Why I think the New Bionicle Story will be Terrible

Resisting obvious insult.

Here’s what I think Var, and quite honestly a lot of other people, completely missed in my original post. I’m not comparing G2 Bionicle to the entirety of G1 Bionicle. All of the comparisons I’ve done with the amount of story and world building have come entirely within the exact same time frame that G2 Bionicle has had (or that we can reasonably predict in the case of my assumption that the Toa will likely not be returning to the villages within the end of 2015).

My point (and keep in mind this is all my opinion) is that Lego storylines have never been intriguing because of their characters. Whenever I’ve gotten engaged in a Lego storyline, it’s always been because of the interesting dynamic of the world that the story takes place in; be it Bionicle, Exo-Force, Knight’s Kingdom, or what have you. Lego’s characters just aren’t engaging enough to draw me in by themselves. They need to stand on something else, and that something else is the world that is established around them.

By that train of thought, then, I don’t think that’s unreasonable to dismiss G2 Bionicle as a failure. Imagine that you’re putting together a building project that’s expected to be finished in 5 years. You notice, however, that the workers forgot to put in the foundation for the building and started trying to build the walls without it. The project may be nowhere near finished, but you’d could quite reasonably dismiss it as an impending failure. Why? The foundation, everything that the rest of the building depends on, is missing.

It’s that same sort of thing here. For me, the world building is that foundation, and Lego’s tried to build its characters without any sort of world to draw me in first. By the time they could get around to it, it will have already been too late. The world building has to come first, and without it, Bionicle’s doomed to crash before it ever gets off the ground.

-MT

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While I see where you’re coming from I still disagree with this statement.

When it comes to a toy-line like Bionicle, Lego should focus on building-up the characters since that is what they’re selling. Unless children are just there for the parts, there isn’t going to be any interest to try and collect them all if a child can’t find some way to connect with the character.

But I do agree that system stories need world-building since the majority of those sets sell vehicles or locations, not characters. While some kids may get a set because their favorite character is a minifigure in it, the majority is likely going to see a cool ship and want to learn more about the world that ship comes from.

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I think you’re vastly overestimating the average child’s appreciation for character development. Hasbro hasn’t sold millions of dollars worth of Transformers toys for their in-depth character development. Pokemon cards and Mario toys aren’t massively popular with kids due to their well written characters. You’ll rarely, if ever, see a toy commercial building up a character’s personality as a way to sell him. Children buy toys more often than not because it looks cool and/or fun to play with. Deep development is honestly something that would fly over most kid’s heads and wouldn’t make any impact in sales one way or the other.

-MT

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By the same token, kids care even less about world-building.

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Good point. Kids usually care about the toys more than anything. :stuck_out_tongue:

And the great thing about the new BIONICLE is that most of the sets are pretty cool.

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But this topic is about why the story will suck, not if kids will buy the sets…

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Precisely. Lego’s strategy here may very well be the best strategy for profit making, but all I’m trying to argue is that the story will be bad.

-MT

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I know for a fact that if you read a story that has this rich history and great setting, but has terribly-written characters, then that story will be terrible. Let us get to know the Toa first, then let us see their adventures in this new land.

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Terribly written, sure. But you could make the same argument for any aspect of story telling. If any part of the story is miserable, the experience will generally be a bad one.

With that said, it’s quite easy to have mediocre/undeveloped characters with a rich history and great setting, and still have a thoroughly engaging story. For instance, G1 Bionicle, Metroid Prime, the latest X-Men movie, etc.

I could quite easily argue that the Toa will be terrible characters, and I think it’d be pretty easy to do so given the absolutely sophomoric attitude Lego has taken towards “developing” them that looks like it was taken out of an episode of Dragon Tales, but completely setting that aside for the moment, the bigger point is that Lego’s style of story telling is, in my opinion, only good when it focuses on creating an interesting world first and foremost. Lego’s already lost most of its opportunity to do that. It’s already tried to build the walls on top of a foundation-less building. That ship has sailed, crashed into an iceberg, sunken to the bottom of the ocean, and had a terrible movie made about it.

-MT

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Precisely.

I disagree with this highly :stuck_out_tongue:

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Ouch. Not disagreeable, imo, but ouch.

Dragon Tales was my childhood…

You’ve officially lost my discipleship. Get thee behind me!

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Even though these “few characters” are also the MAIN characters.

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And here we are.

Quite some time has… Passed…

We don’t know what’s coming next,

But we still believe it’s gon’ be good…

Why did you have to go and…

Try to assume the very end?

{redacted}

I can list the reasons why…

This is never going by with meeeeeeeeeeeee…

@MT_Zehvor for you…

The end…

Is not…

As it seemed…

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RoSS and thGN have kinda undone the damage. If only they had come out sooner in the year.e

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Huh. I guess he was right.

I blame the lego group. Judging from the art book the team had some good ideas,

Didn’t end up being that bad. The simplicity balances out with the shortness of the story when something that lasts 10 years needs more complications.

I guess: I’m just a bit disappointed that they didn’t have enough faith in the line to put effort into the story.

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