20 Stupid Decisions That Destroyed Their Franchise

19. Moving The Devs To Deadpool - Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark

Successfully turning movies and TV shows into video games – and vice versa – is notoriously difficult.

As letdowns such as 1997’s Beast Wars: Transformers and 2007’s Transformers: The Game exemplify, the Transformers brand is no exception. That said, High Moon Studios cracked the code with their early 2010s trio: War for Cybertron, Dark of the Moon, and Fall of Cybertron.

Okay, 2011’s Dark of the Moon got mixed-to-negative reviews, but 2010’s War for Cybertron was a vast improvement over what preceded it and 2012’s Fall of Cybertron was even more adored. In fact, it’s frequently seen as the best Transformers game of all time, with a tempting cliffhanger that saw both the Autobots and Decepticons going to Earth.

Obviously, publisher Activision should’ve let High Moon conclude their Cybertron trilogy with equivalent levels of narrative and gameplay quality. Instead, they forced High Moon to work on 2013’s mediocre Deadpool while having Edge of Reality and WayForward Technologies churn out a lackluster conclusion – Rise of the Dark Spark – that prioritized connecting to the live-action Transformers films.

Unsurprisingly, its poor reception prevented additional Cybertron entries, and although WayForward were able to keep pursuing fresh projects, High Moon have been relegated to supplemental Call of Duty duties. As for the now-closed Edge of Reality, Rise of the Dark Spark was their swan song.