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If you had to pick between the story and the sets, which would you cho


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If you had to pick between the story, and the sets, which would you choose, and why? This is mainly concerning G1, however, I suppose that G2 may also be discussed despite the obvious answer to this question when applied to it.

 

Also, before somebody writes a book about it, yes; I, and everyone else on BZPower understand that without the sets, there would be no Bionicle

 

Given what I've said regarding the topic in the past, I'd say that it's pretty easy to guess which category I fall under; story, story - always the story.

 

And yes, I also think that Bionicle would be a lot less interesting if it was strictly a story with no sets, but if I had to choose, I would probably choose a good story.

 

Bionicle initially started with the stories crafted to sell more Bionicle sets; the hunt for the Kanohi masks, the hunt for the Krana, Krana-Kal, Krataa, Kanoka Disks, and weird ball things(?)/squids. If you ask me, though, later on, Greg seemed to be writing solely for the sake of the story rather than sales.

 

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 however, I suppose that G2 may also be discussed despite the obvious answer to this question when applied to it.

 

"I personally dislike G2 therefore obviously everyone else does too"

 

Oh the arrogance...

 

On topic, I'd go with story. For several years now, my large collection of G1 sets remained in the permanent family home while I moved around quite a lot. Regardless, I constantly poured over the various Bionicle wikis, read the books, the serials, re-watched the movies, often re-played MNOG, MNOG 2, VNOG and the two full-blown PC games (though I played those two for nostalgia rather than the story, granted). I was all caught up in the story, and while I obviously missed the sets, I felt a connection with the world and story of Bionicle, with the characters, rather than the lumps of plastic that sought to represent them.

Without a story, Pohatu would be just some cool looking brown robot with a boulder. The story is what made him my favorite character. 

 

Same goes for G2. I've been following the story ever since it began. I really like the sets, and own far fewer than I'd wish, but even so, once again the story is more important for me. Between the books, graphic novel and JtO, G2 has plenty of lore and story material. I always laugh at the people who choose to put blinders on themselves and ignore that fact just because they think hating G2's story is "edgy and cool".

 

I mean, dislike it if you wish - I have no problem with that. However, stating that thing x has no story material just because you dislike it in spite of it having plenty of story material is just embarrassing. For you.

 

:kakama:

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Story, 110% no doubt about it.

 

Sets are great, but I'm a 17 year old sprout with no money about to go into college and get sucked into debt for the rest of his life and become a slave to American capitalist system as I spend the rest of my life scraping money together to pay bills and get my daily dose of cup noodles.

 

What was the question again?

 

Right, story. It's not just me. A lot of kids can't afford sets either, and I don't buy sets anymore because I can't. But the story is always there. You can borrow Bionicle book from a friend, but not one of the sets, and you can go online and read the story, engross yourselves in the serials and back stories.

 

The sets are great, but they're sets, models. After a while you will forget them or break them apart no matter the infinite play they bring you, things get stale as time passes, but a story and the moments it brings will stick with you forever.

 

And I don't buy the notion that Bionicle is nothing without sets. Story is what drives things, gives them context and makes them meaningful. The sets of G1 wouldn't have been half as cool without the stories and personalities attached to them.

 

Maybe I'm just biased as a story teller, but for me it's the story of Bionicle stuck with me more than anything else, and Bionicle just wouldn't be Bionicle without it.

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Sets, easily (for both G1 and G2). I feel like the Bionicle story has generally been pretty weak and directionless when it didn't have the sets as a backbone. The sets were the reason I got into Bionicle in the first place even if the story helped enrich my enjoyment of them. And of course, LEGO fans are fully capable of coming up with their own stories — prior to the mid-90s it was the status quo for LEGO themes to have a basic premise and otherwise be largely open-ended. So it's not as though a theme without a built-in story would have nothing for fans to enjoy.

 

While I tend to prefer themes with more developed stories like Bionicle, Ninjago, Elves, and Nexo Knights over purely open-ended themes like City, Pirates, and Castle, I would probably never have taken an interest in Bionicle in the first place if it were just an overwrought book or comic series without any sort of colorful, buildable toy characters to fire up my imagination.

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As cool as building the sets are, I've always found them secondary to the story in my interest in Bionicle. I don't know why that is, but ever since 2006 the story has held a much tighter grip on me than the sets have. I guess I thought the comics were cool, and my interest in the plot extended from there. The wealth of material Farshtey regularly provided in 2008 especially kept me excited.

 

 however, I suppose that G2 may also be discussed despite the obvious answer to this question when applied to it.

