Jean Valjean

Thank you. That has been incredibly helpful. Granted, the official MP3 is a slightly different version of the song, that ends with a fade instead of some heavy head-rocking, but I downloaded the music video directly from BioMedia, which is probably the best that I'm going to get. Certainly, it's better than any of the uploads to YouTube. 24601

A quick nostalgic refresher: Alright, now that we're on the same page, where on earth would I find an M4A file of this song? When I look up this band, I found a topic on another forum wondering whatever happened to to them, so I'm not alone in wondering where I can get high quality files of their songs. I've heard some say that the band only existed within the Bionicle creative team,that they were formed to write a couple of songs for marketing, and then disbanded. Some additional searches seem to suggest otherwise, since I can find a couple of other songs by them ("White Chrismas" and "My Way" released on 2011). Anyway, I was wondering if I could find an album anywhere that has this particular song. It's been nagging me in the back of my mind forever. 24601

I'm not saying Bionicle Go necessarily. People think AR medium and immediately think that there's only the Pokemon Go genre, but the medium is still developing and people have only just begun to figure out some of its applications. For example, maybe there would be an app that could take a picture of your MOC and help deconstruct it, or plan the construction of your MOCs, or turn an MOC into a 3D avatar for an MMO, or imagine what they would look like recolored, or create Bionicle-themed animojis (without calling them that, because the name is copyright). LEGO would have to acknowledge the technology in some way in an ever-changing world. I think that there are applications to AR that are quite complementary to Bionicle's constructive and creative nature. When it comes to adventure, though, I'm with you; Bionicle doesn't need a Pokemon Go knockoff, in part because those games are becoming overdone anyway, but logically because such games complement franchises that take place in Earth or Earth-like settings. An actual Bionicle adventure experience would best be suited for an MMO. I do, by the way, definitely agree that G3 could stand to one-up G1. I'm in the came that thought that G1 was great in the first three years,and then lost something when more of the true nature of the world was revealed, like Makuta not being the Makuta, and Mata Nui being a giant robot, and the two not being brothers...eh. I would probably want the twist to validate the supernatural pitch that drew people in, though. That is to say, Makuta and Mata Nui would have to genuinely be brothers and genuinely be deities, but there's more to the story. One franchise that did this really well was Avatar: The Legend of Korra. It took the spiritual roots of the franchise and delved deeper into the implications. In the case of the Legend of Mata Nui and its essential elements, I can see a few areas where a twist could be fit in that fit in completely with the preestablished information. For example, if Mata Nui and Makuta were brothers, could they have a sister? What about the Great Beings and their motives? What if Mata Nui isn't asleep, but dead? What if Mata Nui had unfinished business before going to sleep? What if the story was far more literal than at first thought, an Makuta and Mata Nui were literally imponderable supernatural monoliths? 24601

Welcome to BZPower! I wish you a great time in developing this concept; you can post about it once you're ready in the Epics Sub-forum. You can either "illustrate" your epics with your MOCs or, even better, post links to them in Bionicle-Based Creations so that people can comment on them individually. Keep it up, and you'll find yourself the world's friendliest audience here. 24601

