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Mitchelltrt t1_ja8v3sf wrote

Reply to comment by drLagrangian in [WP] When a god summoned your group of friends to save his magical realm, he allowed all five of you to choose your appearance in this world. The first two of your friends chose to be idealized adult versions of themselves. The next two chose fantasy races. Everyone was suprised by your choice... by Martinus_XIV

Nah, obviously, he is a triple-changer tank/heli/mech. You know, like Astrotrain is a train/robot/space shuttle.

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drLagrangian t1_ja8xcxs wrote

I forgot about them.

Instead I was thinking of that one creature from Beast Machines. Its name was Noble/Savage, and its transformation from "beast to beast" was really confusing to the rest of the cast. Turns out the mystery was explained by >!No i'm not spoiling it for you!<

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Mitchelltrt t1_ja8xlqo wrote

Never watched Beast Machines (do you mean the Beast Wars series?) but I assume it was just a triple-changer that refused to become a robot.

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drLagrangian t1_ja94ce6 wrote

Beast machines was the beast wars sequel they produced. It wasn't as well received and was given the axe after 2 seasons.

The premise is that after beast wars, the cast returns to Cybertron- but something weird happens (warp travel problems). They wake up on Cybertron separated, missing several months of memory, the planet is empty, and an army of plentiful - but not sentient - transforming drones are out to get them.

After a bit of running around for an episode the crew (Optimus, black arachnia, cheetor, and ratrap) find a place to hide and figure things out. Optimus becomes a prophet of sorts to one of the Cybertron gods, and learns that all of the beast wars was ordained to happen to bring organic material back to Cybertron, and that it was now his job to restore organics back to the planet (in the form of organic/machine hybrids). The crew gets "reformatted" into new shiny bodies that look more like cybernetic animals then mechanical ones, and have to figure out what to do.

It was rather interesting - especially it's dive into lore. They explore the fossilized history of Cybertron, meet new does, get a few friends back, and get a new addition: Botanical (ashe had the beast wars treatment, but on a planet with sentient plants).

It was really interesting for the lore, but not as entertaining. Optimus ends up coming off as a bit too preachy, the young teenager cheetor grows up to pretend to be a stoic young adult (but ends up being a bit angsty), and a fan favorite comes back but some sort of off screen trauma gave them an extra dip in the grim dark bucket.

The 3d graphics has improved a lot: the scenery was great, the character models detailed, and the explosions more explosive. But they didn't have the power to do full organic creatures to robot transition nicely. Rather than having a robotic core in an animal shape that would transform in Beast Wars, they have the beast mode morph into beast machine by going through a glowy ball transition phase, so you don't see any transforming - the robotic parts just grow out of the organic bits and vice versa.

This worked against the toys, since they had a beast mode and robot mode in high definition, but no obvious transformations in between. The result was that the toys has to put seams and moving parts in wherever they could to get the transformation to work - but this left the two modes looking lumpy and disjointed - or they just went ahead and made versions of the characters that didn't look like the show. Example: https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Optimus_Primal_(BW)/toys#Beast_Machines -- Optimus didn't look like that.

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