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Post by charlesrocketboy on Sept 16, 2010 1:08:45 GMT
So "yay" or "nay", people?
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2010 7:35:24 GMT
YAY!
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Post by The Doctor on Sept 16, 2010 11:11:15 GMT
It was the ultimately of the kind of shit I clear off my shoes when I travel through fields of cows.
-Ralph
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Post by Benn on Sept 16, 2010 12:01:25 GMT
Nay for me. A disjointed mess of inconsistancy, spelling errors, and more "Oh, Come on" moments than I can even recall.
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Post by charlesrocketboy on Sept 16, 2010 21:02:37 GMT
It was the ultimately of the kind of shit I clear off my shoes when I travel through fields of cows. If you'd said "fields of horses", you could've done a nay/neigh joke. |
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Post by The Doctor on Sept 16, 2010 22:29:11 GMT
True, but cows are far more sinister than horses.
-Ralph
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Post by charlesrocketboy on Sept 16, 2010 23:02:04 GMT
I've only read excerpts and they're quite dry and po-faced - things are bad and Kaon is really filthy and there's Ominous Destiny written by an Old Guy. And you could say "Eugenesis and Telefunken were also really grim and Serious", except they also showed the Transformers have subcultures, senses of humour, mad oddities - I doubt Exodus has a Transformer trying to play bin basketball.
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Post by The Doctor on Sept 17, 2010 11:48:21 GMT
The biggest problem is that it reads like a story bible for the current TF backstory rather than a novel in its own right. Never more obvious than when the first battles of the war are only relayed in a summary chapter, including the key moment when Megatron goes from a chap who operated from some point of ideology to a gibbering McGuffin obsessed loon. Show, don't tell. That's not how to do a novel!
Lots of references to 'the 13' without bothering to go into who/what the 13 are. It assumes the reader will go: "OMG! THE NUMBER THIRRTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!" Which is strange considering there are no tv shows, films or comics to refer to. For some reason which boggles my bloody mind, the story of the 13 so far is being told through convention panels!
Also, the prose is dry and humourless. Everyone speaks the same way It also has a character who knows everything with a Magic Thing (Alpha Trion) which kills any tension stone cold dead. And the less said about Prime and Megatron calling each other "brother" every second sentence the better.
-Ralph
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Post by charlesrocketboy on Sept 17, 2010 23:56:58 GMT
Lots of references to 'the 13' without bothering to go into who/what the 13 are. It assumes the reader will go: "OMG! THE NUMBER THIRRTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!" Which is strange considering there are no tv shows, films or comics to refer to. For some reason which boggles my bloody mind, the story of the 13 so far is being told through convention panels! The Thirteen have been mentioned in... a Fun Pub comic strip. One. And then at some panels and stuff by Hasbro. And that was about it. It's this big thing that Hasbro's using as the lynchpin and hardly any TF media actually has done anything about it... and the book really assumes "The Thirteen" is enough? (It's possible the writer, not being a fan and going off stuff he found on wikis, assumes the Thirteen are a bigger thing everyone knows about) |
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Post by legios on Sept 18, 2010 8:26:41 GMT
The Thirteen have been mentioned in... a Fun Pub comic strip. One. And then at some panels and stuff by Hasbro. The original version of the Thirteen was something that Furman threw into the Ultimate Guide, and I suspect it was a future story hook he was planning on doing something with except for the fact that Dreamwave crashed and burned. It is odd that Hasbro haven't managed to get any actual media out to establish the Thirteen as yet. From the Botcon panel transcripts you would think that the Thirteen were a central feature of the new Transformers continuity....But you'd be hard pressed to tell from any other sources. But then, given that Exodus and War for Cybertron are supposed to be set in the same general point in time in the new continuity but manage to contradict each other anyway then perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. Karl |
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Post by The Doctor on Sept 18, 2010 12:14:40 GMT
Furman was tapped to do a '13' series, but indicated at this year's AA that it was pretty much dead.
It does strike me as strange that Hasbro haven't got behind getting some proper '13' media out there if it's apparently such a key thing.
-Ralph
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Post by charlesrocketboy on Sept 18, 2010 16:32:23 GMT
I wouldn't mind so much if not for that stupid "IT'S THE SAME THIRTEEN EVERYWHERE" crap. That makes no sense. We don't say "all Grimlocks are the exact same Grimlock".
Also, isn't it a bit iffy that the Decepticons are all working class dudes who wanted better conditions, while major Autobots were white-collar workers and officers?
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Post by blueshift on Sept 18, 2010 17:33:55 GMT
I wouldn't mind so much if not for that stupid "IT'S THE SAME THIRTEEN EVERYWHERE" crap. That makes no sense. Ugh yes, I hate multiversal stuff, especially when it gets ridiculous. I don't mind Unicron being the same guy, but when it gets to every universes Alpha Trion being the same guy... |
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Post by The Doctor on Sept 18, 2010 17:37:29 GMT
I wouldn't worry about it. I've never come across this multiverse pish and I've read and seen most of the cartoon episodes and comics made.