@Sir Keksalot: My opinion is that, since the initial pitch of Bionicle was the island setting and that was what has been proven to be able to get this unique property rolling, it's probably best and most essential to go the mystical/cultish rout with the original Mata Nui storyline. The first year of the multi-media project by necessity has to be the basic pitch for the consumers/audience. @Makaukau Nuva: That basin sounds interesting. It takes the ancient proto-religious superstitious Polynesian feel of G1 and adds some of the proto-religious tropes from Mesopotamia, which I find fitting. Perhaps I do disagree with you a little on one particular point; I'm not entirely sure if the secret has to be answered. It probably depends on how you interpret the mystery of G1. I tended to interpret it as something generally mysterious, inviting speculation, and not a high-concept mystery where the audience was intended to ask a specific question of the setting. With that having been said, perhaps most other people interpreted it differently. Anyway, on my own end of things, I was thinking about this at work today and realized something. Bionicle is a multimedia project, and therefore must take advantage of new media since 2001. What has changed since 2001? In a word: smartphones. They have become a major part of how we consume media, and every franchise today must find uses for that media. IP that hasn't adapted to smartphone media has gone the way of the dodo; I'm looking at you, Neopets. Additionally, tablets are mainstream and no longer a gimmick. Tech companies have compressed technology to such sizes that today's watches are yesterday's supercomputers. Microsoft is releasing a new foldable tablet. Cars now have infotainment systems, and houses now have virtual assistants. If Bionicle were to comeback today, it would enter a completely different world than when it first came to. Only, a G3 Bionicle wouldn't come into being today. LEGO will inevitably wait for a little while to give the franchise some rest and time to accrue nostalgia. Let us say that, at the very earliest, LEGO released G3 full-throttle at the beginning of 2025. What will new upcoming technology allow? MicroLED screens are projected to be the norm by then, and so will 5G connectivity and high refresh-rate monitors, so expect that to affect the way that Bionicle animation is presented. There will be a new standard of Bluetooth by then, and older devices will probably use at least Bluetooth 5.0. What does this mean? I'm not sure, but conceivably more electronic sets like the Manas could take advantage. We don't know where virtual reality is heading in the near future, but presuming that it's still a gimmick with a small audience, it's still a gimmick worth exploring. After all, if G3 lasts for ten years, it should anticipate the growth of such an upcoming market. I'd personally love a VR experience for MNOG (I don't think that the medium lends itself to an MMORPG; that's best for laptops and desktops). Most significantly, I think that since Augmented Reality is becoming a major part of the phone market, Bionicle should create an AR experience that complements the physical sets, and fundamentally modernizes the way that people play with their product. 24601

Yes, that was clearly the case, canonically. Were a G3 to get a little more imaginative with the Matoran language, I would change that. Within the context of the Bionicle universe, something divisible by 6 makes more sense, so I'm imagining either base 12 or base 36. My preferences are for 36, although as Planetperson said, the writing system as it currently stands really lent itself to 12. Were a reboot to write numerals in essentially the same way, then 12 would probably make the most sense, and it would also probably tie more into the sets, since there are 12 released per year. 24601

Because I want this guy to love me. That's all I ever wanted. Why, TMD, why?!? Which is a humorous way of getting atan underlying truth: for whatever reason, we here in BZPower who were here a long time ago came to know and understand each other on an individual level. The bond was especially strong, I think, because even when Bionicle ended, we still had common interests because Bionicle was such a franchise that it attracted a very particular subset of creative types, and a lot of them convened here. I, in particular, made a few strong bonds with fellow writers and worldbuilders. Nowadays, we mainly communicate over Skype. Also, for all I know, there may be a Bionicle G3. And if that ever happens, I hope to have a voice, however small, in ensuring that it's as beautifully conceived as possible. BZPower was a surprisingly influential fanbase that Greg Farshtey reached out to quite a bit. 24601

Oddly enough, I was just about to leave a post saying that I was planning on doing a Paradox Games mega-campaign from CK2 -> EU4 -> Vic2 -> HoI4. I had been interested in getting these games fora mega-campaign for along time, and I figured that I simply couldn't make it worth my leisure time. Partially, that's because I don't have any friends who are into that kind of things. As it turns out, I'm wrong about that, because I do have a friend who's into it, because he just recently tried out HoI4 and is trying to put together a full party of players to engage in a long-term campaign. I also made a new friend who's interested. Personally, I will only engage if we can start out from CK2 or EU4 and work our ways through a mega-campaign, but if we did, it would be a great way of keeping in contact with my increasingly long-distance friends. Anyway, I'm still working on the idle, graphics-free Kittens Game. Plus, I have an idle clicker game on my phone at the moment, where literally all I do is gradually wait for my resource production to double, and then double again. How hardcore I am. Oh, me! 24601

