So I've been doing some digging on my various readthroughs of the novels and Covenant of Primus, and I've stumbled across something very interesting.

Many of Shockwave's experiments directly mirror the Thirteen Primes. He tries to imbue attributes of the primes into his victims. Notably Amalgamous, Nexus, and Onyx - triple changers, combiners, predacons, and dinobots. Similarly with Quintus Prime, how he created life by creating Trypticon - and with Solus Prime, all of his devices and weaponry mimicking her talents.

We also see how he works with memory and knowledge with the Cortical Psychic Patch. It's my belief that he intended to use it on Alpha Trion, in order to attempt to access the memories of Cybertron.

I propose that he was attempting to mimic the powers of the Primes in order to mitigate their abilities, and perhaps to experiment with the fabric of reality itself. He knew that one he had their power he could start looking into the metaphysical and warp reality itself to his whims.

Gives Alpha Trion's quote a hell of a lot of weight;

The book doesn't really take the time to expand on it, but it's there. At the same time that Starscream plans to backstab Megatron, Jazz is standing guard at Optimus' door. At the same time that Jazz gives orders to the Autobots that save them, Starscream saves his own skin and leaves his fellow Decepticons behind. At the same time that Starscream insists to abandon Megatron to what they both assume is death, Jazz insists that Optimus must still be alive (and he is! but Jazz has no way of actually knowing that, he just believes it!) and wants to rescue him. Starscream spends the entire book trying to usurp Megatron, and Jazz spends the entire book trying to protect Optimus.

Even when their scenes don't directly mirror each other, there's still an echo between them. Starscream keeps thinking, for the entirety of the novel, that he should replace Megatron as leader of the Decepticons. Jazz never once entertains the thought of being higher than Autobot deputy commander, and he even immediately shoots down someone's inquiry about him potentially being Optimus's successor.

from one of the Aligned Cont. novels, Transformers: Retribution by David J. Williams and Mark S. Williams

What is the purpose of TF: Retribution? Because all it really seems to do is fuck up the established lore and timeline that Exodus, Exiles, WFC, FOC and the TFP show had already established at this point.

yes, I know that the books, the games and the show had a lot of problems with consistency, but they still followed a basic premise of world building (particularly about the Ancients), timeline and lore.

Retribution fucks this up by ripping up a giant hole in the lore and shoving in this unnecessary Quintesson shit and saying "All these characters like Megatron, Orion, Ratchet, Jazz, Soundwave, etc. have been alive LONG before the Age of Rust and in fact, they took part in both the Age of Wrath and the Golden Age, they just got REALLY BAD AMNESIA".