BIONICLE 2016 Discussion Topic

Where is that? Looks like a normal skull to me.

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its found here:
Imgur

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That Makuta looks really neat, and really complex!

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Think we’re kinda expecting that what-with the artbook lol

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Thanks for another dose of salt in our wounds Lego. You really like showing off what we will never get, don’t you?

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Bro, why so mad?

All of this is just the guys who worked on the models being nice enough to show us how to build them by giving us pictures of their outer workings and even skeletons. They certainly don’t owe you anything, but they’re nice enough to lend you these pictures. This isn’t LEGO showing off models that they’ll never release, this is a designer trying to help the community that’s been spurned by his bosses.[quote=“Ekimu, post:32052, topic:15529”]
I’m not mad just salty because he is my favorite Makuta design!
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We’re all salty seeing what could have been. So much potential. XD

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That’s great. Too bad, we can’t have those new pieces and recolors from that MOC. So we can’t make a real accurate Overlord Makuta. I’m not mad just salty because he is my favorite Makuta design!

Oh well. Here is a really nice animation about Okoto by Nescent.

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Here’s my opinion on the recent article that shows LEGO struggling to keep up with demand. First, I have to say that this means that LEGO is doing REALLY well. I’m glad about that, and it’s not likely going to be going away any time soon. As for the need to cut back on advertisement, it’s totally understandable. It’s a good way to keep too many new fans of their product from coming in.

The fact that Bionicle was planned to be brought back during this tough time is simply a sad coincidence. I also get why they decided to cut back bionicle’s marketing, even though it is probably the line that needs exactly that. Action figures in general aren’t doing well at all right now. Most companies are either making extremely cheap figures to minimize losses, or are appealing to the adult collectors that will still buy them. Why risk putting in a ton of advertisement into something that won’t sell as well as something that would sell just as well with little to no advertising?

That scenario leads to this. If they don’t advertise it at all, it’s going to sell extremely poorly and will make retailers not want to buy any further products from that line. If they do advertise it well, then they will likely have way too much demand for the sets, and their factories would be put under strain for it.

CCBS uses parts that can only be used for that line, while with traditional bricks and technic, you can just change the color being pumped into that machine. Thus, you basically have to have several machines dedicated to making CCBS parts, and it takes quite a while to change out molds to use parts for something else.

So, basically LEGO strained themselves to put out Bionicle sets, and gave themselves a bit more breathing room while they expand their factories (by cancelling Bionicle).

That being said, once LEGO’s popularity goes down a little, or they get their factories expanded, it is generally more likely for them to make another CCBS line again.

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Great point, man. People like John Ho are wonderful, but they have limited clout in TLG; there’s no way that he could have just vetoed his bosses and made them release a line of 2016 sets. These are people with full-time jobs who are taking valuable time to photograph things that, typically, no one outside of the company gets to see. Far from being salty, we should be grateful.

Any fantastic discounts on 2016 Bonkle that you guys know of?

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Agreed. Adding to that, I notice that the majority, if not all, popular action figures sales stem in some way from a preexisting media, whether it be from movies, books, real life, etc…something that a consumer can latch on to. I bet even if the star wars construction had a lower budget, less advertising and produced mediocre sets, it would still sell better than bionicle simply because of its external popularity. People buy for the character that the toy is portraying…not really buying a toy to find out its character.

That was bionicle’s strong suit for me back in the day. I see new and unrecognized sets and I can’t wait to discover who the new characters are and how they fit in the story. But with G2 they made the mistake of selling generic skeletons and beasts…whose only purpose are to give the Toa something to fight with. There is little to no depth to them. They may attract wide-eyed kids who think they look cool, but over time characters without depth become forgettable and provoke less nostalgia that would feed into future purchases.

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I still think its a stupid idea to cancel a line just because you don’t have enough factories. just pauze it and continue it when the demand has lowered.

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FTFY.

I personally think that LEGO is actually going to continue it once the ‘factory crisis’ is over. The open ending of JtO would allow for such a thing, after all.

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it would be but they created so many plot holes in that last episode they are gonna have to do alot to write those out.

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Now that G2 is over, I’m waiting for someone to take all of the characters we were given, and redo the 2015-2016 story. :stuck_out_tongue:

Like the story we were given was just… meh, and you can’t say that LEGO’s been going this route for some time now, because Ninjago HAS a story with symbolic depth in various places during each arc. G2 didn’t have that. It was honestly just one big reference/parody using an amazing building system.

I guess I just want to see someone take a crack at making an alternate story, one where the Toa are a lot more similar to their G1 predecessors (so they have actual personality flaws to work with, and very distinguishable personalities at the same time). Heck, give them Mask Powers again, that was the whole reason collecting masks was fun in G1, each of them had powers and so collecting all of them meant you could give your Toa an edge in battle. Make all of the golden masks interchangeable, so that we could just say that they all had to find six golden masks of each type. Let’s also just call them Kanohi again and use their G1 names, I don’t see why not. Terms like that were one of the largest contributors to the whole BIONICLE “feel” back in '01.