 

"I personally dislike G2 therefore obviously everyone else does too"

 

Oh the arrogance...

 

Are you saying there are people in the world who like the G2 story more than the sets? Where are these people? Show yourselves!

Edited by TheSkeletonMan939

 

 

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So, you actually like the G2 story?

Surprise!

 

This isn't a question I could answer overall.  Year by year, maybe.  I probably wouldn't have been so interested in the sets had there been no story or setting, and I certainly wouldn't have followed the story without the sets to play with.

 

I can't say accurately with regards to G1, but I can say that for G2 so far I prioritized the 2015 sets over the 2015 story, and I'm prioritizing the 2016 story over the 2016 sets.  And I can definitely say that I enjoyed many of the Hero Factory sets, which had an entirely separate story but occupied my "BIONICLE" interest slot.

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It's a split answer for me.

 

G1, I like the story more. It is why I am still a Bionicle fan, mostly. It's the part that now interests me the most, I will still gladly sit down and watch MoL anytime (Can practically quote the whole thing...) While I do like the sets, they mostly hold nostalgia value for me.

 

Now, G2, I prefer the sets. but only by a bit. While the story has some good stuff, It's just not the same. I am not really a fan of rebooting stories.

 

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 however, I suppose that G2 may also be discussed despite the obvious answer to this question when applied to it.

 

"I personally dislike G2 therefore obviously everyone else does too"

 

Oh the arrogance...

So, you actually like the G2 story?

 

Yes. I've kind of made that clear in several threads where you've also posted.

 

The condescension in that question is not lost on me, however.

 

:kakama:

:kakama: Stone rocks :kakama:

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Story, absolutely. Love the story, love the world. Sets (despite having ~130 of them) were almost always a secondary thing to me.

 

And yeah, I think it was pretty awesome that Greg ended up writing most of the serials merely for the fun of writing them. They weren't to sell sets (heck, a lot of the characters in the serials were never even made as sets), they were just written to expand the world and lore. That shows the passion that he and others had for the brand.

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Story, absolutely. Love the story, love the world. Sets (despite having ~130 of them) were almost always a secondary thing to me.

 

And yeah, I think it was pretty awesome that Greg ended up writing most of the serials merely for the fun of writing them. They weren't to sell sets (heck, a lot of the characters in the serials were never even made as sets), they were just written to expand the world and lore. That shows the passion that he and others had for the brand.

On a semi-related note, I find it funny when people ask Greg about their novel of a theory and he essentially says "Yea, okay I guess that's canon"

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Story, absolutely. Love the story, love the world. Sets (despite having ~130 of them) were almost always a secondary thing to me.

 

And yeah, I think it was pretty awesome that Greg ended up writing most of the serials merely for the fun of writing them. They weren't to sell sets (heck, a lot of the characters in the serials were never even made as sets), they were just written to expand the world and lore. That shows the passion that he and others had for the brand.

On a semi-related note, I find it funny when people ask Greg about their novel of a theory and he essentially says "Yea, okay I guess that's canon"

 

Yeah, haha. Greg is great at just writing a story without any plan, other than sometimes "this character needs to be in it and this needs to happen at the end". He's not quite as good at... planning. I think he's "confirmed" some contradictory lore at one point or another actually, lol. (Can't really blame him, though, since the world and lore is massive.)

Edited by Kopekemaster
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I have all the sets, so I'd love story. When the serials came out for G1 they were some of the best things we ever got from a story perspective. They were limited by set production


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Story, absolutely. Love the story, love the world. Sets (despite having ~130 of them) were almost always a secondary thing to me.

 

And yeah, I think it was pretty awesome that Greg ended up writing most of the serials merely for the fun of writing them. They weren't to sell sets (heck, a lot of the characters in the serials were never even made as sets), they were just written to expand the world and lore. That shows the passion that he and others had for the brand.

For what it's worth, some of the serials WERE written to sell the sets. "Dreams of Destruction" focused on telling the story of store exclusive characters Lesovikk, Sarda, Idris, and Karzahni, who were mostly absent from the year's main story. Likewise, "Brothers in Arms" in 2008 existed to shine a spotlight on Vultraz and Mazeka.

 

I do think it's nice that Greg did write some of the serials and short stories largely for the enjoyment of writing them, as it shows how much he cared about the franchise. Unfortunately, they are also part of why I would choose sets over story: the serials that didn't focus on characters from the current sets often felt aimless and disjointed, especially as the core story approached and eventually reached its conclusion. As side-stories they were satisfactory, but it was their connections with the set-driven core story that gave them a real sense of purpose, instead of just feeling like a bunch of errand-running interrupted by plot twists. The "big picture" in the core story tended to be planned out years in advance, whereas the serials helped fill in the gaps in that big picture. Having that spontaneous cliffhanger-heavy style of the serials without the more purposeful, set-driven main story backing it up is like having mortar with no bricks (no pun intended).

