it basically took the best things about the Bay design, and worked in his classic traits from G1 with a better colorscheme. Best of all worlds tbh. A lot of the Prime designs went for this but Shockwave did it the best.
A little detail I liked about the show is in one of the flashbacks Soundwave's got his same head but his body is much bulkier, like it was in the WFC/FOC games. I know the Aligned canon is fucky but it was cool to see them actually acknowledge they were supposed to be in the same timeline in some small way
One of the better TF cartoons tbh