I’d just love to see someone take these amazing sets, and actually craft an amazing story full of world building and meaning. Turn them into something that I can look at on my shelf, and just feel proud to own a model of that character. Heck, take the Skull Villains and just retcon their whole origin story altogether. Let’s just say that they’re from another island that once had advanced cities but eventually something happened to render them in a post-apocalyptic state, and the Skull Villains are actually just a tribe of raiders doing whatever they can to survive, and Kulta is their warlord. Let’s say that they target the Toa solely to take the masks they find all over the island, in order to use the mask powers for themselves (could you even imagine a Skull Scorpio with Kakama speed? That’s terrifying).

The sets were so great, I can’t help but feel that they deserved an expansive and meaningful story behind them.

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you know its at the moments one say, “give them mask powers again” and “Let’s also just call them Kanohi again” that makes me shake my head, because by that point its not G2, but “G1 but different”. Doing that won’t make the sets or G2 better, infact it would make it worse, because now people would wine and say “why could i not get that awsome stuff instead if these piles of trash”.

whats worse is that we all know what those people would do, they would have rebuilt all of the sets into more Technic orianted sets with little to no CCBS and clame that “this is what the G2 sets SHOULD have been like”, if not just scrapped a good number of the sets that where released like the Skull villains, Umarak and the Beasts by arguing that they are not Bionicle sets, and instead make mocs based on G1 figures in their place.

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G2 was okay, I don’t hate it, it gave us amazing sets, but there are some things we have to recall as undeniably BIONICLE. Words like Kanohi and attributes like Mask Powers were a part of BIONICLE’s soul. The point of G2 was to be different from G1 yes, but on an atmospheric/background level. The big difference is that G1 was always planned as sci-fi covered up by fantasy, but G2 was fantasy with a bit of sci-fi. That’s what the difference was, and that difference was wonderful. It was undeniably BIONICLE, but it didn’t carry over as much as it should have. I mean if Nexo Knights can have Nexo Powers, then why is it too “complex” for BIONICLE to have mask powers?

Like, if I play BioShock II, It’s still BioShock and has many of its properties, but it also lacks several properties that made the original BioShock so good. It’s still a good game, but it just didn’t carry over what it needed to.

Now you’re going off on a trivial tangent that has nothing to do with what I’ve said… I just said that I want to see someone make a story with depth to replace the G2 story. The sets were great, the story and overall lack of meaning in the story were not. :stuck_out_tongue:

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and i stated one of the main problems with that, because most of the Bionicle Community would, like you said, add in more G1 stuff, and possibly even removed the reason for G2’s existance and instead just made it a sequil to G1. and remember again, not all people would agree that the sets where good, im not saying that i dislike the sets, but we have to remember that other people have their own opinion, and if someone where to try an redo the story for G2, its highly possible that they would probably remove a good chunk of the stuff they would dislike, like the skull villains, the beasts, rewrite Makuta’s background (under the assumsion that Makuta had little to no background story at all if that persion have not read the books nor seen JtO).

i think the possible reason would be that, having a Toa of Fire who’s mask allows him to create a shield would probably not make sence to some people, i mean they must have had kids around to play test the sets and stuff. add that with how most of the masks powers for the G1 Toa where rather meaningless for some of them, and G2 just removed the powers from the toa and instead added them into the Toa, for exmaple G1 Gali needs her mask in order to breath underwater, while G2 Gali does not. G1 Onua needs his mask to be super strong, while G2 Onua does not.

it would be better though if the mask powers like shield, super speed and flight where caused by the symbols on the Toa’s armor for example.

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I really don’t see any merit in what you claim, especially since we haven’t seen it in action. Besides, I just wanted to see if someone in the community might do a fan story to serve as an alternative for what we got in G2. I don’t really care what side anyone is on in the “G1 vs G2” debate, because I’m on neither side.

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I feel like 90% of G2’s story (story only) is actually not that bad, it’s just how it was conveyed and the overall character development that is completely wrong. It’s another case of “nice concept, bad execution”.

But yeah, I would totally love to see someone who’s good at writing remake G2 too.

But I also agree with @DarkHenrik, it should be an unbiased person to do it, so that the story can be its own thing.

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im just pointing out that from what you just said as an example, many Bionicle fans would probably add more G1 elements to G2’s story, like adding in the Kanohi names, making the G2 Vahi somehow be part of the G1 Vahi and stuff like that. You yourself said that you would like for the Toa to have mask powers again, and that G2 should have keept the name Kanohi as the name for the masks.

its the Star Wars Prequil problem, the ideas where good, but they where poorly directed.

one can tell that the creators of G2 had great ideas, but they where poorly handeld, just like the Star Wars Prequils.

just like Anakin Skywalker, Makuta’s story was poorly told, the idea behind his character is great, being a figure who want to use his power to help people only to become a monster because of those powers. but because of the poor direction, the character suffers and thus becomes something of a joke to the people watching.

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