My understanding is that you can construct a spinner if you're a Bara Magna resident, but the only people who will have a physiological reaction to it are Protodermis-based lifeforms from the Matoran Universe. I'm not a story expert (goodness, I'm not; the books never sold in my area), but to me it sounds like this is comparable to a disease bred in a lab. You know what, I think I'll expand on that analogy with a specific hypothetical scenario. Indulge me for a minute. Let's say that during World War II, German scientists experimented with biological warfare to create a virus that could annihilate entire populations. Unfortunately for them, probably due to their cumulative medical knowledge being incurably tainted with research tainted by certain presuppositions about what kind of people were worth their attention, their most efficient virus only really worked on their own gene pool — the German gene pool. They snuff out the virus, but true to their character, they keep all documentation. Not only is the data useful for further development, but such a virus would still have its uses in a worst-case scenario. Among the most fanatical members of the Party, there was a commitment that Germany should be the preeminent world power, or it may as well not exist at all. I know that this sounds rather extreme even by World War II standards, but the political elites of Germany at the time were genuinely crazier than what the movies depict. So, leading up to the Fall of Berlin, though the officers and the true fanatics were quite willing to distribute cyanide tablets among themselves and their families in order to avoid judgment for their war crimes, getting everyone else to go along with this was a different story. Hence, this hypothetical virus would have been the ultimate fail-safe. Something happens, and they aren't able concoct a batch on time. When the Soviets occupy Eastern Germany, they confiscate the virus and all related research. They do not use it, but it is kept around as a fail-safe of their own. The U.S.S.R. was, at the time, paranoid that Germany would rise again. Perhaps they weren't paranoid — history will never know what Germany could have been capable if the Soviet Union didn't go overboard with preemptive measures such as deporting every last German from Prussia and importing an entirely Russian population to make sure that Germany would never, never, never ever have any Prussian generals again. In this analogy, the virus is the Rhotuka Spinner. It was created by Germans (the Protodermis-based lifeforms) who, given their limited reality, only knew about German (Protodermis) genes. Their virus therefore was designed purely to destroy the gene pool that they best understood, the German (Protodermis) gene pool. However, the Russians (Bara Magnans) could still use the virus (Rhotuka) to affect Germans (Protodermis lifeforms). The main difference is that the Bara Magnans can still find other uses for the Rhotuka. I mean, there's nothing stopping them using them in a game of Ultimate Kanoka Golf when they couldn't get any Kanoka Disks because all of the Matoran called dibs on them. Not surprisingly, those Matoran didn't want to touch the Rhotuka, and it's like that situation where everyone at the Thanksgiving family reunion gets to the turkey before you can, but the vast majority of them are lactose intolerant, and so you have the tasty but not-quite-as-festively-appropriate cheese pizza instead. Eh, long story short, if the energy required to charge a Rhotuka is biological, then only creatures with a Protodermis-based biology can charge them. It the energy isn't biological, then I could see it being like the virus analogy where Group B recreates a virus invented by Group A that only affects Group A. I err toward the latter, because something about the Toa Hagah shields screams, "This tool does not have to be tied to biology!" A more story-savvy fan can correct me if I'm wrong. 24601

Thanks. That's some pretty awesome information, and a detail that I actually quite like. Personally, that settles it for me that I like Base 36 the most for Bionicle. If there's ever a G3, I would love to see them incorporate that in somehow. Combining LEGO and math games for the win. 24601

Holy cow. I really, really with that this guy's designs were sets that I could just buy. They are BEAUTIFUL. I especially like how consistent the colors are. 24601

I'm currently playing "Kittens Game." 24601

I just realized something. You said that it's the Disney Canon for STAR WARS, and yet it's set during the George Lucas era. Although, I'm purely thinking of canon in terms of films. I don't watch the other stuff. I'm one of those guys who treats STAR WARS as a purely cinematic experience. I might change my answer, thinking through the exact nature of your premise. You're saying that they would befighting the people of Spherus Magna while also engaged in their Galactic Civil War. Well, they lost that war. So in this scenario, they lose even without matching up against the Bionicle. Since they've already lost, if you add in Bionicle as their enemies, they only lose harder. The only question is whether or not, in the Disney canon, there are enough remnants left for the First Order to rise up. In keeping with my original answer, I would say "yes." The Bionicle universe simply isn't populated enough to change much about the reorganization of a portion of the galaxy. 24601

