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OFFICIAL 2016 Bionicle Topic


Makaru

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At first I was disappointed that the "Powered Up" instructions were online only instead of in the booklet like the booklets in G1. Then I was hoping that the online system meant they could release new combined forms whenever online. But that ended up not happening. Haha.

I hope they have combinations for the new sets though, because you can do a lot with the way the new sets are built.

Related: does it bother anyone else that a lot of sets have "worthless" pieces in them. Like there's instructions to put 1/2 pins in the character's arms and legs with nothing to connect them to. I always feel like those parts are meant to be used in a planned future combiner.

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At first I was disappointed that the "Powered Up" instructions were online only instead of in the booklet like the booklets in G1. Then I was hoping that the online system meant they could release new combined forms whenever online. But that ended up not happening. Haha.

I hope they have combinations for the new sets though, because you can do a lot with the way the new sets are built.

Related: does it bother anyone else that a lot of sets have "worthless" pieces in them. Like there's instructions to put 1/2 pins in the character's arms and legs with nothing to connect them to. I always feel like those parts are meant to be used in a planned future combiner.

In the case of sets like the new Onua and Tahu, I've heard some people theorize that the pins in the legs are so you don't mix up the 6M beams in their legs with the 5M beams of the same color in their arms. If you tried to use the 5M beam on the legs instead of the arms, you'd quickly realize your mistake because there'd be nowhere to add those pins.

 

Not so sure about the pins in Kopaka's arms. They might just be to help fill in the holes in his arms, which would otherwise be totally exposed from both sides.

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At first I was disappointed that the "Powered Up" instructions were online only instead of in the booklet like the booklets in G1. Then I was hoping that the online system meant they could release new combined forms whenever online. But that ended up not happening. Haha.

I hope they have combinations for the new sets though, because you can do a lot with the way the new sets are built.

Related: does it bother anyone else that a lot of sets have "worthless" pieces in them. Like there's instructions to put 1/2 pins in the character's arms and legs with nothing to connect them to. I always feel like those parts are meant to be used in a planned future combiner.

In the case of sets like the new Onua and Tahu, I've heard some people theorize that the pins in the legs are so you don't mix up the 6M beams in their legs with the 5M beams of the same color in their arms. If you tried to use the 5M beam on the legs instead of the arms, you'd quickly realize your mistake because there'd be nowhere to add those pins.

 

Not so sure about the pins in Kopaka's arms. They might just be to help fill in the holes in his arms, which would otherwise be totally exposed from both sides.

 

Huh... that's very interesting and actually quite clever if true. 

I guess in Kopaka's case it could be so that people don't put the axle in the wrong whole, which is a hard mistake to make as the arms would fall out if you did. 

Back to Kopaka '15, I noticed the half pin used on his chest after the 3rd time I rebuilt him. The first time I guess I thought it would have some reference later and the 2nd time I must've breezed through too quickly. I guess that must've been for reference as well. This certainly cleared up a few things. 

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So, I dunno how many people share these issues, but as much as i love the 2015 sets... they aren't perfect. Some common complaints are that the arms hang too far back, and in some cases, too low, and of course, there's the complaint about the unused ball joints.

 

Well, I may have a solution. I have just ordered two of these from Aviary on bricklink. http://img.bricklink.com/P/11/24124.jpg One dark tan, one black. I'll use the dark tan one for Pohatu, the black one for someone else. Maybe Tahu. I'll use this to flip the gearbox around, making the shoulders, hips and neck in line, and I'll use a Toa Metru pelvis for the hips.

 

Now, they still won't be perfect. They will have incredibly short necks and a gear may collide with their chin. However, I won't know until I try it. Depending on how happy I am with this experiment, I will share the results.

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The Toa- A Bionicle Retelling by NickonAquaMagna http://www.bzpower.com/board/topic/25275-the-toa-a-retelling-of-bionicle/

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Got Kopaka and Melum yesterday, and while the set overall is better than Gali, I still have problems with it.

 

For every one good thing Kopaka has, he also has several bad things. For starters the silver, white, and trans light blue work for the color scheme when not united, while the gold and earth blue do not. His legs are great, but suffer from weird extended ankles and the gold crystal spikes that throw it all off. The weapons are great, but I cannot see how that "shield" could block large attacks. Somehow, though, the torso shell doesn't bother me. The pistons don't stick out as much when they are not on a metallic-colored piece, and it works here. 

