BotCon panels 6/12 - Activision (Movie Game).

[griffin]

Saturday 11am.
Panelists - Shawn (multi-player designer), Justin (art director), Joey (creative), Jason (producer), Tyler (brand manager).

Because of the different needs of each console format, five uniquely different games were developed for this 2009 TFs game.
(not sure if this makes sense, or is exactly what they said)
- 360, PS3 (with) 5 Multi-player modes
- Wii, PS2
- DS x2 (Autobot and Decepticon campaigns)
- PSP

Can't play as Devastator. But there are 10 characters to use, plus 2 later in the game.
Each character is designed to have strengths and flaws, to make it more even, but still followed their official abilities.

They looked over the TF1 game to see what they needed to do, to do a better job this time.

Over 500 people worked on the different game versions.
Melbourne House (part of Chrome Studios, and did the Armada Game) were involved in the Wii and PS2 version.

Main Cast:
Peter Cullen - Optimus
Charlie Adler - Starscream
Mark (? - the guy who did Movie Bumblebee) - Bumblebee
Jess (?) - Ironhide
Frank Welker - Megatron
Robert Foxworth - Ratchet
Megan Fox - Mikeala
Shia Lebouf - Sam
John Dimaggio (Bender from Futurama) - Sideways

Expected time to complete game - 6-8 hours per level, but even longer to do everything in the level completely.

A 'viral' feature of the online version of the game - a number of the Activision team will start out 'tagged', and if someone defeats them, they aquire the 'tag'... until someone else defeats them, taking the 'tag' off them. There isn't any special ability with the tagging, just a 'rare' gimmick to look out for when online with the game.
(hope that makes sense)

The Game follows the Movie storyline, but from a Bot perspective, instead of the human perspective of the actual movie.

Downloadable content includes characters from all generations.

Some music used from the Movie Score.

Unlockables - 5 Gen1 characters, 6 full episodes of Gen1 cartoon, concept art.

PS2 is a 2-player.

They then showed a short promo interview with Frank Welker and Peter Cullen, as well as the two main Game Trailers - Autobot and Decepticon.

[Kyle]

Because of the different needs of each console format, five uniquely different games were developed for this 2009 TFs game.
(not sure if this makes sense, or is exactly what they said)
- 360, PS3 (with) 5 Multi-player modes
- Wii, PS2
- DS x2 (Autobot and Decepticon campaigns)
- PSP

That's similar with the last game as well. With the only collectors edition available on 360 last time, it helped me make the decision. This time though there won't be any collectors edition. The only special items you can get are some exclusive character skins (gold version of OP and Megs I think) if you preorder the game with the more expensive EB (PS3 and 360 versions only). Since my last game was the 360 version I've preordered the 360 version again this time.

[griffin]

I got the impression that the actual game play or missions were different with the different formats this time. They seemed to emphasise the fact that different companies were involved in the different formats to produce a 'completely different game on each format. But could just be their spin to get people to buy more than one format, and it is basically the same game.