Lielac

I have a "sort of" answer, and a theory that this "sort of" might have been intended to happen based on a couple things.

1. The Red Star's revival function exists.

2. The Chamber of Death on the path to the Ignika is A, a bit of a trial run for "be willing to sacrifice yourself in a permanent death", and B, lit entirely by red lightstones.

My theory is that the Chamber of Death is intended to create a backup or copy of the user of the Ignika, who would be returned to the Matoran Universe after their original was consumed reviving Mata Nui. This would conserve limited resources, and the Ignika user would only have lost hours or days of memories if all went well. However, the Red Star had already malfunctioned by the time anyone needed to revive Mata Nui, and so the copies of the Ignika users would be stuck up there.

Thus, my theory is that (a copy of) Matoro Inika could be on the Red Star, alongside the member of Jovan's team who used the Ignika. Matoro lives! ... kind of.

Woo hoo, four days until everybody can start being overly critical about how the new theme doesn't meet up to their expectations! Can't wait!

 

Pfffff, please. People are always critical. It's what some fans do, day in and day out, to show that they care. (I'm part of that group. Sometimes we get overenthusiastic.) 'Sides, we're allowed to be disappointed if we are. We're also allowed to be, and sometimes/often are, wrong. Alllllllll kinds of wrong. And liable to fall prey to the Marmite Effect.

 

 

 

I'm more interested in finding out what prompted Lego to revive BIONICLE. Was Hero Factory not selling? Did they think there was sufficient fan interest?

 

I'd love to see an interview with an exec in the near future.

Yeah Lego never really discloses that kind of information for some reason and I really wish they did. Maybe someone can ask Greg one day, too bad he can't be on this site.

 

-NotS

 

He's contactable on the Lego Message Boards, I believe.

 

I'm putting my money on fan interest though.

 

Huh, shame.

 

I wasn't around when the rule was created that Greg couldn't be on this site anymore. Why was that?

 

-NotS

 

If I recall correctly from my pre-account lurking days, it was something to do with him not being allowed to talk to people under the age of 13 for... I think COPPA reasons? Legal isssues, anyway. And BZPower has preteens and under on it who aren't even lying about their age.

It does actually look a bit like she's holding the world in her hands though.

... Suuuuure, let's go with that! Goddess Kotu, y/y?

The Rau immediately gives me Nokama vibes, but yeah, the rest of the body is very Nuva (sans silver pauldron-things). 

 

That ball of water she's holding seems a bit shaky there.

ehehehe that water's even worse than the one I drew for the first version. I may have spent less than a minute on it, and that maaaaay have been a giant mistake.

As for the mask, yyyeah. Very Nokama. As for silver armor, well, Takanuva aped the Nuva-style armor and he was shiny gold, so I'm kinda going off of that sort of thing. Thanks for posting!

 

I'm thinking that if the NYCC panel was always going to be Bionicle, then this reveal on Friday will be saying "Yes, yes, it is coming back, you're all very clever cybersleuths, have some teaser images and we'll go into detail at our NYCC panel."

That's a waste of marketing time, effort and potential. No sane person who has any qualifications for marketing would decide it was a good idea to build up suspense for an announcement of an announcement that everyone would have to wait 4 days + 1 month for.

 

I have no experience with these things, so I'll bow to your likely greater knowledge. It does feel like it'd be fanning the flames of anticipation, though, making sure people don't get bored. Although, if it ends up falling flat at the end... it's a risk either way, probably.

Oh, now they're just doing it on purpose. Excuse me, I need to go outside and screech at the top of my lungs because HYPE TRAIN

I'm thinking that if the NYCC panel was always going to be Bionicle, then this reveal on Friday will be saying "Yes, yes, it is coming back, you're all very clever cybersleuths, have some teaser images and we'll go into detail at our NYCC panel."

Actually, really what they could do is just announce it, give silhouettes or something, and then let us brew ideas for who is who and what is what (like with some old comics that just showed them all blacked out in the last comic of each year). And THEN they'll show us the actual guys during NYCC, receive Q's about them and whatnot, maybe even show some cool commercials or something.

That's what I've been thinking. Tell us that yes, yes Bionicle is coming back, give us a couple more official images to make wild guesses about, and then at NYCC they'd go into greater detail about, y'know, everything else. Like whether it's a reboot or a continuation, maybe a basic sketch of what the initial story will be like, telling us if any of our favorite characters will return.