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I say the sets AND the story. You can't just have one without the other, I'm not personally interested in Legos anymore, though I am bionicle. I enjoy the bionicle sets as much as anyone else, but I also enjoy having a storyline behind them, it's what made them so unique. You can't just have great sets and a poor story, or vice versa.

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I say the sets AND the story. You can't just have one without the other, I'm not personally interested in Legos anymore, though I am bionicle. I enjoy the bionicle sets as much as anyone else, but I also enjoy having a storyline behind them, it's what made them so unique. You can't just have great sets and a poor story, or vice versa.

While I stand by my comment for the sake of the thread, I wholeheartedly agree on this point. Back when I was younger, I liked pretty much all Lego for simply being cool little colorful plastic buildable things. Now, I only care about Bionicle, and am tracking down the remaining G1 sets that I don't have, but I think it's the connections between sets and story which really sets it apart. Bionicle was really the first story-based line for Lego, and I really admire it for that as well.

The sets and story are ultimately inseparable, and strengthen one another.

 

:kakama:

:kakama: Stone rocks :kakama:

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Story, absolutely. Love the story, love the world. Sets (despite having ~130 of them) were almost always a secondary thing to me.

 

And yeah, I think it was pretty awesome that Greg ended up writing most of the serials merely for the fun of writing them. They weren't to sell sets (heck, a lot of the characters in the serials were never even made as sets), they were just written to expand the world and lore. That shows the passion that he and others had for the brand.

For what it's worth, some of the serials WERE written to sell the sets. "Dreams of Destruction" focused on telling the story of store exclusive characters Lesovikk, Sarda, Idris, and Karzahni, who were mostly absent from the year's main story. Likewise, "Brothers in Arms" in 2008 existed to shine a spotlight on Vultraz and Mazeka.

 

I do think it's nice that Greg did write some of the serials and short stories largely for the enjoyment of writing them, as it shows how much he cared about the franchise. Unfortunately, they are also part of why I would choose sets over story: the serials that didn't focus on characters from the current sets often felt aimless and disjointed, especially as the core story approached and eventually reached its conclusion. As side-stories they were satisfactory, but it was their connections with the set-driven core story that gave them a real sense of purpose, instead of just feeling like a bunch of errand-running interrupted by plot twists. The "big picture" in the core story tended to be planned out years in advance, whereas the serials helped fill in the gaps in that big picture. Having that spontaneous cliffhanger-heavy style of the serials without the more purposeful, set-driven main story backing it up is like having mortar with no bricks (no pun intended).

 

I really highly doubt that the books in anyway affected sales. I had never once read any of them while the series was still on going

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I really highly doubt that the books in anyway affected sales. I had never once read any of them while the series was still on going

If they didn't affect sales in any way they wouldn't have existed in the first place. The purpose of the Bionicle story in general, including the books, comics, serials, and movies, was always to promote the sets. The books were certainly not the biggest or most essential factor in the sets' sales, but they were definitely a part of the overall equation. The more levels at which fans were able to engage with the brand, the more enthusiasm they tended to have for the sets, which is where the bulk of the theme's profitability came from.

 

I don't exactly understand what this had to do with my post, though? I didn't mention the books prior to you bringing them up… sorry if I'm missing something obvious.

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For me, it was always the sets. Ever since I got my first BIONICLE in 2005, I cared way more about the sets. Sure, I would do my best to keep up with the main story as much as I could, but that was usually after getting myself a couple of sets.

 

Also, if it was no sets and just story, I could just get some sets and come up with my own story. That's part of the fun with LEGO in general, am I right?

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I say the sets AND the story. You can't just have one without the other, I'm not personally interested in Legos anymore, though I am bionicle. I enjoy the bionicle sets as much as anyone else, but I also enjoy having a storyline behind them, it's what made them so unique. You can't just have great sets and a poor story, or vice versa.

Hear hear!

 

I personally lean towards story, but they're kindof... I don't know, symbiotic.  I followed all the story for the Mata Nui arc, and I got a lot of the sets.  I didn't follow it as closely for Metru Nui, didn't get many sets, but now that I've taken a look at it, I'm thinking 'Dang, why didn't I get more of the sets?'

 

Also I don't said Mata Nui arc would've been nearly as good were it not for MNOG's story.

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