 

The arms are my main point of contention, though. While the construction isn't the worst, it's still not very great. The shoulders are connected to the torso by one pin each, so the shoulders sag a small amount and move a small amount whenever the arms are posed in any way, making me fearful that the parts used for the shoulders will break in the near future. The Skrall armor on the shoulders collides with the mask whenever you try to put Kopaka in any pose where his arms are perfectly horizontal, and to top it off the arms cannot achieve a full-on horizontal T-pose.

 

The waist swivel is just as tight as Gali's, and due to the inability to put Kopaka into some poses, he can only sweep with his sword at the same level as his abdomen (unless you don't try the T-pose and go for the vertical slash).

 

Melum is better than I expected. I found that the creature heads fit best in unity forms when a figure with an extended axle/horns on the head piece are outfitted with the creatures (so Umarak has an unintentional locking system for creature heads in unity forms). The color scheme is nice, but the limbs are very abstract. I found that the only pose I could put him in that didn't look awkward was when he was on all fours, and I'm surprised I haven't seen pictures of either Melum or Terak on all fours, because the pose looks very nice. 

 

The two figures look best in the united form, which sums up my biggest complaint with this wave: most of the figures only look good in their united forms. While I like the two separated, they look best when combined, and while this is a good business strategy to promote the uniter gimmick in one set, it doesn't do it for me.

 

However, I do like this set; I feel like I got my money's worth from it, and I recommend it to anyone who is on the fence about picking this set up from the shelf.

Edited by FordianL at the BCC
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while the gold and earth blue do not. His legs are great, but suffer from weird extended ankles and the gold crystal spikes that throw it all off.

The gold can be replaced by the silver crystal pieces from Gali, it looks much better.

Edited by Display Name Goes Here
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while the gold and earth blue do not. His legs are great, but suffer from weird extended ankles and the gold crystal spikes that throw it all off.

The gold can be replaced by the silver crystal pieces from Gali, it looks much better.

 

I agree! That's actually the first thing I did after I built Kopaka, and I think it would have been better if it had used the silver crystal pieces and have different parts in gold, or just make all of the silver gold instead.

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The weapons are great, but I cannot see how that "shield" could block large attacks.

I'm not a huge fan of Kopaka's new shield, yet I ought to bring up that sometimes a smaller and lighter shield is actually MORE useful than a larger one. After all, the bigger a shield is, the heavier and more unwieldy it is. And when it comes to melee combat, the chief purpose of a shield is to have something to deflect attacks with other than your arm/hand. A small shield used to parry attacks is called a buckler and was a very popular tool during medieval times.

 

Now, when it comes to projectile attacks (or I guess, in a science-fantasy story like Bionicle, energy blasts), a bigger shield would be preferable, since you can't exactly move your arm fast enough to guard against a bullet, arrow, or energy blast out of the air unless you have super-reflexes of some kind. But then, we've seen nothing to indicate that the 2016 Kopaka doesn't still have his "Frost Sphere" ability, which lets him project a shield all the way around himself using his ice powers. And that seems like it'd be his most effective defense against energy or projectile attacks anyhow.

Edited by Aanchir
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I didnt even consider it a shield at first. I also dislike that his sword is in his left hand. Kopaka '15 held the spear in his right and and the shield in the left. This would imply that he's right handed. But now he's suddenly swapped the hands that each weapon belongs to.

I can assume that this is due to the parts that make up the shield, but still...

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I didnt even consider it a shield at first. I also dislike that his sword is in his left hand. Kopaka '15 held the spear in his right and and the shield in the left. This would imply that he's right handed. But now he's suddenly swapped the hands that each weapon belongs to.

I can assume that this is due to the parts that make up the shield, but still...

Actually, since both the panels used for the shield have mirror-image counterparts that are presumably the same price, I doubt they're the reason for the shield moving to his right hand. Rather, I think it's likely that they put his new shield in his right hand because it makes it easier for right-handed people to operate the attached blaster.

