Sir Kohran

This actually raises an interesting point that I hadn't considered before - what's the purpose of the non-English prefixes? If Kanohi simply means 'mask' and Kanoka means 'disk', as might be assumed, then 'Kanohi mask' and 'Kanoka disk' end up meaning 'mask mask' and 'disk disk'. Both prefixes are pointless because their meaning is specified in the noun. In which case, do Kanohi and Kanoka mean something else? By the way, are there examples of 'Rahi beast'? MNOLG always uses just 'Rahi', see Takua meeting Jala: "What is a Rahi?" "The Rahi serve Makuta (...)"

What makes you say that? A lot of the G1 Matoran were clones with distinct personalities. The Protectors do share the same mask, but that still doesn't mean that they won't have identities. Literally all of them are exact clones. Look at the Fire protectors in the Masks of Power trailer. In G1 Matoran had different masks, colours and personalities. Proper names too. I repeat what I said in another topic, if it's of interest: The 'G1' Matoran are sometimes depicted as all looking the same. There's a crowd of Jalas in one of the 2002 comics, and the Matoran crowds in MOL are also clones (making the main characters with their unique designs look a bit conspicuous). Even the first two villages (Ta and Ga-Koro) seen in the MNOLG had lots of clones, and individual designs for each Matoran didn't show up until Po-Koro and the villages after that.

You could perhaps be ever so slightly more specific.

The 'G1' Matoran are sometimes depicted as all looking the same. There's a crowd of Jalas in one of the 2002 comics, and the Matoran crowds in MOL are also clones (making the main characters with their unique designs look a bit conspicuous). Even the first two villages (Ta and Ga-Koro) seen in the MNOLG had lots of clones, and individual designs for each Matoran didn't show up until Po-Koro and the villages after that. And the original Matoran were often capable of defending themselves against Rahi and even Bohrok, though there wasn't much they could do against Rahkshi.

Yeah, Tolkien never made up any words at all. Except for Hobbits, Uruk-hai, Nazgul, Balrogs, Istari, Valar, Noldor, Rohirrim, Numenoreans, Haradrim, Mumakil... Someone doesn't know about hovertext. Alright then - why are only Carroll and Tolkien free to make up as many words as they like? And anyway, I can point to other fantasy universes with far more than five made-up words. Look at Star Wars - Jedi, Sith, Wookies, Tuskens, Jawas, Gungans, the Wampa and the Rancor. And those are just from the movies. This is a matter of specific names and words, not whole languages. For all their made-up words, Bionicle, Star Wars and even The Lord of the Rings still use plain English in the telling.

You could, but I think using plain and standard words would lose a lot of the cultural flair that non-English names/nouns bring to a fantasy universe. Counterpoint: http://xkcd.com/483/ Yeah, Tolkien never made up any words at all. Except for Hobbits, Uruk-hai, Nazgul, Balrogs, Istari, Valar, Noldor, Rohirrim, Numenoreans, Haradrim, Mumakil...

You could, but I think using plain and standard words would lose a lot of the cultural flair that non-English names/nouns bring to a fantasy universe.

I was using 'robot' as an example of a word that automatically says quite a bit about the thing it's being used for, I wasn't saying the characters actually are robots.

One advantage of 'cultural' words like Toa, Matoran, Rahi, etc. was that they meant the story didn't have to refer to them with technical words like 'robot' that would give much away about the nature of the beings.

At the moment all that occurs to me is that I think a couple of Toa sets suffer from a few too many colours - Lewa is the main example of this, with green, orange and a heck of a lot of a grey all in one figure. Though not as bad, the purple parts on Onua also seems a little unnecessary (I think dark grey for those parts would've worked much better). I may have something to say about the technical/design aspects when I own some of these sets.

While I would love a game like that as well, as you have said Bionicle is definitely action-based and I feel like a game would need action to really sell that point. And if it would have action, then I would like it to be very refined (like Platinum Games refined). MNOLG has plenty of action; its trick is to keep it largely to cutscenes.

Duuuuuuuuude, you shouldn't be doing that, you might get arrested or something! He might even end up talking to Greg or something.

One of the playsets in 2006.

And this didn't? The Mata Nui Matoran faces aren't ugly...they're just misunderstood! I don't like all the gaps across the piece, and the lack of eye colour is also annoying. I'm fairly sure that ideally the Matoran sets would've used the same head and coloured eye pieces as the Toa and Turaga; I think the one-piece head was a necessary evil due to the limit on the number of parts imposed by the McDonald's promotion.

