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And that's just from a business perspective. There's also the fact that the story itself wasn't the best it could be (far from it) and had too much random baggage weighing it down, and that would hold back a new installment too much. In my opinion, it'll be far more refreshing to get a reboot, and hopefully this time they do it better. 

I honestly don't see why a time-leap couldn't work for both audiences.

Takuma Nuva

I honestly don't see why a time-leap couldn't work for both audiences.

Takuma Nuva

 

Well, for starters, then it's only a matter of time before frickin' Vezon of all people shows up again.

 

On a more serious note, though, there would still be issues to be addressed. For instance, what about Tahu's Golden Armor? If you introduce him with that, then you have to explain how he got it, what powers it has, why it has those powers, etc. If you bring back Lewa, people are going to wonder how he got away from the Jungle tribe Glatorian in one of the forgettable serials. If someone like Helryx shows up, you've gotta explain her, too. Anything new would be held back by the old canon's standards, old canon rules like garbage gender ratios would still be in effect, etc. It's too risky.

I didn't know about the Greg answers and winning BZP stories until I joined BZPower. 

 

Most of the universe doesn't even consider that part of the Bionicle story at all. You can ditch it/ignore it when writing new story without rocking the proverbial sales boat. 

 

As for the rest of this argument, I remain neutral. I maintain that a continuation is possible, though if they were doing one of those, I wouldn't bring the original Mata back as protags. New characters would be the way to go for that.  

The amount of hoops required to jump through to make a continuation work is unjustifiable. At that point, you are risking alienation of potential new fans for the sake of old fans who statistically were not buying as much, and definitely aren't the target audience now.

Let's say that I stack up all of the logical evidence for a continuation right now and prove that a continuation could work. 

 

Would you still say that a reboot is a better business decision?

You don't just have to prove that a continuation is possible, but that it's a better business decision than a reboot. That's my argument, after all. I'm not saying a continuation couldn't be done, merely that it would be a terrible business decision, because of the risks of alienating new fans for the sake of appeasing people outside their target audience.

 

If you can somehow disprove that, lay it on me.

Meanwhile someone from LEGO reads this blog entry and is all "yes... of course that's why we're doing a reboot. I mean, of course we took all of that into... consideration... -dials phone- Guys, we need to redo everything. Everything"

 

But I do agree with you. A reboot would be the most fun and the most refreshing. Plus it means all elements could be multi-gender and I am one million percent for that.

How anyone could think the 2015 release is anything but a reboot is beyond me.

Seriously though, Transformers is one of the best things Bionicle can be compared to since they're both toylines first and foremost, but also have a ton of multimedia storytelling.  Considering what Transformers has been doing (rebooting whenever necessary) has made it wildly successful for thirty years, it stands to reason that it would be a good move for Bionicle too.

 

And really, think about the possibility of Bionicle becoming a Transformers-style franchise.  Just picture it for a minute.

 

Reboots are a great thing, people.

How anyone could think the 2015 release is anything but a reboot is beyond me.

 

Well there hasn't been anything to suggest one thing or the other yet so far. I'm assuming that when NYCC hits we'll get more hints as to the nature of the continuation, but for now its up in the air.

did soMEONE SAY TRANSFORMERs and BionicLE CROSS-ExAMINATION

 

*dumps 3 overstretched and messy portfolios onto the desk and begins to cry*

The issue with a continuation isn't that it's impossible, but because there are not enough advantages to continuing the story to outweigh the massive advantages of a reboot, let alone to counteract the major disadvantages a continuation would bring. In fact, there's only one advantage of a continuation, which is to pander to older fans—but since many older fans are fine with a reboot, and those who aren't won't necessarily be guaranteed to like the direction a continuation goes either, that "advantage" is an exceptionally risky one to rely on.

The issue with a time leap is that Bionicle works on a practically geologic time scale. If you skip ahead 10,000 years, that's STILL not enough time for the older generation of characters to die off or lose relevance—so the only option for a fresh start would be to invoke some disaster that killed off a bunch of major characters (and since that's GUARANTEED to tick off older fans, the few advantages of a continuation are instantly nullified). And besides that, new fans who aren't used to the ridiculous lifespans of characters in the Bionicle theme would likely be incredulous at that kind of time skip—do you really want to start the new theme by shattering the suspension of disbelief of most prospective newcomers?

Greg may not be significantly involved in the story, but since the announcement he's stated very firmly that fans shouldn't assume the new theme is a continuation just because of recurring elements like the Mask of Creation. Since those elements are the ONLY things about the new theme which could be reasonably construed as evidence of it being a continuation, and there's been PLENTY of other evidence for the theme being a reboot, I don't think there's really any point in expecting anything other than a reboot at this point.

Yeah, it's not that a continuation couldn't work. But to put things simply, the risks outweigh the rewards. A reboot stands to benefit everyone, while a continuation stands to benefit only a small and hard-to-please fraction of the theme's target audience.

Plus if it's a reboot then we can totally makes lots of jokes about Bob, Enzo and Dot being in the BIONICE universe.