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Is Umarak's design meant to be digitigrade? I was talking about how I wished they would make a digitigrade bipedal set last year XD

That actually makes sense. Assuming the antlers are actually a part of Umarak and not a part of the mask (I believe Skull Basher and Grinder had their horns as part of the mask as the horns disappear when putting on a different mask in the animations.) However in the new commercial, Umarak retains his horns when he wears the mask of control. Maybe he's meant to be more animal-like than humanoid, hence the digitigrade feet. 

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Is Umarak's design meant to be digitigrade? I was talking about how I wished they would make a digitigrade bipedal set last year XD

That actually makes sense. Assuming the antlers are actually a part of Umarak and not a part of the mask (I believe Skull Basher and Grinder had their horns as part of the mask as the horns disappear when putting on a different mask in the animations.) However in the new commercial, Umarak retains his horns when he wears the mask of control. Maybe he's meant to be more animal-like than humanoid, hence the digitigrade feet. 

 

The set has the horns attached to the head/eyestalk, so it appears it is part of his body. I thought the extra pieces on his calves were something like G1 pistons, but now it looks more like it's there to add bulk for a digitgrade look. Neat!

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Is Umarak's design meant to be digitigrade? I was talking about how I wished they would make a digitigrade bipedal set last year XD

That actually makes sense. Assuming the antlers are actually a part of Umarak and not a part of the mask (I believe Skull Basher and Grinder had their horns as part of the mask as the horns disappear when putting on a different mask in the animations.) However in the new commercial, Umarak retains his horns when he wears the mask of control. Maybe he's meant to be more animal-like than humanoid, hence the digitigrade feet. 

 

The set has the horns attached to the head/eyestalk, so it appears it is part of his body. I thought the extra pieces on his calves were something like G1 pistons, but now it looks more like it's there to add bulk for a digitgrade look. Neat!

 

Yeah, but Kulta and Skull Basher's horns are built in to their eyestalk as well. The animation still chose to get rid of them when they changed masks. Although everything that happens in the animations isn't exactly 100% accurate. Noting that Protector of Sand and Ekimu have different eyestalk colors than the official sets; in addition to the animations not following certain box-comic events such as Kopaka losing his mask. Although, I believe when I looked at the masks on the old website the masks had the horns with them. 

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I just realized that the printing on the torsos for my copies of Gali, Onua, and Kopaka are slightly off center. That's pretty poor, especially for the fact that they could have been stickers.

Usually when they're stickers I put them on wrong anyways. I'll take a manufacture defect with printing over a personal error with stickers any day. 

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A small thing to point out: Ekimu's eyes are back to being blue on the new image of him on the site, even though it is his (otherwise real-world-accurate) set appearance.

 

I just wish they had sticked to blue eyes in the animations... :(

I stopped thinking about eye color consistency when they couldn't even get the eye colors right on the Barraki instruction manuals. Like, did someone just go and photoshop the eye colors differently for the booklet?

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A small thing to point out: Ekimu's eyes are back to being blue on the new image of him on the site, even though it is his (otherwise real-world-accurate) set appearance.

 

I just wish they had stuck to blue eyes in the animations... :(

I gave my Ekimu set blue eyes. Though I doubt I'll leave him assembled for much longer. I want to put the MoCr next to the MoCo on my "Mask Hunter" MoC with the other gold masks.

:r: :e: :g: :i: :t: :n: :u: :i:

Elemental Rahi in Gen2, anyone? A write-up for an initial video for a G2 plot

 

I really wish everyone would stop trying to play join the dots with Gen 1 and Gen 2 though,it seems there's a couple new threads everyday and often they're duplicates of already existing conversations! Or simply parallel them with a slightly new 'twist'! Gen 2 is NEW, it is NOT Gen 1 and it is NOT a continuation. Outside of the characters we already have I personally don't want to see ANY old characters return. I think it will cheapen the whole experience to those of us familiar with the original line...

 

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I just realized that the printing on the torsos for my copies of Gali, Onua, and Kopaka are slightly off center. That's pretty poor, especially for the fact that they could have been stickers.

Old or new? Because either way, it's a fairly common thing. My 2015 Lewa's chest-print is way off-center. It's the same thing with my Skull Warrior.

