That’s really cool! Thanks for posting them here!
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Ooh yeah those are great
They’ve got the mystical 2001 feel
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I find it quite interesting that the first specifies that Mata Nui wasnt even aware he had a brother. To me that somewhat fits with the later revelation that Teridax wasnt his literal brother but titled himself that out of sheer megalomania. he didnt know he had a brother because only one of them views it that way.
on the other hand Teridax WAS created to eventualy fulfill a task on the very same level of Mata Nui. In that sense you could call them brothers in a figurative way. But just like anything living inside him, Mata Nui didnt care about him. Kinda fits with that too.
Both more than likely just super coincidental but at least the slightest bit interesting to me.
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Oh yes, there are tons of things that seem “predicted” by these prophecies in retrospect. For example from Chapter IX: Mata Nui’s Last Battle:
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Makuta behind the scenes is fascinating. Despite being the main antagonist, it seems he was constantly being retooled for the story, even before Greg’s big retcon. As far as I can tell there’s like four or five different iterations of Makuta Teridax.
- Spirit Makuta - Based on statements made by Alastair Swinnerton, albeit many years later, Makuta was intended to be a spirit-like entity, who had power of the island but no psychical form. (Except possibly the Shadow Toa?) Possibly seen in 2001 media minus MNOG.
- MNOG Makuta - Here, Makuta is a spirit of destruction, the yin to Mata Nui’s yang. He is not truly evil but still must be stopped to awaken Mata Nui. Has a physical body but his true form is a vortex of chaos.
- Titan Makuta - A powerful entity whose motivations may be more complicated than expected. Mask of Light gave us hints, but these concepts were never fully fleshed out or realized.
3.5 Makuta’s…Brothers? To add mystery, LOMN revealed Makuta had brothers, plural, beside Mata Nui. What this meant at the time was unknown, but it was figured that “the Makuta” was a title, similar to the Toa and Turaga, and thus could be more could exist than the one in Metru/Mata Nui. - Makuta Teridax - Greg figured that if Makuta cannot be taken seriously as a villain if he loses all the time. So, he was retconned into a chessmaster supervillain, where even his defeats are staged for a great plan. Abandoning Thomson’s desire to have no truly evil characters, Teridax was rotten from the very beginning.
4.5 Teridax’s Destiny - One complaint is that Makuta changed so much over the years that he was no longer recognizable from the original legend. Journey’s End tried to tie things back together to some extent. It reaffirmed that the BoM rebelled due to their envy of Mata Nui and the Toa. And Teridax was supposed to inherit Mata Nui’s body after his mission, thus he was Mata Nui’s brother. (Even though nobody but MN knew that so it still makes no sense why they called him that, but whatever…)
However, if this story bible does say that Makuta was merely testing the Toa, that adds an even earlier version that was changed later… sort of. Despite being his character being overhauled, his motivation in 2001 was still persevered in some form years later.
Q: Then how come Makuta’s tendrils did not kill the Toa Olda in their (as far as I know) first face-off?
A: Simple, actually. In their first battle, Makuta really didn’t believe they were Toa and he was testing their power, not trying to kill them.
Makuta’s Guide to the Universe
For almost 1000 years, I attacked the Matoran of Mata Nui with wild rahi, storms, and plagues, all designed to break their spirits. Just when I believed they might be ready to crack, the Toa Mata arrived, to give them new hope. Or were they truly the Toa Mata? I had to find out, and so set the rahi against them, knowing true Toa would be able to defeat them with ease.
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The part about their souls reminds me of how early on, Makuta may have represented Mata Nui’s inner darkness, (though I don’t remember if that was Templar’s interpretation, or Swinnerton’s). This could explain the brotherly aspect, as well as how Mata Nui was unaware of his existence.
It’s probably a stretch, but part of me thinks that Takua may have represented Mata Nui’s inner light somehow. Not only does he show up during the Toa’s first fight with Makuta, but he returns as a Toa to fight Makuta himself before they both combine. Obviously it doesn’t work in current canon, but it could’ve been an interesting direction if Mata Nui was there all along and simply forgot who he was.
I wonder how much these “legends” actually impacted the rest of the story decisions at the time. It looks like the ones focused on the Toa all follow a similar pattern to the PC Game: Find the village, prove themselves to the Matoran, get a noble mask, find the Turaga deep within their region (at the Temple), then defeat a “monster” guarding the entrance to more masks (in other words the next level).
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I love how all the other toa have to meet their Turaga and then Lewa goes to Nuju.
Even in the first story bible turaga Matau was as useless as ever.
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It’s really fascinating how many Makuta interpretations there are. Just like the story evolved from a very mythological feel, the idea of what Makuta is evolved with it. You are basically put into perspective of a Matoran finding out about their world - being told legends and fireside stories their entire life and gradually finding out the real truth behind those stories when the Turga drop their act. You find that just like there is a grain of truth in legends, there is also some truthfull inspiration behind Turaga’s lies.
