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Planned vs. Not Planned (Partial Recovery)


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I had some quotes from the original post GregF gave on this forum on Planned Bionicle events back in January 2010, before the update wiped the archives, and I thought I'd share them here:

 

"Teridax was always destined to take over the MU robot"

Planned from the beginning.

 

"Mata Nui is a giant robot in which the Matoran and Toa live"

Planned from the beginning. That is the central piece of the first story bible, written in 2000. Regardless of who was and wasn't on the story team when it was finally revealed, or who wrote the story in which it was revealed, it was ALWAYS planned.

 

"The Turaga were once Toa and they and the Matoran lived on the island of Metru Nui"

Planned from the beginning. It was always Bob's intent to do flashbacks to pre-2001 story.

 

Mata Nui being a giant robot was planned from the beginning -- if you change it, you basically scrap all of the last nine years of BIONICLE story, because that was the core concept. Without Mata Nui as giant robot, there is no island of Mata Nui, let alone any of the other locations. So if you want to change that, you are pulling the bottom card out of the house of cards, and it all comes tumbling down around you.

And here's a few Toatapio Nuva recovered:

Q: What of the Order of Mata Nui and the Brotherhood of Makuta? Were they also planned, along with the Dark Hunters, or were their ideas conceived later on? And were the concepts of Artakha and Karzahni there from the beginning, or were they made up later?

A: Brotherhood of Makuta was planned from the beginning -- although it came as a surprise to me too when I first found out about it, Teridax was never intended to be the only Makuta in existence. OOMN was not, that was mine. The idea of Artakha was created by me for a web game to promote Mask of Light in 2003, and Karzahni was created by me for a book, so neither of those were part of the original plan.

 

Q: Did the concept of the great beings exist from the beginning?

A: Oh, sure. In fact, I think one of the characters in the comic even makes a reference to them sometime in the first couple years, though I may be misremembering. But yes, they were always in the story as the creators of Mata Nui.

 

Here are some other statements from the original post I also recall him saying:

 

The Bohrok's purpose to clean Mata Nui's face for his awakening was planned from the beginning, as was their mysterious origins, but the idea that they came from Matoran was not planned from the beginning.

 

"Takua becomes a Toa", and the outline of the Mask of Life saga were both planned from the beginning, but the specifics with the Barraki and Piraka were not.

 

The Hordika and Kal sagas weren't planned from the beginning, but were developed later just to draw out more time with those settings and characters.

 

The Bara Magna Saga was not planned from the beginning.

 

The Toa were originally supposed to be more solemn and stoic and serious, like Gods, but the story team decided to make them more humanized, talkative, and more down-to-earth with individual personalities.

 

Bob Thompson or Alastair Swinnerton came up with the original story bibles, which were largely just floating around in his head for years, and he gradually wrote them all down before he left LEGO.

 

And on a somewhat unrelated note, here are some notes about cancelled Bionicle projects Greg worked on:

 

GregF knows the specific processes that went into creating Krana, and he was going to publish them in Bionicle Legends 7: Invasion, which also described the Inika's journey through the cord and Vezon's capture by Zyglak, but that was cancelled to shorten the book schedule as a result of decreased sales. Greg said he then considered instead publishing those processes on BionicleSector01, but the site was down so he couldn't, so I don't know what the process is, nor whether it was planned from the beginning or not.

 

A Windows 98 & ME game called Bionicle: The Legend of Mata Nui would've shown how Toa got most of their Great and Noble Kanohi and defeated the Makuta, but LEGO cancelled it in mid-September 2001, with Greg saying it was because it did not meet LEGO's quality standards. Though a few copies of the playable developer disc exist, their owners remain anonymous and haven't released the disc's contents to the public. This is because it would technically be illegal since the rights are still split between LEGO and Econova CEO Mark Kendell, who retained ownership of developer Saffire's assets after the company became defunct around a decade ago. GregF explained that the game was originally supposed to represent the definitive 2001 Bionicle storyline, but after it was cancelled that distinction went to the Mata Nui Online Game. To this day, it remains a sort of "Holy Grail" for longtime Bionicle fans.