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Biosector01 says that the creature have "creature masks". So those are not their heads? The head are their masks? I'm honestly confused  :???:

It might just refer to them as masks because of the way they go over the Toa's heads/masks. But it's also possible they are masks. Leads you to wonder what the creatures' heads look like if that's true, since they aren't represented in the sets. But it's worthwhile to keep in mind that product descriptions aren't always accurate to the story and might just be describing the parts from a design standpoint, same as how the faceplates of Nitroblast and XT4 are identified as masks despite not really having "heads" they fit over.

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I just realized that the printing on the torsos for my copies of Gali, Onua, and Kopaka are slightly off center. That's pretty poor, especially for the fact that they could have been stickers.

Old or new? Because either way, it's a fairly common thing. My 2015 Lewa's chest-print is way off-center. It's the same thing with my Skull Warrior.

 

New. I've never gotten a misaligned print before, and to have three in a row is a new territory for me to enter.

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Biosector01 says that the creature have "creature masks". So those are not their heads? The head are their masks? I'm honestly confused :???:

It might just refer to them as masks because of the way they go over the Toa's heads/masks. But it's also possible they are masks. Leads you to wonder what the creatures' heads look like if that's true, since they aren't represented in the sets. But it's worthwhile to keep in mind that product descriptions aren't always accurate to the story and might just be describing the parts from a design standpoint, same as how the faceplates of Nitroblast and XT4 are identified as masks despite not really having "heads" they fit over.

I actually think it would've been cooler to have masks as well. Maybe make it so that the masks could clip on to the new toa masks.

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Biosector01 says that the creature have "creature masks". So those are not their heads? The head are their masks? I'm honestly confused :???:

It might just refer to them as masks because of the way they go over the Toa's heads/masks. But it's also possible they are masks. Leads you to wonder what the creatures' heads look like if that's true, since they aren't represented in the sets. But it's worthwhile to keep in mind that product descriptions aren't always accurate to the story and might just be describing the parts from a design standpoint, same as how the faceplates of Nitroblast and XT4 are identified as masks despite not really having "heads" they fit over.
I actually think it would've been cooler to have masks as well. Maybe make it so that the masks could clip on to the new toa masks.

These are testing the water for the clip-together Mask of Time next year. The Masters' masks that year can also clip together with the MoT.

 

More
Pure speculation, mods. Don't censor me.

 

 

 

Edit: Please use spoiler tags for storyline spoilers only. Converted to 'more' tag.

-Wind-

Edited by -Windrider-

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Elemental Rahi in Gen2, anyone? A write-up for an initial video for a G2 plot

 

I really wish everyone would stop trying to play join the dots with Gen 1 and Gen 2 though,it seems there's a couple new threads everyday and often they're duplicates of already existing conversations! Or simply parallel them with a slightly new 'twist'! Gen 2 is NEW, it is NOT Gen 1 and it is NOT a continuation. Outside of the characters we already have I personally don't want to see ANY old characters return. I think it will cheapen the whole experience to those of us familiar with the original line...

 

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Biosector01 says that the creature have "creature masks". So those are not their heads? The head are their masks? I'm honestly confused  :???:

It might just refer to them as masks because of the way they go over the Toa's heads/masks. But it's also possible they are masks. Leads you to wonder what the creatures' heads look like if that's true, since they aren't represented in the sets. But it's worthwhile to keep in mind that product descriptions aren't always accurate to the story and might just be describing the parts from a design standpoint, same as how the faceplates of Nitroblast and XT4 are identified as masks despite not really having "heads" they fit over.

 

They may actually have masks as this page from a LEGO magazine describes the Toa and Elemental Creatures as having "halves" of the Golden Unity Masks.

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Ah, if those are "halves" of the Gold Masks, that explains quite a few things.

  • Why the creatures' heads are hollow under under the chin. (Very easily just a design choice so that they can go over the Toa's masks. But if there's a story relevance, this is it.)
  • Why the Toa need the Gold masks in order to unite. (Seeing as the creatures' heads and the gold masks are made of the same material, the regular masks would be a different material and not able to unite. This also explains why the other Toa can't canonically unite with other element's creatures.)
  • It also explains the ugly colored ridges at the top of the Toa's masks as where the gold mask was torn in half. Which raises the question as to why the non-gold  mask has the same ridges with the silver. 