@Potahu_Nua I noticed that too. And there are some similarities to Lego Adventures magazine comics.
@Racie02 I’m pretty sure that was a typo 
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Nobody’s seen the full thing yet?
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Oh I have, just didn’t have time to post about it here. Thank you for that.
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The document can be kind of confusing at times as different sections were clearly written and revised earlier than others. Still, it’s interesting to read all the notes and see how things were still evolving within the document itself.
People tend to forget how much influence Legend of Mata Nui had. It was supposed to be the main vehicle for the story,; the comics and other games were merely tie-ends.
Makuta being a chimera-like monster is a cool idea and might have been the inspiration for the Rahi-Nui. That said, this might not what Saffire would’ve gone with. I believe the Shadow Toa were also considered to be the final boss fight, as seen in the first BIONICLE book.
However, the biggest surprise was that Mata Nui was just one of six giant robots who also crashed. I wonder how long they kept that idea before it was abandoned.
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Agreed. The whole document reads like an ongoing active idea process, which I guess we should have expected, based on what little we knew before hand. Some of its contents were actually released in official fashion, makin its way on the webpage, quest for the masks card game and many promotional materials, not to mention influencing early MNOG and by extension MNOG 2.
Most wrote it off as outdated interpretations of the characters/story, but now that we have the story bible, it actually confirms what I have suspected for years - that the uber-mythological descriptions were never meant to actually be real, just a part of Matoran legend and culture. In that sense all of the mentions of certain Toa battling each other and bringing calamities or prosperity, remains canon as Matoran folktale. It was always meant to be largely untrue, just loosely based on Toa’s actual attributes.
This one might be an opposite effect. I’m not sure, but it seems based on the story bible that the self-replicating cihmera-like form of Makuta was meant to be literal at first, but when this description was released on the webpage, it read more like a legend which was implied to not neccessarily be true from the start. At that point Makuta was already a shapeshifter.
Oh yes! It is fascinating and by the looks of it, this unreleased game was the single biggest factor that shaped the story into what we ultimately got. Were it not for the game, Bionicle would by MUCH different.
I don’t think anybody has expected that! Reminds me a little bit of the revelation in the extended version of the Iron Giant movie. I wonder if Greg got the idea for the second robot from this scrapped concept. Who knows…
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I find it interesting that the Makoki Stones were originally going to be the masks the Toa needed to collect.
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This bit is weirdly similar to Mata Nui’s actual purpose in the final story:
I wonder how much of the final version existed back then.
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To be honest, for all we know that could still be the case… those robots may still be out there somewhere. Just one of those loose threads left open for any story team in the future to pick up. Arguably they already did with the prototype and the second Mata Nui robot.
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Imagine if those were the AUs that Takanuva visited: not actually alternate universes, but the other robots scattered across Aqua Magna…
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Huh, interesting idea. I probably still prefer the actual AU, but this is a fascinating take.
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There’s a good chance that there is at least one other GSR out there in canon. The one the GBs were supposed to build to help repair SM at the end of his mission.
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No wonder Bara Magna lacks raw materials… the construction of those robots would have drained the planet of metals and other elements…
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I agree with @ToaKebaka in that I prefer the official alternate universe setup, but I could get behind the City Of Silver pocket dimension (and likely other pocket dimensions) actually being in another robot. Perhaps they’re in the second Great Spirit Robot that the Great Beings made to reform Spherus Magna?
The official canon states that this second robot was never built, but Greg has hinted that it may actually be out there:
Chat with Greg Farshtey | Page 317 (thegreatarchives.com)
Chat with Greg Farshtey | Page 453 (thegreatarchives.com)
We even know that, if this robot was built, it was to have Matoran, which is also reminiscent of the original idea that the other five robots needed to be awakened in later stories:
Official Greg Dialogue | Page 274 (thegreatarchives.com)
Official Greg Dialogue | Page 282 (thegreatarchives.com)
This quote in particular makes me wonder if the claim that “the third robot was never built” was always meant to be a mistake on the part of the characters, and the third robot would have eventually come into play:
Official Greg Dialogue | Page 251 (thegreatarchives.com)
On An Unrelated Note...
On a bit on an unrelated note, this idea of there being alternate Matoran in the third robot is really interesting, even if they’re not secretly the pocket dimensions of the main robot. For starters, these Matoran likely wouldn’t be Awakened, and the universe as a whole would likely be far less populated since the robot only needed to operate for a brief period.
Of course, if the robot and its Matoran actually got built and activated, then these unAwakened Matoran might well be running long past their expiration date with nothing to do, which is another interesting concept.
Also, might there be Matoran of other Elements not seen in the prime universe?
Not necessarily; we know that the Toa can create matter from nothing, so it probably wouldn’t be difficult for the Great Beings to do the same.
This could also explain the ridiculously fast manufacturing time; rather than moving and assembling all that metal, the Great Beings just generated it in place in the right shapes.
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