'Fall of Cybertron' nearly missed out on Dinobots

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron will feature the rare appearance of the Autobots and Decepticons' lesser-known cousins, the Dinobots — though developer High Moon Studios originally didn't have permission to put them in the game.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron will feature the rare appearance of the Autobots and Decepticons' lesser-known cousins, the Dinobots — though developer High Moon Studios originally didn't have permission to put them in the game.

In an interview with Polygon, High Moon Studios game director Matt Tieger explained that Hasbro denied his original pitch to put Dinbots in Fall of Cybertron, the developer's third game adaptation of the franchise. The problem was canonical: High Moon's Transformers games weren't supposed to be set on Earth, but that's exactly where the Dinobots were spawned in all of their illustrated origin stories. Also, the inherent nostalgia of the Dinobots would be lost on the new generations of Transformers fans Hasbro was attempting to reach out to.

After revising the Dinobots origin story — in Fall of Cybertron, the dastardly Decepticons are the inventors of the Dinobots — and including a few other narrative and gameplay changes, Hasbro approved the new direction High Moon is trying to take the series in.

"Purely selfishly," Tieger said, "it is a dream to be able to work on one of my favorite franchises of all time and then reinvigorate and rediscover my favorite character. It's fantastic. What other job [lets you] do stuff like that?"

Check out our feature for the full story on Fall of Cybertron and the battle for the fate of the Dinobots.

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