 

Of course there's also a few issues with this too. If they're half of the gold masks, why are three of the creatures silver-headed? Why then, can Umarak unite with them? His mask doesn't share anything with the creatures so his united forms must be entirely forced and mashed together. 

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Ah, if those are "halves" of the Gold Masks, that explains quite a few things.

  • Why the creatures' heads are hollow under under the chin. (Very easily just a design choice so that they can go over the Toa's masks. But if there's a story relevance, this is it.)
  • Why the Toa need the Gold masks in order to unite. (Seeing as the creatures' heads and the gold masks are made of the same material, the regular masks would be a different material and not able to unite. This also explains why the other Toa can't canonically unite with other element's creatures.)
  • It also explains the ugly colored ridges at the top of the Toa's masks as where the gold mask was torn in half. Which raises the question as to why the non-gold  mask has the same ridges with the silver. 

 

Of course there's also a few issues with this too. If they're half of the gold masks, why are three of the creatures silver-headed? Why then, can Umarak unite with them? His mask doesn't share anything with the creatures so his united forms must be entirely forced and mashed together. 

- Those "ridges" are crystals. 

- Crystals seem to be a source of raw elemental material. 

- The Toa also have new crystal armor parts.

- I think you're going a bit too deep into this. :P

- The creatures and the Fusion Masks might come together as one, but I don't think that it means they were      

   originally part of a single mask, because we learn on the BIONICLE website that the creatures are elemental

   beings that came into existence when Okoto was created, at the beginning of the G2 universe's creation.

- It has been hinted that Umarak needs the Mask of Control in order to force the creatures to unite with him,

  although I have no idea if that's canon or just marketing fluff.

Edited by Tarvaxx
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Okay, does anyone have any sliver of information reguarding the release of the app? Or are we all equilly as clueless.

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I like the idea of the Unity Masks being made from two halves, with the creatures' heads being one of them.

But we have to remember that Club Magazine has been known to just make stuff up about the sets, like saying that Skull Slicer was controlled by LoSS.

 

Although, they were the source that revealed "Kulta", and they were right about LoSS not needing the Golden Mask of Skull Spiders to control the horde...

(Reminds me I never got round to saying "I told you so" to those people who were so sure that the mask was canon. Consider yourselves told. ;))

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I like the idea of the Unity Masks being made from two halves, with the creatures' heads being one of them.

But we have to remember that Club Magazine has been known to just make stuff up about the sets, like saying that Skull Slicer was controlled by LoSS.

 

Although, they were the source that revealed "Kulta", and they were right about LoSS not needing the Golden Mask of Skull Spiders to control the horde...

(Reminds me I never got round to saying "I told you so" to those people who were so sure that the mask was canon. Consider yourselves told. ;))

Wait, are you saying that the Golden Mask of Skull Spiders ISN'T canon? Because I don't believe we've ever seen anything to imply that. Just because it never became a plot point in the story itself doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The Kanohi Vahi was first available in sets in 2001, yet never became a plot point until mid-2003. If you were claiming it wasn't canon near the beginning of 2002, you'd be in for a rude awakening. Not to mention the huge number of combi models and contest winners in G1 that were considered canon despite never actually appearing in any story media...

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I like the idea of the Unity Masks being made from two halves, with the creatures' heads being one of them.

But we have to remember that Club Magazine has been known to just make stuff up about the sets, like saying that Skull Slicer was controlled by LoSS.

 

Although, they were the source that revealed "Kulta", and they were right about LoSS not needing the Golden Mask of Skull Spiders to control the horde...

(Reminds me I never got round to saying "I told you so" to those people who were so sure that the mask was canon. Consider yourselves told. ;))

Wait, are you saying that the Golden Mask of Skull Spiders ISN'T canon? Because I don't believe we've ever seen anything to imply that. Just because it never became a plot point in the story itself doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The Kanohi Vahi was first available in sets in 2001, yet never became a plot point until mid-2003. If you were claiming it wasn't canon near the beginning of 2002, you'd be in for a rude awakening. Not to mention the huge number of combi models and contest winners in G1 that were considered canon despite never actually appearing in any story media...

 

All of the media we've gotten points to the mask not being canon, instead it implies that he can control the Skull Spiders telepathically. I guess it can go either way, really.

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