-Ralph
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Post by charlesrocketboy on Sept 18, 2010 18:27:46 GMT
If Optimus is all "freedom is the right" and slag, why's he being made an autocratic ruler under the dictat of unelected, corrupt politicians advised by a really old guy who's obsessed with a prophecy? Wouldn't it have made more sense to have him, y'know, elected to a position by people? Then you could have Megatron being livid that the ungrateful masses voted the wrong way and that's why he turns from revolutionary rhetoric to civilian-massacring Peace Through Tyranny: the Transformers just "proved" they can't make decisions for themselves. I wouldn't worry about it. I've never come across this multiverse pish and I've read and seen most of the cartoon episodes and comics made. That's cos Fun Pub are the only people to do anything with the idea. But the idea came from someone at Hasbro, so it's now canon and they say every chance they get how it's canon even though no other stories use it. Sideways is also the same character as a Sideways toy from RID, which is weird. Extra weird considering Sideways was a completely different character in seperate Unicron Trilogy series, never mind seperate continuities. (And Cybertron Sideways was awesome, darn it. Armada Sideways wishes he was the same dude) |
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Post by Kingoji on Sept 19, 2010 14:50:44 GMT
Exodus does talk of the 13 as being the 'First Primes', and there was once a Prime War between them, which I suppose would tie it into Revenge Of The Fallen.
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Post by The Doctor on Sept 19, 2010 14:58:04 GMT
RE: Charlesrocketboy.
Yes, the idea of Prime being all into freedom when he became military leader because some old mystic dudes said so is interesting. I bet no interesting stories ever come of it though. I got no sense from Exodus that the writer had clicked on this point at all.
-Ralph
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Post by charlesrocketboy on Sept 19, 2010 16:06:34 GMT
I got no sense from Exodus that the writer had clicked on this point at all. To be fair, neither has Furman et al. You have to wonder if there are Autobots who think "hang on, why does this guy deserve to be in charge again? He can't even stop Megatron killing the planet!". (Which is another thing: the Autobots completely lose. I guess evil IS better at running things!) |
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Post by legios on Sept 20, 2010 19:41:40 GMT
I have now read Exodus. I was originally going to be borrowing Andy's copy, but as I actually ended up reading at his house I didn't bother. (270 pages should not take me only two hours to read - that in itself is not a good sign.)
Very, very dissapointing. Every time it approaches an interesting plot element it buries it as quickly as possible, and seems more interested in getting in as many references to other Transformers media as possible rather than actually telling an interesting story. Throwing in the idea that Transformers used to have Spacebridges so they could travel to the G2 comic and the Energon Cartoon and that they were made by Primus using the Allspark cube and the original Primes had a civil war and one of them Fell but then the Quintessons invaded and enslaved them but they rebelled and won their freedom... It just makes my eyes glaze over and my brain conclude that you haven't got a story to tell and you intend to bury that fact under fan-service - especially as almost none of this stuff is relevant to the story that we are supposed to be being told. It also makes it feel as if the vaunted new official continuity for Transformers is just a mass of bits and pieces from other versions stuck together in a semi-random order.
Considering that there are only two, three at most, actual characters in the book the characterisation is pretty thin as well. (and why on Earth would you have Megatron's defining moment where he changes from political extremist to full on crazed lunatic just told about in a summary chapter than basically outlines the whole of the war on Cybertron?)
It feels like it was knocked together very quickly in the interests of just shoving something out of the door. It is, quite simply, a bad book as spin-off novels go. (Its last third, that tell a completely different version of the same events as the video game, have a less interesting narrative than the game - and the latter was not exactly a shining example of the heights of videogame storytelling).
Karl
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Post by charlesrocketboy on Sept 21, 2010 10:45:38 GMT
So one of the problems is that this isn't so much a story was two stories, Prime/Megs and a game adaptation, held together with selotape?
The existence of a post-Fallen war and a Quintesson war could be used as foreshadowing (there's been devastating war and dangerous tyrants before, and Cybertron's going down the same path again!) but I guess they don't do that.
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Post by The Doctor on Sept 21, 2010 11:03:17 GMT
Even solid plotting could not have saved the deathly-dull prose. The very epitome of generic tossed off tie-in material. A year from now this will be barely remembered.
-Ralph
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Post by legios on Sept 21, 2010 11:26:21 GMT
So one of the problems is that this isn't so much a story was two stories, Prime/Megs and a game adaptation, held together with selotape? More, a story of Prime and Megatron and then a story using some of the same plot elements as the game. The last third of the book isn't so much the story of the game as it is a story that uses the same McGuffin and a couple of the plot beats - sort of like Marvel#1, the opening episode of Animated and the first episode of Sunbow use the plot beats that the Autobots go in a space ship, Decepticons attack and they crash on Earth. But as Ralph says, generic tie-in material that will have as much staying power as Ghosts of Yesterday or summat. Karl |
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Post by charlesrocketboy on Sept 21, 2010 14:01:07 GMT
Ghosts of Yesterday is both its title and a description of how it's remembered!
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Post by The Doctor on Sept 21, 2010 15:28:22 GMT
Was that the one with the humans having space adventures in a cave on another planet?
-Ralph
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Post by legios on Sept 21, 2010 19:28:44 GMT
Was that the one with the humans having space adventures in a cave on another planet? -Ralph That is indeed the one. Karl |
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Post by The Doctor on Sept 21, 2010 19:43:23 GMT
It was pish.
-Ralph
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Post by grahamthomson on Oct 25, 2010 9:03:43 GMT
I finished reading Exodus yesterday.
I got it for my birthday, read the first half the day after and nearly forgot about it until yesterday where I read the second half.
This is the only (official) TF novel that I have ever finished (and that includes all the feature film tie-in stuff and the Dreamwave books). So that's saying something. Not much, but something.
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Post by grahamthomson on Feb 10, 2011 13:29:13 GMT
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Post by Benn on Feb 10, 2011 17:02:53 GMT
Yay.
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Post by The Doctor on Feb 10, 2011 18:58:24 GMT
Oh goody.
-Ralph
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