Now I’m almost positive everyone has pros and cons to Bionicle G2 but my major dislikes from the start of it were as follows: 1. Too many real world references in character design aesthetic, like using essentially human skulls for masks/faces on the bad guys, making them basically skull pirates of Caribbean. 2. Simple, non unique real world reference names, Skull warrior, Skull spider, Quake beast, Lava Beast etc. 3. Making Makuta just one character not a species, with the name Makuta. 4. Changing Mata Nui’s name to Ekimu and the name of the island to Okoto. 5. Super simple story 6. Most sets were boring in build and most in design as well. 7. Making the Toa of Air the Toa of Jungle 8. Changing the Toa personalities. 9. The sticker like appearance of chests on many sets. 10. Not making the main bad guy an official set before it ended. Some positives of G2 would be 1. Umarak character and set and name 2. Makuta was still a good character and design. 3. Having Bionicle return was exciting. 4. The sets that were good were really good. 5. The story was starting to pick up and improve as time went on. Now these are my Opinion, and may differ from yours but I would still like to hear all of your dislikes and likes as well!
My opinion on G2 has changed a bit over the years, and my perspective on some of the issues you mentioned have changed as well. When it first came out, I shared quite a few of your same issues: the overly simplistic story and some of the changes like Lewa being switched from air to jungle. But looking back, my opinion on G2 has really sweetened over the years, and that’s for a couple reasons. Firstly, I’m glad it gave us something. When it was first announced, the possibility of constraction straight up disappearing wasn’t really on the table in my mind, and now that it’s gone, I wish I’d been less picky. That’s not to say I wouldn’t have liked it to be better, but I wish I’d appreciated it more when it was around. I still remember, having passed on most of the sets when they were first released, finding a lone Skull Warrior set after the theme’s cancelation sitting at the back of a shelf at a Target. I picked it up instantly, if only because I knew it’d probably be the last chance I’d ever have to buy a new Bionicle, and I have to say (hopefully not coming a cross too melodramatic when talking about a plastic figurine) it was a sobering moment.
And while I think most of the sets were pretty great, I think my favorite part of G2 was the simplistic story. It felt like a blank slate that wasn’t overcrowded with a mountain of books, lore, and games that contributed to the canon. Do I think that an in-depth story and complex canon are bad things? No, I think they’re one of the main reasons G1 was so great, but having the island of Okoto be such a simple setting made telling stories there and filling in the gaps myself a lot more appealing. But truth be told, the biggest reason I’ve come to appreciate the blank canvas that was G2 has to be the Okotan Adventures RPG I took part in on these boards. With so few canon details tying us down, it felt like the entire island was ours to explore and shape the way we wanted, while still providing a nice framework to start off of. As far as I’m concerned, the stuff that happened in that RPG is the G2 canon, and characters like Geet, Blaze, Lync, Gladius, Hitora, Mokuzai, and Echo are so intertwined with G2 that they really elevate the theme in my mind, despite not being official characters.
So yeah, those are my rambly, super subjective reasons for why I like G2. Cheers.
I actually don’t dislike G2 at all, those are things that I disliked sure, but I did get quite involved with it and had a few sets, I was just pointing out the things that really got to me, but I still liked G2 and was generally excited for Bionicle to be back and excited to see more of G2 but then it ended unfortunately. I actually need to update my “positives” section haha, it sounds like I only like a few things.
Agree with many of your points. Especially the names, stories rely on characters with iconic names to stand out and they were truely generic.
Bit on the fence with this one, the idea that it’s just a name and that him and Ekimu are literally brothers as they are the same species wasn’t a bad one per say.
Disagree with this one, those names were among the ones inappropriately used from the Maori language and is would be a bit silly for a meer mask maker to be named after an island he lives on. I reckon the names have a ring to them, simply lack of development that could have added endearment to both location and character.
Mainly the names bother me the most out of all my dislikes. Yeah I guess the Makuta thing is just personal preference. Also I can understand that, it’s just Mata Nui was an extremely iconic name from the original and kind of the centerpiece name in the series, so it was just odd to not see it in G2, though I understand your reasons.
I’ve always been a fan of G2, and there isn’t much I would say is actually bad about it.
I think G2’s biggest fault is that it never got to do enough. It was released and left with little fanfare either way, and to me that’s incredibly sad because I so vividly remember when I saw the first social media teaser of the Mask of Creation just floating on a pedestal. For Bionicle fans, it was incredible.
That was the moment we all knew it was real, and it felt soooo surreal. I don’t think I’ll ever have an experience like that again.
I think the biggest point of yours I agree with is that it was only just getting its foot on the narrative gas pedal when it was cancelled. The comics were really cool, the books by Ryder Windham were significantly adding to the characters (I adore Gali’s arc), and the announcement of JtO, to me, felt just as good as if we were getting a new Mirimax movie. Things were kicking up, it felt like, but they never got the chance to grow into something more than it started, story-wise.
Yes. This is the biggest issue I have with G2’s ending. I feel like it had a ton of potential, but then it was dashed by the cancellation. Personally, I thought the sets were pretty good, and if we had gotten a third year the theme would’ve really taken off.
