High Moon Studios
From Transformers Wiki
High Moon Studios (formerly Sammy Studios) is a video game development studio based out of California that wielded an outsized influence over the direction of the Transformers brand in the 2010s. Namely, they were responsible for the flagship War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron games that formed the bedrock of the decade-long "Aligned continuity" project. A subsidiary of Activision, some of their most prominent work outside of the Transformers brand includes serving as a supporting developer for the long-running blockbuster Call of Duty and Destiny franchises. Their most well-known homebrew title is likely their debut game, the cowboy-vampire-horror-shooter game Darkwatch.
Some of their key personnel include:
- Matt Tieger (game director)
- Dave Cravens (cinematic director)
- Mike Brown (principal artist)
Contents |
Games
- Transformers: War for Cybertron (360/PS3/PC)
- Transformers: Dark of the Moon (360/PS3)
- Transformers: Fall of Cybertron (360/PS3)
High Moon Studios and continuity
High Moon Studios has, at times, made comments to the gaming press that have avoided giving a direct answer to the question of the continuity of War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron, or have appeared to contradict Hasbro's official position on the subject. Both games are part of Hasbro's Aligned continuity family (which is headed by the Transformers: Prime cartoon), while High Moon Studios have suggested to the press that the games are part of the original 1980s cartoon series, and that the studio considers "making authenticity to the G1 cartoon series as high as possible to be [their] biggest priority".
Being ignorant to Hasbro's statements on the subject and seemingly without any other easily available information to the contrary, this led the press and much of the gaming public to conclude that the games indeed belong to the cartoon from their childhoods. Even some portions of the Transformers fandom refused to believe that the games have anything to do with Transformers: Prime.
Of course, it is worth keeping in mind here the historical context that as one of the first Aligned projects, "authenticity" to other contemporary productions wasn't really on the table for War for Cybertron, and certainly would not have been a selling point to large adult gamers even if it were. Further to High Moon's credit, while Fall of Cybertron features many, many references to the Generation 1 cartoon and the original animated movie, it also ties in more tightly to the (now extant) larger arc of the Aligned continuity and depicts several significant events from Prime's established backstory as well as events that would inform a multitude of future Aligned productions going forward.
Then-Hasbro "writer's room" head Rik Alvarez later elaborated that High Moon Studios were on board with the Aligned continuity family despite conceiving War for Cybertron as a G1 prequel, and that Hasbro Studios were the ones resistant to tying into the games.[1][2][3]
Looking back long after the shuttering of the Aligned project as a whole this particular continuity kerfuffle is largely consigned to the dustbin of history, with the influence of the anti-Aligned camp on official fiction being confined to the realm of Easter eggs and footnotes like this one.
References
- ↑ Aligned Continuity panel at TF Con Charlotte notes
- ↑ Rik Alvarez panel, slide show - See fan photos
- ↑ Rik Alvarez panel, slide show on Beast Hunters - See fan photos
