They really did. They kinda filled in what the comics and books failed to in my opinion. What's amazing is that I'm pretty sure Templar didn't even have to go that length. If I remember correctly I think I heard the MNOG was originally supposed to just be a simple little Flash game without that much story importance before the Legend of Mata Nui PC game got cancelled.

Yeah, Templar had a huge impact on BIONICLE. The fact that they focused their attention on the Matoran rather than the story's designated heroes is significant enough on its own, but beyond that they brilliantly balanced all of the values that defined BIONICLE. I honestly still feel that the Mata Nui Online Game is the single best vehicle for storytelling and world-building in any LEGO theme, and certainly the best LEGO game with regard to how well it told a story and established a world.

Sometimes I wish that modern themes like Ninjago had an adventure game like the Mata Nui Online Game to let you experience their world firsthand. For that matter, there are lots of non-LEGO franchises that could benefit from an adventure game of that caliber.

It made me happy to discover the Professor Layton and Ace Attorney franchises in the past couple years, because those have a lot of the same heart-wrenching, pulse-pounding adventure gameplay and storytelling as the Mata Nui Online Game. It's good to see adventure games aren't entirely out of style.

But it seems like today marketers for story-driven franchises are more than content to leave the storytelling to non-interactive media and promote the franchises with simple, casual action and puzzle games. I suppose that in some respects, that should be respected, as even before the Mata Nui Online Game, a lot of licensed video games were utter garbage which failed to do justice to the franchise they were supposed to promote. But at the same time, I miss the Mata Nui Online Game's irreplaceable experience of discovering a new and fantastic world from the inside.

Templar's later animations also deserve great respect. Not only were they beautiful on an aesthetic level, but they told great, episodic stories and gave the characters a real sense of humanity. The Mata Nui Online Game II was not as great an achievement as its predecessor — gameplay was not only buggy but also extremely repetitive, and the worlds were not quite as immersive from a fixed-angle, third-person perspective — but what the Mata Nui Online Game and the subsequent animations did for the Matoran as individuals, Mata Nui Online Game II did for them as a culture. The way that each tribe derived their own principle from the Three Virtues, and then derived a Kolhii skill from that principle, was carried out quite elegantly, as was the diversity of careers held by the Matoran of each village. It's a shame no later BIONICLE games were ever really able to live up to these high standards.

Yes, you would have thought that it would have set the bar. What happened to Templar, are they still making games?

Yes, you would have thought that it would have set the bar. What happened to Templar, are they still making games?

The impact Templar's work has had on BIONICLE and on me personally is immense. I think one can safely say it simply wouldn't be the same without them. By focusing on the Matoran, the story simply felt more natural, more human. The Matoran weren't just plot devices that only existed to be rescued by the heroes, they were characters with depth and emotions you could identify with. In fact, I feel that identifying with a Matoran was easier than with a Toa, especially for children, which may also be because of the slightly childish attitude the Matoran sometimes had (which made them even more sympathetic).

-Gata