 

An Xbox game called Bionicle: City of Legends was cancelled in 2004 after its developer Argonaut Games was liquidated later that year, but a playable tech demo was released online.

 

By 2009, Greg had already written the first draft of a script for Bionicle 5, where Mata Nui, Ackar, and Kiina would have journeyed through the Valley of the Maze, where they would have encountered bio-mechanical dinosaurs, and con artist Tera of the Earth Tribe, whose other members were stranded on Bota Magna. Their goal there was to get to a power plant under a fake volcano, which could power the Prototype Robot, before the Element Lords did. Since Bionicle 4 wasn't quite profitable enough to merit sequels, the rest of the trilogy of movies that were supposed to be planned around it and the originally planned 2010 and 2011 sagas were scrapped and replaced with the Mata Nui Saga and Journey's End. Greg says the events of Bionicle 5 still took place in an alternate universe.

 

Another cancelled book was BIONICLE 10: Power of the Great Beings, which would have included three exclusive chapters depicting Tarduk and Mata Nui's journey through the Valley of the Maze and Glatorian Comics 6-7. However, due to lack of sales of Graphic Novels 8 & 9, production stopped after Greg wrote the first chapter, which he still can't legally disclose because it's still owned by Papercutz.

 

Bionicle 11: Journey's End was cancelled for the same reasons, which would have included the 2010 comics and a few new post-Journey's End stories.

Edited by Tren Krom
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[...] nor do I know how the Toa got most of their Great and Noble Kanohi back in 2001, since the game that was supposed to explain that was also cancelled.

The Toa Metru placed them around the island as a means to test the next toa to come (which I am sure they thought would be matoran empowered by their toa stones, not the power unleashed and serve a beacon to castaway heroes), while I think Artakha had created and placed the Golden Masks in their place via agents/servants. The Kanohi Nuva were placed their by an Order of Mata Nui member on behalf of Artakha, which Makuta has found and slain and Vezon would later take this member's toa canister to reach Voya-Nui to the south.

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Why haven't more people seen or +1'd this topic?

 

[...] nor do I know how the Toa got most of their Great and Noble Kanohi back in 2001, since the game that was supposed to explain that was also cancelled.

The Toa Metru placed them around the island as a means to test the next toa to come (which I am sure they thought would be matoran empowered by their toa stones, not the power unleashed and serve a beacon to castaway heroes), while I think Artakha had created and placed the Golden Masks in their place via agents/servants. The Kanohi Nuva were placed their by an Order of Mata Nui member on behalf of Artakha, which Makuta has found and slain and Vezon would later take this member's toa canister to reach Voya-Nui to the south.

This I know, but what I don't know is how specifically the Toa collected each and every little mask. Did Tahu find his Kanohi Pakari in the Motara Desert guarded by a Nui-Jaga? Did Pohatu find the Kanohi Mahiki after fending off a Tarakava at the Papa-Nihu Reef? Did Onua find the Kaukau Nuva under Lake Kanae after beating Pahrak-Kal to it? These specifics are forever lost to time because the writers never took the time to fill in all the blanks, and because the programmers were laid off before their game could answer them. That's why I and so many others in this community are eager to find and restore a copy of the unfinished Legend of Mata Nui video game.

Edited by Tren Krom

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Why haven't more people seen or +1'd this topic?

Well he only just posted it. :P That said, there are a number of people who believe the Great Spirit Robot was a horrible idea and contrary to what they felt was the very essence of Bionicle. Which is all fine and well, but it is also true that their understanding of the "essence" of Bionicle is completely in contrary to that of the Bionicle story team. And I'll be honest, I don't really understand that line of thought myself. Regardless of how Bionicle and its definitive twist were executed (and I think most can agree the execution of the story was at least somewhat lacking), you have to admit its metaphorical underpinnings are much deeper than most of its contemporaries in the action figure world. Transformers was nothing more than a ploy to sell a mishmash of prexisting transforming toys cobbled together from various companies. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was ultimately based on a joke comic, originally meant to last only one issue. Bionicle... Bionicle was the Biological Chronicle, the fictionalized, metaphorical account of a real person's cells waging a seemingly hopeless war against a horrific disease - cells that never gave up the fight even when their "Great Spirit" was asleep and close to death. It was so, so much more than Tiki robots throwing disks in the jungle, though we had no idea for almost its entire run.