A difference in colour goes a very long way in whether or not there's a resemblance. Any part similarities between the Pohatus is offset by the fact that the Mata/Nuva is brown and tan whilst the Phantoka one is orange and dark grey - no colour continuity there whatsoever. And the part differences between Lewa Mata and Nuva are mitigated by the fact that the colour scheme, green and lime, is continued.

2004 was the last year Matoran played an important role in the central story, with the main characters starting out as Matoran and the six other missing ones at the start. In 2006 and the following two years Matoran only existed to fill the 'six small sets' role and the focus was entirely on the six Toa characters and eventually Mata Nui and his companions. Greg did bring a lot of the 'classic' Matoran back into the story in his serials, but not in a way that involved them in the central plotline. I think it's a shame Matoran lost so much attention; the Mata Nui section's cast of Matoran characters and the depiction of their culture in the MNOLG played a major role in making the early years as appealing and memorable as they are.

Are you seriously saying you can't see any similarities between these?

Because the simple option had already been used. The fact that it's happened several times suggests Lego at least thought there to be an advantage of some kind. Note that they're not always incapable of recognisability/consistency - the Stars, though a little hindered by the limitations of the Av-Matoran build, clearly recreate the appearances of previous years' sets.

That too, good memory. Did the Toa Mata not collect Noble masks then?

I'm under the impression, rightly or wrongly, that the reason the Mistika/Phantoka Toa bear hardly any resemblance to the Nuva was because the 'simple' transformation had already been used in 2002 and an 'elaborate' transformation was now needed, hence the Adaptive Armor device which led to figures with almost no resemblance to the Nuva at all. Had a 'simple' transformation option been open at that point, the designs might've had a bit more in common with those they were picking up from. I do admit that the overall changes in parts, colours and set design would've meant these theoretical Nuva wouldn't pick up from the Mata as closely as the actual Nuva did, no question there. Your points about the mask designs are mostly right, but I'm thinking more about character appearances as a whole. And I don't think it was ever stated that Great and Noble versions resemble each other in appearance, even if that might be expected.

I agree that was a problem. The Bohrok chapters are arguably the culprits here because they neither introduce or conclude the Mata Nui section. I think it would've been much better to have gone straight from the quest for the masks into the Mask of Light chapter. An added bonus to this would've been that the Nuva transformation could've been kept until after the Metru Nui flashback, and when the six Toa returned they would've been in recognisable forms rather than those bizarre 2008 ones.

How much storyline was there to 2006-07 beyond 'collect the Ignika'?

While that's true, mind control is much more rarely benign. Jedi mind trick type uses are probably the main ones that don't venture into immoral territory. But the two examples we have are (or at least seem) benign in their nature - in the MNOLG Lewa uses it on the Nui-Kopen to provide an extra steed to carry the Matoran back to Le-Koro, and in LOMN Onewa uses it on Krekka to get him to stop Nidhiki from attacking.

Other masks can be used immorally - the Akaku (x-ray vision) could be used to violate indoors privacy, the Huna (invisibility) could be used to stalk or eavesdrop, and the Mahiki (shapeshifting) could be used to impersonate others. Ultimately I think it just comes down to 'as good or bad as the person using it.'

But why? If they were worried about a threat from the Bohrok they should've just organised better defences for the villages, not put a couple of signs in the wild. What use would that be? But it's more time-consuming and dangerous for him to travel to another Wahi than just putting it in his own. It's not really a matter of assuming, because we only consider what we know of. For example, for years we only considered there to be six types of Matoran, because we only ever saw six. We only started considering there to be more than six when types other than the original six were shown. Likewise, we should only consider the two warnings in Le-Wahi and Ko-Wahi because those were the only ones shown. You don't want to visit Wonderland? Well, I wasn't really thinking about which area came first in terms of time, and we don't know that anyway. You first brought it up as a possible example of a warning in Ta-Wahi. The three flags that need to be passed to reach the warning stone are all in the snow field, yes. I'd say it's the other way round. Could you repeat it? I'm not sure which bit you mean. It's obviously foreshadowing by the makers, but that's not an in-story reason. He wanders into the nest then barely escapes with the help of the chisel thing Onewa gave him. The warnings made no difference whatsoever to anything that happened there. If he wasn't going to tell anybody, what was the point of him knowing? I meant stone carving, which requires a hammer (as Onewa and Hafu are seen using), the warning in question clearly being made of stone. Ice sculpting seems to be something Ko-Matoran can do without tools (watch the Kopeke opening the gate clip, he makes a key from an icicle with his bare hands). The Wall of Prophecy was just etching letters onto a surface. That's certainly possible.