It's from earlier this decade, and I think that it's the one that they made in the first half of 2014, according to the tech support guys who sold it to me. There have been a few major discounts coming from their office, selling used Macbooks for a couple hundred dollars and stuff like that. Not just anybody can buy them. In any case, the takeaway here is that I have a Mac. Specifically, a five-and-a-half-year-old Mac Mini, with some dismal I/O and a little bit of dust inside. However, it was only $50, and when I looked up Macs from when this model was first made in 2012 (this was made in 2014, but it didn't refresh the 2012 design; also, it looks like someone expanded the memory on it), the price of refurbished 7-year-old Mac Minis is nine times as much as what I paid. So I got a pretty good deal. Not that I'm using it. I'm giving it as a gift to a friend whose old computer broke down, and I'll let him assume that I paid the standard refurbished price for it, somewhere around $500. If he wants to pay for my next few meals, then my purchase paid for itself. 24601

My goodness, I honestly didn't know that he still answered questions. A quick Google search shows that he's still employed by LEGO and works for their editorial board, so I guess that an answer from him would carry the authority of canon. 24601

I look at that Akaku and all I can see are the faceles mooks from the movie Atlantis: The Lost Empire. It definitely doesn't have that islander feel. It's far more "dieselpunk adventure serial." I'd imagine that it would have something to do with being at a high altitude. Probably, seeing through the thick blizzards...oh wait. Okay, something like being able to travel really quickly between low altitudes to high altitudes without getting altitude poisoning. Meaning that he could also go from deep underwater to the surface without getting the bends. 24601

I just have to say how much I appreciate your first post on BZPower. You could have posted about any unceremonious thing, but you go through all of this trouble to create an image of a yellow MNOG2 Tamaru. That represents the exact sort of pedantic nerdiness that Bionicle fandom is supposed to be. Gosh, I love this nerd culture. As WOLKsite said, there were several different interpretations with how colors were rendered. I would say that I would trust MNOG and the Bohrok animations more. The reason being, the promotion render is just one still image, whereas the MNOG games and the Bohrok animations were consistent over time. This meant that it was had to be approved by creative directors more times than the individual still. It seems to me that the LEGO company was more committed to this look than the yellow-lime-ish color in the render. As it stands, the most appropriate answer is that, pending Greg falling out of the sky and announcing his return to answering fan questions on a long-since dead franchise that no longer employs him for his time, there is no canonical color. 24601

I'd add Toa Lhikan, as everyone's been saying. It was definitely the first indication that shape might not correlate with power, although it was similar enough that you could assume that shapes could be approximated and still work. Later, it became real apparent with the Toa Ignika, when the Selutu's powers have been mentioned elsewhere, but it was also made clear that the shape of their masks was outside of the normal order of things. You might argue that this could buck the trend, since the creation of the masks was outside of the normal order of things as well, and this might have bypassed the requirement for them to conform to a specific shape. Then, the next year you ended up with the Mahri, and the shapes of all of their masks were specifically tailored to existence underwater, and that was the reason for their shape, not the correlation to their power. Although like Lhikan's Hau, one could interpret it such that apart from a different design aesthetic, the overall form of the Mahri's Kanohi were close approximations of their archetypal versions. So you'd think that we would then all apply the same standard to all masks that came about as a form of mutation or transformation. However, that is not the case. Early on, when the Toa became the Toa Nuva, it looked like their masks became randomly mutated. Yet, it wasn't actually random. As it turns out, that was apparently the timeless design, because there were other Kanohi Nuva scattered across the island, all with the same shapes. Therefore, we also cannot assume that all mutations result in established masks with altered physical forms. Sometimes a mutation will give you an established mask in its original form. Which is odd, for a mutation. If you want, I could continue overthinking things. It's interesting, though; that's one thing that I appreciated about Greg Farshtey and the other creators behind Bionicle, is that they generally thought through the complications of all of these technicalities that you could overthink, and they overthought them, too. For example, I was just looking up the Kanohi Mohtrek, and Greg thought through exactly how he wanted that sort of time travel to work. Stuff like that. So in spite of the continuity errors, which is what you're talking about, they did a pretty good job of knowing their nerds. 24601

