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Favorite Bionicle setting?


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Curious to hear thoughts on different beloved locations in the Bionicle universe.

Feel free to include concept locations that never actually appeared in the story (such as this unrealized concept for Ga-Koro: https://biosector01.com/wiki/File:Concept_Art_Ga-Koro.png), and locations in alternate timelines / Bionicle Gen. 2.

"Kai... Nireta... the other six Kakama-wearers... yep, Ga-Koro's all here!"

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I've never seen that concept art before, that's really cool. (though I'd imagine it'd be pretty loud with all those waterfalls rushing over your house :P)

I'd have to say my favorite place would be Mata Nui. I'm sure nostalgia has a lot to do with it, but also the rich variety of biomes to explore, from the extreme cold to the extreme heat and everywhere in between. I suppose if I had to choose a Koro I would choose Ga-Koro, it's got the most unique architecture and the best climate IMO, and I've got the most nostalgia for it since it was the starting point of MNOG2, which was my first exposure to Bionicle.

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Well, obviously, the island of Mata Nui is a huge favorite. I liked the beaches in particular. I grew up not seeing the ocean until the Christmas before BIONICLE was released, so being introduced a landscape surrounded by ocean gave me good feelings, a sense of the exotic that in my mundane world, had gotten to experience (albeit briefly).

Bara Magna, however, probably was my favorite setting. Long before the LEGO Movie 2 introduced us to Apocalypseburg, Bara Magna was the original post-apocalyptic LEGO wasteland populated by fierce warriors, feral survivors, and cobbled-together technology. Plus, there were all those mysterious colossal robot parts sticking out the sands! Almost as much an air of mystery as the original setting on Mata Nui.

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Oh, absolutely Mata Nui. I'd make my home in Ga- or Onu-Koro, for sure - they both feel like really soothing environments to me - but I can't pick a favourite location; I love the sense of atmosphere and depth to the whole island world, from the jungles of Le-Wahi to the volcano with Ta-Koro at its heart to the central Kini-Nui temple. It was just such an amazing - and, as Bionicle Guru says, exotic - place that you feel like you could spend weeks, months, even years exploring it and still not have seen everything. It's just such a fascinating world.

Also? That concept art of Ga-Koro looks amazing :D

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There's so many good ones...

Mata Nui, especially as depicted in MNOG, is beautiful. But it's hardly fair to categorize that as one setting, since it's like six different biomes all within walking distance of each other. I can't even pick a favorite biome, they all do what they're supposed to do so well.

Metru Nui, especially in LoMN and WoS, really felt like a plausible homeland for the advanced Matoran (after three years of mystery building on why these futuristics cyborgs lived on an otherwise normal tropical island). I love the 1984 vibes we got with the Vahki animations and Teridax-as-Dume. Whereas the Rahi were (sort of) just wild animals, Metru Nui really felt like an antagonist itself against the Metru. And all I wanted as a kid was to explore the web-covered abandoned version in 2005.

Voya Nui really feels like a depressing realistic version of Mata Nui. It always made me sad, reading Island of Doom, to imagine how lighthearted and carefree life on Mata Nui seemed to Voya Nui, and how both islands were inhabited at the same time. Stuart Sayger's art style works much better for locations than characters as well, imo.

Mahri Nui and Karda Nui bored me, not gonna lie. It just felt like the underwater one and the sky-cave-swamp one. More a background to people fighting most of the time than settings that impacted the story. Bara Magna rekindled my interest in exploring the Bionicle world.

If I had to pick an all-time favorite... Ko-Metru. What BIONICLE animation did I watch the most as a kid? Toa Nuju sliding around the Knowledge Towers and swinging himself around.