Edited by ~~Zarkan~~
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Nice recap. I believe if Greg was on the story team for the reboot, we'd have a story centered around the main Toa again, but many years in the future. 

 

But with this G2, I'm pretty sure there's no giant robot. I agree with his saying that its like taking the bottom out of a house of cards, and for this they just carried on the characters in a new setting.

 

Too bad about the krana though. BS01 being down and all, I doubt we'll ever know.


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Did Onua find the Kaukau Nuva under Lake Kanae after beating Pahrak-Kal to it?

 

Onua finding his Kaukau Nuva was actually told in Bionicle Chronicles 4: Tales of the Masks. He found it in an underground cavern guarded by Manas. Whenua was with him on his search too.

 

I also have two additional quotes from the individual posts in the topic, which I saved. They're basically Greg answering some questions of fans:

 

 

Q: What of the Order of Mata Nui and the Brotherhood of Makuta? Were they also planned, along with the Dark Hunters, or were their ideas conceived later on? And were the concepts of Artakha and Karzahni there from the beginning, or were they made up later?

 

A: Brotherhood of Makuta was planned from the being -- although it came as a surprise to me too when I first found out about it, Teridax was never intended to be the only Makuta in existence. OOMN was not, that was mine. The idea of Artakha was created by me for a web game to promote Mask of Light in 2003, and Karzahni was created by me for a book, so neither of those were part of the original plan.

 

 

Q: Did the concept of the great beings exist from the beginning?

 

A: Oh, sure. In fact, I think one of the characters in the comic even makes a reference to them sometime in the first couple years, though I may be misremembering. But yes, they were always in the story as the creators of Mata Nui.

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Nice recap. I believe if Greg was on the story team for the reboot, we'd have a story centered around the main Toa again, but many years in the future. 

 

But with this G2, I'm pretty sure there's no giant robot. I agree with his saying that its like taking the bottom out of a house of cards, and for this they just carried on the characters in a new setting.

 

Too bad about the krana though. BS01 being down and all, I doubt we'll ever know.

I seriously doubt G2 Bionicle would be anything other than a reboot even if Greg was in charge. I don't feel like looking it up but I believe that even before Bionicle G2 was announced, Greg admitted that if Lego were to bring Bionicle back it would be most practical to start from scratch with a reboot. Not to mention that being on the story team≠being totally in charge of the story's overall direction.

 

Also, the apparent lack of a giant robot in G2 doesn't affect G2's quality because it was not planned with a giant robot reveal in mind. Greg's metaphor was about trying to change the direction and outcome of G1's story after so much of the hints and backstory had been established, not about coming up with a totally new story out of whole cloth.

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Did Onua find the Kaukau Nuva under Lake Kanae after beating Pahrak-Kal to it?

 

Onua finding his Kaukau Nuva was actually told in Bionicle Chronicles 4: Tales of the Masks. He found it in an underground cavern guarded by Manas. Whenua was with him on his search too.

 

I also have two additional quotes from the individual posts in the topic, which I saved. They're basically Greg answering some questions of fans:

 

 

Q: What of the Order of Mata Nui and the Brotherhood of Makuta? Were they also planned, along with the Dark Hunters, or were their ideas conceived later on? And were the concepts of Artakha and Karzahni there from the beginning, or were they made up later?

 

A: Brotherhood of Makuta was planned from the being -- although it came as a surprise to me too when I first found out about it, Teridax was never intended to be the only Makuta in existence. OOMN was not, that was mine. The idea of Artakha was created by me for a web game to promote Mask of Light in 2003, and Karzahni was created by me for a book, so neither of those were part of the original plan.

 

 

Q: Did the concept of the great beings exist from the beginning?

 

A: Oh, sure. In fact, I think one of the characters in the comic even makes a reference to them sometime in the first couple years, though I may be misremembering. But yes, they were always in the story as the creators of Mata Nui.

 

Nice, I'll add it to the OP.

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