I remember posting a similar question on my blog, except it was the Toa Nuva vs. the U.S. Military. Most people posting said that our Earthling military would win. Gosh dangit, we have Abrams tanks! Respectfully, I disagreed. Perhaps in their basic Toa forms, without the Kanohi Nuva. Still, the jury spoketh. I will respect their judgment enough to definitively declare that the Galactic Empire would win against the collective Bionicle cast. Plus: "UNLIMITED POWAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!" 24601

Thanks for the contribution, Cybre. You provided a lot of food for thought. Probably the one area where I different is probably when it comes to villains. Basically, I think that Makuta is inevitable ("And I...am...Iron Man!"), but among the minions, I could see some original creations. The protagonists were what made the series, not the revolving door of antagonists. However, that does make me wonder. There could be a recurring group of six villains, which occasionally gets rebooted sets alongside the Toa. I don't think that it should be overly done, though. There should still be plenty of years with sets of faceless minions of Makuta. For the record, I'm not saying that I would complain and personally dislike it if villains were rehashed. In particular, the Rahkshi (I would totally be onboard with them being the aforementioned recurring villains, with a lot more sapience). However, I would just be concerned about how that would pan out from a marketing standpoint. I think that when a G1 villain set was rehashed, it would have to be one of those unexpected crowd-pleasing moments. I don't think that people should simply expect to see a fan-favorite. You're totally right when you talk about the ambition. It was ambitious. It had a fairly low budget, obviously. It wasn't like there were any mainstream theatrical movies. Still, when creating a mysterious, immersive world, that ambition showed. The second (technically, third) coming of Bionicle could only be sold if it had the requisite ambition to give it the proper gravitas. I also agree, I would prefer a "soft" reboot. Basically, it would be classic Bionicle, but with more experience and confidence behind the wheel, allowing for even more ambition than the first time. Instead of pitching it as a third generation, I would pitch it as "The definitive version that Bionicle was meant to be." 24601

I'm curious, where does this 85% come from? Never mind, I looked it up and found the Greg blog post. Before this moment, I thought of the Toa as being 50% organic, and the Glatorian being 100% organic, only appearing mechanical in the sets because of the natural limitations of LEGO toys. Personally, if I were in his shoes, I probably would have kept the number ambiguous, though since this is canon, I guess that it would be one of the major guidelines for how I would design characters in a higher budget, mainstream Bionicle film. To address the main question of this topic, though, there are many reasons why this wouldn't work, the first being that a Toa team is, by definition, a Toa team. Secondarily, and about as important as the first, Toa are literally created by destiny. It's a little more complicated than that, and it's been a while since I've delved into the story, but for all intents and purposes, these are beings forged by destiny. The physical existence of Glatorian doesn't share such a clear spiritual source. 24601

Woah, woah, woah...How is this topic the first time I have ever heard of "Gold Good Guy?" I lived through that era, and I was paying active attention to Bionicle, too. Had a Lhikan set, too. This slipped past my radar? As far as mask shapes go, shape doesn't determine power. Power doesn't determine shape. When you look at a few illustrations from various comics, you'll also see mask shapes here and there on Matoran that were never released on any set. A lot of masks existed, evidently. It's just that for the sake of the sets, certain masks are designed. These were toys, first and foremost. Greg had to work around that. 24601

In the classic 2001-2003 sense of Bionicle, Makuta. I'm not countin the Great Beings as characters. The idea of Makuta as a dark being from before time gives him a sense of infinite intelligence. Other than him, Kapura. Kapura knows how to move so slowly that he goes fast. If he can reverse logic like that and make it work out in the real world, what else can he do? He can probably say, "2+2=2," and through his genius actually change the postulates of mathematics to make it true. 24601