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for me, definitely the island ov Mata Nui! it's an island paradise where the Turaga and the Tohunga/Matoran enjoy being in! the scenery is nice, the friendly Rahi are interesting creatures, the structures built by the Tohunga/Matoran are amazing pieces ov work, the colors ov the inhabitants are vibrant, the atmosphere makes you feel like you are actually there, the plant-life/vegetation is nice to look at, and the overall beauty and natural essence ov the island really shows many wonders to behold! other settings were cool, too, but the island ov Mata Nui is the one that really stuck with me and MNOG really solidified my love for the island! everything about the island ov Mata Nui is amazing and surreal (well, except Makuta trying to destroy everything! lol)! i can't think ov a better place to be in the Bionicle universe than the breath-taking island ov Mata Nui! it's that awesome! :) 

also, as a side note, i really should play MNOG again! been wanting to play it again for the past couple years and just never did! but i will when i can! :) 

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I'm a huge sucker for all things Metru Nui, I'm pretty sure for nostalgia reasons. Like, the books were coming out right when I was getting old enough to read on my own (I'm slightly paranoid my timeline is wrong and I'm implying that I learned to read at the age of 10 or something really off like that..) I think Mata Nui didn't stick with me as much because my Dad would read the Bionicle Chronicles books to us, and he would ham it up with the names (I distinctly remember Lewa being Louie, sometimes King Louie, like in the Jungle Book XD ), so my interest remained limited. The Metru Nui era, though, I was old enough to tackle on my own, and it just stuck with me. 

But when I actually went back and read the Bionicle Adventure books as a (somewhat more) grown up, it really seemed more like an authoritarian industrialized dystopia. Like, the Vahki get you if you enjoy anything besides going to work. Granted, those books were only a small snapshot of the City of Legends in its last days, under control of a usurper. But all the more need for Toa-heroes, right? 

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Honestly for me it's always been a toss up between Mata Nui and Metru Nui, but after re-reading the novels and comics and going back through the games like MNOG and currently playing Legend of Mata Nui for the first time, I can say with certainty that my favorite setting is Mata Nui. I love that whole era, especially in the pre-Metru days where everything was much more mysterious.

2 hours ago, Aderia said:

But when I actually went back and read the Bionicle Adventure books as a (somewhat more) grown up, it really seemed more like an authoritarian industrialized dystopia. Like, the Vahki get you if you enjoy anything besides going to work.

I feel like that might have been what they were going for. Don't know if you've ever seen these:

 

Edited by Bambi
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Metru Nui, with Mata Nui as a very close second. With Metru Nui, I feel that it was so creatively designed, and the effort put behind it really shines in most of the 04-05 media. Mata Nui is easier to connect to the real world, but Metru Nui represents something much more alien, requiring its own set of rules.

That's not to say I think Mata Nui is inferior, I absolutely love its mysterious nature and the secret purpose behind it. Plus, we got to explore it more comprehensively than Metru Nui, thanks to MNOG and MNOG II.

My third spot would go for Voya Nui. We didn't really get to see much of it, but the concept behind it was cool enough, and at least we had VNOG to give us a bit more insight into its different areas.

Mahri Nui and Karda Nui were lousy. Both had potential, but they were relegated to being backgrounds for the adventures of the characters. In the overarching MU geography, Karda Nui is slightly more interesting than Mahri Nui though, if only because it served such an important purpose for Mata Nui's health and functioning (like Metru Nui).

Bara Magna was boring and non-sensical. It was just a desert, but with random elementally-themed spots here and there that made little sense to the overall geography. Giving us an entire planet at once didn't help either, since it lessened the feel of consistency between the different locations.

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On 8/17/2020 at 6:13 PM, Sir Kohran said:

Regarding that concept art, how do the people get to their homes? I can't see any way down from the land at the top, and going up from the water at the bottom against the waterfalls would be almost impossible.

That's why it's concept art, right? :P My guess would be either that there's stairs combing from the top that are off the edge of the picture, or that there's tunnels going from the surface to the top row of homes.

The waterfalls themselves are the bigger logistical problem. I think they're awesome don't get me wrong, and they're kinda the defining feature of the concept, but can you imagine living in a hut by the base of one of those waterfalls? The noise would be unimaginable, the front half of your house is probably perpetually flooded, and one wrong step coming out your door and the waterfall will slam you into the ground before whisking you into the ocean several stories below. Good think Ga-Matoran are good swimmers!

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  • 3 months later...

For me, Ga-Koro will always be the way it was depicted in the 2003 game. It was the one level where the graphics weren't that bad. Verdant canyons filled with corals truly sound like the dream.

bionicle_the_game_image6.jpg

Though, I'll have to say, Metru Nui will always be my favorite setting due to how it filled me with wonders me as a child. There was something so elegant and fascinating about the architectures from the promotional vids. I couldn't get enough of it.

OAFE - Bionicle Metru Nui: Nokama review

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