured in the non-story missions. The following names were specified by Luna to be codenames, so these may not be the final names.
Elite
A gamemode only accessible in Endgame, an endless battle mission where you try to progress as far as you can in the level using a selection of Transformers. When you die as one Transformer, you respawn as the next one you selected. You require tickets to enter Elite and these can be obtained by leveling your Account Level and via special Quests. This gives the player an infinite way to test their power, item rewards scale with how far you get and there are mutations and/or complications that can occur. It has a leaderboard that is reset on a weekly basis.
Patrol
This is a midgame gamemode where you are directed to a specific mission on the map where a different objective will spawn, such as escorting a VIP. This gamemode allows players to join mid match unlike Elite. Enemies will have special mutations during these missions to provide variety from regular story missions. Objectives will continue to spawn until all players have left the match. Completing more objectives will grant more rewards, some of which include Tech Specs, weapon consumables and weapons.
Spearhead
This is an endgame gamemode where you are granted an “itemized quest” as a reward. Activating this quest will ask you to track down a Transformer and/or Weapon and lead you down a path of activities that will get you various weapons, mods and Tech Specs for the Transformer you are tracking down. You will be able to get these quests until you have completed the objective, for instance fully unlocking the Transformer you were hunting.
Stronghold
Strongholds are a piece of the map where enemies have taken over the area, they are a type of mission which unlocks halfway through a season. This will be used as a rengagement mechanic for when a season starts waning half way through. There will be one Stronghold per Zone, the enemies found in the Stronghold will be max level and at the power cap of the current season. These are “main combat areas” where all players will have to fight a certain amount of waves to retake the Stronghold. Strongholds are not freed on an individual basis, the more the global playerbase completes a Stronghold the more it fills a completion meter. After a certain point all completed Strongholds will reset into “Mega Strongholds” that have a random chance to spawn a “Mega Boss” in the mission.
Seasons
Seasons will correspond to seasonal events of the calendar such as Halloween and Christmas. Seasons will possibly have new content that will be retired when the season ends. Each season will also bring new content such as new Zones and new Transformers.
Battle Pass
Battle Passes will be made for each season, you will be able to buy into the Battle Pass or stay on a free version with lesser rewards. You will also be able to purchase a fast track which gets you 25% of the content. The Battle Pass would contain such things as character skins, weapon skins, currency packs, XP boosters and other things.
Inventory
There will be a limited amount of inventory slots, you will need to sell items and manage your inventory to avoid running out of items. It is unknown if you can pay for inventory slots.