I agree with the final statement of TheArchAngelleofJustice. That is, certain things about the island of Mata Nui need to be kept mysterious and open to interpretation. One of the things that made Bionicle Bionicle was that it knew how to constantly entertain the imaginations of fan fiction writers. If you explain too many things that don't need explaining, it takes away from that. In a different scenario, I can see myself having another opinion. If Greg had been the type of worldbuilder who, like Tolkein, thoroughly developed multiple volumes of history, all for the sake of inventing fictional languages, and that had been a staple feature of Bionicle, that would have been great. However, while it had its own alphabet, Bionicle quite famously did not invent its own language. Conlanging wasn't at its core, so it isn't critically important that we know the origin of absolutely every word in the Matoran culture. 24601

This was something that I was thinking a little bit about lately while looking at highly divisible numbers. And then, today, I was thinking about how Tolkien (the BZPer, not the original) started developing the Matoran language based off of canon materials. It actually just occured to me, though, that the original canon didn't really do justice to how the Matoran would have likely had a very different view of numbers than humans do. Let's consider: in just about every set, Matoran don't have ten fingers. The Miramax films gave them ten, but that's just one interpretation. Eight seemed to be the norm once 2010 rolled around. Why would they use Base 10? Culturally, could something else have sufficed? And what would have been the most fun learning. This ties in with a question someone on BZPower asked a few years ago (okay, over a decade ago): Why six sets? Why not five? Or seven? Four? Why that seemingly arbitrary number? It wasn't something that I had much of an answer for at the time, but now that I think about it, I realize that it has a lot to do with six being a strong composite number, the product of the first two prime numbers. There are nice advantages to being able to divide your lineup into either two groups of three or three groups of two. That sort of happened with the three virtues, in a way, as each village began breaking them down into subcategories of thought. With that in mind, I would imagine that the most appropriate base for the Matoran would be Base 6. It simply matches their culture. It also would have been the simplest for kids to learn. Alternatively, I could also see Base 12 or 36. Given their astronomy, I actually kind of like Base 36. It's 6^2, and I can imagine a month on Mata Nui lasting for about that long. I know, I know, it was later revealed that they didn't come from Mata Nui, or that planet at all. I guess that picking a numeral system based off of time and astronomy depends on whether or not you think that it would have been cool for the first three years, or for the entirely of the G1 run. Assuming the latter, a unique number system and means of keeping track of time might have been interesting foreshadowing for later revelations of the Matorans' history. For example, a base 36 system might have been an possible early hint that there were more Toa teams. Of course, their writing system doesn't make this particular base system ideal. I did always wish that the Matoran number system wasn't almost exactly like their alphabet. I think that it would still be great if it incorporated circles into the number writing system, but not as framing devices. Rather, I would want to see circles being a strong, consistent feature throughout the numbers, but used in a different way than the letters, such as how circles have formed a unique part in representing the various virtues and values of the Matoran villages*. Or, perhaps they wouldn't use circles, and they would resemble variants of the Toa's symbols. Or it could be a mixed radix system, or a combination of things. It doesn't have to be a positional notation system at all. It could potentially use a far more poetic way of representing large numbers, and they wouldn't necessarily require a base at all. At least, not in their written language. Perhaps they would still speak in something such as 6, 12, or 36. However they wrote it down, it would probably be a very good featural, logical writing system. While their alphabet isn't featural, being essentially a carbon copy of the arbitrary Roman alphabet, their number system was. There were pretty consistent patterns behind their numbers. I thought that it said something about their culture, too. Still, what if it hadn't been simple numeral and positional notation? Kids across the world were scrapping to translate Matoran signs on MNOG. Translating the letters was a little hard, but translating the numbers was easy. What if something had been done about those to make them their own separate puzzle? Alternatively, because they're kind of robots, sometimes depicted with four or eight, they speak in hexadecimal. That would be interesting, and also fitting, although I like the highly composite numbers more. As I said, I think that it fits with their overall culture more. 24601 *The alliteration was purely an accident, I swear.