Did G1 BIONICLE characters have too many powers/abilities?

Do BIONICLE characters have more abilities than they could practically use? For example, during the 2006 story Jaller Inika possessed:

  • The ability to create, control and absorb fire (combined with lightning powers)
  • The Kanohi Calix, mask of fate (which gave him greatly enhanced agility and reflexes)
  • An energized flame sword (which could be used both for melee combat and to fire blasts of electrified fire
  • A Zamor sphere launcher (which could be used to free enslaved Matoran and as an offensive weapon against the Piraka/the environment)

These powers have a lot of potential to be used and combined in interesting ways that showcase individual character strengths. However, while rewatching Noah Productions’ adaptation of the 2006 BIONICE storyline I was struck by how often character powers are either sloppily shoehorned into action sequences or forgotten altogether.

What do you guys think? Has anybody else noticed this issue with G1’s storytelling/world-building? If you write your own BIONICLE stories, how do you juggle all of these different abilities?

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I observed this too, but never had a problem with it.

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I think the most over powered non-titan characters were the piraka, actually: specifically, Thok and Avak because of their vision powers. However, because of the way it was written, and the fact that characters rarely keep the same power-sets fro very long. For instance, as of 2007, that list would change to:

The ability to create, control and absorb fire and breath underwater
The Kanohi Arthron, mask of sonar (pretty self explanatory)
An aquatic power sword (which could be used both for melee combat and to fire blasts of fire
A Cordak revolving blaster (which could be used to channel elemental power and as an offensive weapon against the Baraki/the environment)

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I still think your point stands, but I do want to clarify that most Toa weapons were simply to channel their innate elemental powers, and most couldn’t actually fire blasts themselves (aside from projectile weapons like Vakama’s disk launcher).

Were the Inika weapons actually capable of firing blasts on their own? That’s something I didn’t know before.

Anyways, the obvious reason for this is that it’s simply more cool features for the sets to have (mostly in terms of the weapons), but I agree there was a lack of neat combination of their powers later on in the story.

I feel particularly there was a lack in the story overall of creative uses of mask powers and elemental powers in combination. That would have been cool to see.

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I just saw it as continued escalation of power. I found nothing wrong. Really it’s the lack of a true demonstration of how a Makuta would fight that leaves their 42 powers as seeming over-powered.

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Functionally, I think the amount of abilities the Toa had in any given wave makes sense. After all, each additional power or weapon adds playability value. Since the sets can’t actually shoot fire or lightning, adding a rather superfluous launcher enhances the set.

In terms of story, which I think is what you’re really getting at, I do agree that there seem to be a lot of overlapping powers. However, at the same time, the Toa often battled villains with as many, if not more powers than they themselves had, so for them to have fewer powers would put them at a practical disadvantage. Also, I wouldn’t necessarily characterize the Zamor Launchers as an offensive weapon in the Toa’s case, as they were only used so against an enemy once, when Hakann and Thok were deprived of Brutaka’s power. The other cases were about freeing the Matoran, which was less of an actual attack. Cordak Blasters, on the other hand…

I think the only truly overpowered beings in the MU are the Makuta, because 42 powers of highly destructive capability would make any battle against ONE Makuta akin to the Battle of Titan in Infinity War, never mind the battles against the EIGHT Makuta in the 2008 story.

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I think the issue comes from Lego setting themselves up with too many “power slots” to fill
Take a Toa in late G1. They had an elemental power, a mask power, the launcher of the year, their weapon, and their mutation/adaptation/whatever. That’s a lot of powers to make up, and they don’t always necessarily hang together in a way that makes any sense, such as Nuparu having earth powers, flight, a gun that shoots small doses of energized protodermis, and lightning powers. That’s not a character you can explain easily.

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Setting Makuta aside I don’t really think so, at least not how they were portrayed in the portions of the story I’ve read, which isn’t really all that much. They usually had a dedicated melee and ranged weapon with use of their element being somewhat uncommon. There’s not giant fireballs or tornadoes being thrown about every battle

But if you were to go and make your on character you could easily stack quite a few powers onto a single character without doing all that much. Elemental Powers, Mask Powers —some of which can grant more powers—, Rhotuka Powers, weapons with specific powers like Kanoka Blades, as well as miscellaneous Kanoka tech that can let them hover. This is also before you get into nonvanilla and semi-canon stuff, like mutations, makuta experimentation, modifications to mechanical parts, more varied use of kanoka tech, using the abilities of certain weapons in ways probably not meant to be used, and many more that I’m probably missing.

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Considering some of the late Gen 1 Toa had to fight against beings with 42 different powers or upgrades due to bodily mutations or modifying their bodies with new technology, having at least a few powers at their disposal needed to combat them would make sense to me.

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I think it is mostly fine. It should be limited to two, any more than that start to become complicated an hard to remeber. But intuitiviness is most important thing.

Example:

-Sentrakh has Illusion, Darkness, Mind wipe, Dematerialization and molecular transformation rhotukas. Ridicilous amount and hard to remember.
These powers do not have any connection to one another.

+Zivon has 4 rhotuka powers, but each removes one sense of the target, so they are easy to remeber. (Power to remove each sense)

Mask powers are hard to remember, but since every toa is color coded, we do not have to remember their elemental powers. Their weapon powers are also clear from a glance, crossbow shoots lasers and axe cuts things. Zamors shoot orbs.

So audience only have to merise 6 mask powers instead of 6 eleme, 6 weapon, 6 zamor powers.= 24 powers

If each toa had unique zamor power and weapon had a secret boost (more elemental power, better reflexes) then it would be super hard and bad design.

Edit: shadowed one amd piraka

I totally forgot that shadowed one had third power besides his staff and eye powers. He has rhotuka that… I bet you do not remeber. It was never used in story but since character has a laumcher, he was given a power.

Piraka each have two powers plus elemental. These powers are all over the place, and each has more than one. Aside from hakann who is my favorite piraka I can’t remeber all of the powers of piraka. I remeber thok could move objects/make them alive but I can’t remeber what his eye power was. (Spellbinding huh?)

Two powers are a max. One is better. If one has two they should have a connection or be used in story a lot or be intuitive enough to remember.

Edit: voporak has a time field, his rhotuka alters sense of time. Simple.

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