Really, all I disliked was that it had almost no third-party characters, such as the Dark Hunters, and no real explanation of whether this was happening in the Matoran Universe or somewhere else.
- Totally agree. Skulls don’t belong in Bionicle.
- There may have been a middle way. Something that is recognizable yet a fantasy word. More like Glatorian than Rahkshi.
- Even Teridax is absolutely fine with me, setting Makuta up as an individual with his more popular name is not a problem to me. Bionicle was intended to last three years. And I don’t think Makuta species would have been mandatory to establish for those three years. As a name for a concept of evil Makuta works just fine. And in G2 Makuta was for most of the time more a general concept of evil, even though he was a character he was more the driving force that kept the villain bosses going on.
- Theoretically it is a “new” character, because it merges Vakama, Takanuva, Arthaka and Mata Nui into one. Though the execution was lackluster.
- Nothing to ad there. It really seems like they looked at the sets and the masks that came with it and asked: "How can we tell a easy story that bring together the characters with the masks their sets come with. Especially LOSS suffered from that, because he was not even included in the mask quest but a quick fight after that.
- I disagree on that. I think the Toa Master are the best designed sets, even though pricing is badly balanced. The Toa Uniter are also great. The protectors and creatures are good for the most part, but the theme made barely an effort to make those desirable. The protectors have no important main story moments and I don’t recall one character defining trait of one protector. The villains, except Skull Scorpio, have good concepts, but are immensely dragged down by the overall theme of their wave.
- I don’t get why this had to be changed, though I am not upset. What got me upset was the weird delivered call-outs of such changes in the story, because they pretend to be clever, what they are not really.
- Looking at the way the how weird the references to G1 are delivered I sometimes ask myself, whether the writers actually read any of the story material by Greg Farshtey. I know Ryder Windham didn’t, but did the authors of the story bible?
- I am conflicted on those. They give the figures some details, but some of them seem very cartoonish.
- I have to admit my disappointments about G2 grew during the course of early 2016. At that point I was looking forward to buying the Makuta remake in 2017 and then be done with G2. But that didn’t happen. Nevertheless I bought a decent amount of G2 sets.
1.Umarak looked cool. Maybe he would have even made a better villain than Maskmaker Makuta. But Journey to One rushed through everything before he could be decently developed.
2.Not for me. Makuta for me is a powerhungry demigod who believes that he is the destined to become the supreme being. By giving Makuta a more “mortal” origin story, he appeared for me to be more a whiny insecure incompetent guy who just wants to compromise his failed career. G2 Makuta is neither depicted as powerful ( the power comes from his mask) nor intelligent (mask of ultimate power was unstable and the negative effects were not anticipated). Those were the traits that made Teridax cool for me. This is just Garmadon lacking any of the complexity that made Garmadon work.
3.Yes it was. Absolutely yes.
4.Again yes.
5.I really didn’t see any progress in Journey to One. It was just: Toa get creatures and masks, Umarak gets mask of control. More didn’t happen in season 1. And season 2 was the trainwreck that was created due to the cancelation. The second graphic novel was cool admittedly, but JtO season 2 broke continuity to it in a way that puts some of the scenes in the graphic novel into question. Did Ekimu use the mask of time? When did he read the prophecy? The G2 story never really clicked with me.
Well I can completely 100% agree with you, in fact some points made me realize that I actually like less then I thought, like Makuta as a character is in fact much less imposing and intelligent and powerful.
Yeah G2 had a lot of potential that got lost. And Ekimu and his brother are the biggest symptom of oversimplification that stripped said potential straight to the bone marrow
I felt that there were a bunch of good character ideas but they didn’t get fleshed out enough.
2: Ehh, I kinda get it but also don’t. Aside from Kulta, the other Skull enemies are raised common folks. Bob and George, the cannonfodders. You can’t really give special names to non-special characters. I also like the name of the Skull Spiders. This is the kind of descriptive name common people would give to different things, like how in hungarian gargoyle literally means “water spitter”.
6: Just no. Both Masters and Uniters are great, the Protectors are the perfect villager sized sets, and the Skull Army is the best enemies both set and design-vide next to the Bohrok Fight me.
7: Maybe it’s just me, but I always thought it was weird for Lewa to be the Toa of Air. Like, look at his box art: He is in the forest, he is green like the trees, he is swinging on a vine, he has a (woodcutter’s) axe. How is he not the Toa of Jungle/Plantlife?’
Other than 10, which is a hard agree from me, I’m indifferent about the other cons, mostly because I don’t care that much about G1’s story (couldn’t get myself involved in it since all I had was fan translated 01-03 comics and the movies + very high level story.)
The thing that bothers me however is the lack of variety in certain areas. We didn’t get Skull sets for Gali and Tahu, we didn’t get trans-gold mask for them either. We got only three skull villain masks. Same applies to the Beasts, but it’s even worse, with no emeny for Gali, Pohatu and Lewa. I would have loved to see more bone pieces in different colours and sizes, or other add on pieces.
The other thing I loved tho and you didn’t mention is the art book and the concept art. God dam, that art book really makes me wish for more. More of the places, more of the character designes, more of everything.
I agree with most of your dislikes, and most of them ultimately boil down to the fact that Lego took a fairly generic theme and called it Bionicle, rather than trying to continue and/or replicate what made Bionicle special in the first place.
However, there are a few parts I disagree with:
I don’t think this is a very fair comparison. To me, Ekimu never really felt like he was meant to be Mata Nui, and was instead an entirely new character.
If we were to compare Ekimu to G1 characters, though, he and Makuta seem more like Artakha and Karzahni, rather than Mata Nui and Teridax.
As for the island… I don’t really see how that’s an issue. This was clearly meant to be an entirely new story, rather than a redo of G1, so I don’t really see why the island should be the same.
I have issues with the design of Okoto itself, but not with the fact that it’s not Mata Nui.
I heavily disagree with this; to me, the G2 sets are some of the best CCBS sets Lego ever made, even if it’s only because they integrated non-CCBS parts and techniques.
I can’t overstate how much I disagree with this statement. Giving characters names is one the the most basic worldbuilding techniques there is.
Just look at G1 Bionicle. Virtually every single character had a name; one-shot characters like Dezalk and Gar had names, or even the background Matoran in MNOG II.
And even when there were swarm-type villains without individual character names, they were still identified by “Bionicle names”, such as the Bohrok, the Vahki, and the Skrall. Some of these even had subtypes, such as “Tahnok” and “Lehvak”; they weren’t just “Fire Drone” or “Acid Drone”.
And it’s more than just the characters; virtually every single thing in G1 had a special name. Tahu’s mask isn’t just the “Mask of Shielding”, it’s the Kanohi Hau. Nokama didn’t live in “the Water district”, she lived in Ga-Metru.
So when the main conflict in G2 is between the Masters and the Skull Creatures fighting over the Mask of Creation, the whole story feels a lot more generic.
(Also, at the very least, Skull Slicer and Skull Basher were individual characters, and had backstories from when they were alive. It would have been nice to get actual names for those two.)
Yeah, G2 had some problems with names. Mainly, I didn’t like how it was never specified if Okoto was an island, a continent, or an alternate universe. And Makuta and the villains each wave were not my favorite, since they all seemed to be very generic: the type that, in a similar way to villains like the Joker, apparently are never really able to be defeated. They just disappear for a while and come back for the Final Battle event. Plus their names are as generic as any unnamed character in any TV show or movie: Skull spiders, Skull basher, Skull warrior, etc. Umarak was the only villain I liked, since he didn’t look like another Black Phantom clone that somehow got a facelift to having a skull for a face.
That and they actually took the magic out of all the names and words completely, there were no words from the Matoran language used period, not Kanohi or any other Matoran words for objects or things, which was half of the fun and nostalgia of the original G1 to me, I know they said they needed to make it more simple for the target audience to understand, but I was 10 when Bionicle first came out 20 years ago and I understand it just fine, I think they believe children are alot less Intelligent than they are, or unless their target audience was 5 and 6 year olds.
That is very likely true. Quite unfortunate, but it probably explains many disappointing things, such as how many of their themes are incredibly predictable nowadays.
Real talk? A big weakness of late G1 and G2 was the lack of collectibles.
The masks were so fun! They really implemented them well in G2. There were a lot of creative designs and variants. If they had made more color variants, like releasing toa masks in all 6 colors, AFOLs would have eaten that up. There were some real marvels of Lego’s design too, like the mask of creation. As it is, the masks are fun to own and there are some intriguing variants out there, like the trans-blue mask of water and the gold skull mask.
To add to that, introducing gold and silver as ‘ordinary’ colours for the Toa right off the bat meant the colour schemes where a bit messy and watered down the ‘specialness’ of say a gold or silver mask.
I agree with most of the problems you have listed, above. 
Both back then, and even now, I have a lot of very similar issues with G2.
The truth is, that when I saw the early leaks of the reboot, back in late summer of 2014, at first, I was burst out in such rejoice, that, (and I don’t make this up!) I started literally dancing in some very awkward way in the room.
Then, a few days later, I’ve started to think about it more & more, and I got the conclusion, that maybe I should be more careful, not to get my
my hopes too high. I’ve simply reminded myself, that the overall direction, which TLG have taken after the cancellation of G1, was quite apparent on those story centric themes they’ve made not so long after.
One of the most notable examples of this new trend was Hero Factory Which, through Lego have demonstrated, that they’re most likely will never make such tonally dark & complex in narrative story as what G1 Bionicle had. (for various reasons)
So, I’m was well aware, that whatever this new installation of Bionicle will end up be, it won’t be as “serious” as G1 was.
With this in mind, I tried to receive it with an open mind, but despite this, I’ve still found myself utterly disappointed with the end result.
Truth to be told, it did have a few positives, mostly the sets, although, they could have improved on some parts. (Gali, (IMO) besides of should have more dark-azure parts on her, also should have got a different chest plate and a tiny bit thicker thighs, to further emphasize her feminine attributes.)
Overall, it was… Okay, for what it was, but I certainly won’t remember to it as fondly as I will to G1.
Cheers! 