Well, taking the six coloured tiles (red, green, blue, brown, black, white) as obviously representing the six Toa Mata, we can see that LEGO is hinting several things due to which colours are next to each other.

 

Firstly, Tahu seems to have distanced himself from the group, possibly due to his inferiority complex from being the only non-Nuva. Second, Gali will continue having to hold the team together because they are inept at teamwork even after 100 000 years. Thirdly, Pohatu and Onua have become best friends after realising they are basically the same element. Lastly, Kopaka is staying as far from that pyromaniac nutter Tahu as possible.

 

Oh, and the radar dish brick on the white background represents how LEGO wanted to include Kopaka's shield, but could only find a grey one off Benny's spaceship.

Aw, man, no, you've got it all wrong. If Gali was still the heart of the team, wouldn't she be in the center instead of Pohatu? No, Pohatu's the real team center now. I think Gali's over there because she and Lewa are trying to convince Tahu that nobody thinks any less of him! Of course, Lewa keeps making "The Toa Nuva -- and Tahu" cracks, so I can see why he's not buying it, but it's the thought that counts.

(oh mata nui now I need art. I can see it now; Tahu huffily glowering at not those jerks, while Lewa's invading Tahu's personal space with an arm flung over Tahu's shoulders, and Gali's facepalming but also trying to explain to Tahu that no, really, Lewa's just a giant incompetent dork who makes bad jokes, we really do still love you! And Pohatu is torn between trying to get those three to focus, keeping Kopaka from getting sick of all this nonsense and freezing Tahu until his head gets back on straight, and keeping the ol' future-versus-past Ko-Onu rivalry from flaring up between Onua and Kopaka when those two decide they might as well debate what they're going to do about the spiders.

... this might need to become a comic hELP I CAN'T DRAW WELL ENOUGH FOR THAT)

Heh. I noticed that a few days ago and thought it was an amusing coincidence.

 

 I am ignoring all potential leaks with an offended dignity worthy of a cat. Come on, people, if it says right on the image that it's "PRELIMINARY" and "CONFIDENTIAL", you'd do best to not discuss it anywhere that enforces LEGO's Leaked Content Policy. Or anywhere at all, because preliminary means things can and will change.

 

And I'm still holding out for a reboot. Pitching ten years of storyline like a "faulty Kanohi" (ehe) might suck, but if that metaphorical Kanohi is faulty, which in this case it really is, then isn't it best to set that mask aside and recreate it without the flaws? I mean, all that work isn't wasted. You can look back, see what worked and what didn't -- in this case, what fans liked and what snapped their suspension of disbelief in two -- and then make a better, more enjoyable work of art that bears a family resemblance to its predecessor, but is stronger and still holds together when you try to pick it apart.

Honestly, I don't think you can blame people for wanting to discuss the leaks, I mean, it's the first substantial content we've had in years. It's like putting a steak in front of a hungry dog, it might not go for it while you're looking (I.e BZP following Lego's policy) but it's going to bolt it down as soon as your back's turned (I.e other sites not following the policy) .

 

Also I don't think Miras meant the Faulty Kanohi comparison to compare to the quality or accessibility of the story, I think he meant it more as an example of something you throw away without thinking about.

 

I'm not blaming people, exactly, I'm just saying that they shouldn't base their excited flailing on something unfinished, and that, if they need to talk about it because it won't leave their heads until they do, they should limit that excited flailing to places that don't follow the leak policy.

And whether that's what Miras meant or not, analogies/similes/metaphors are always inexact. If he meant something different from what I understood and subsequently disagreed with, he can tell me himself. In the mean time, I'd rather if people responded to the content of my points instead of dancing around them and arguing semantics.

 

And more on topic: I am ignoring all potential leaks with an offended dignity worthy of a cat. Come on, people, if it says right on the image that it's "PRELIMINARY" and "CONFIDENTIAL", you'd do best to not discuss it anywhere that enforces LEGO's Leaked Content Policy. Or anywhere at all, because preliminary means things can and will change.

 

And I'm still holding out for a reboot. Pitching ten years of storyline like a "faulty Kanohi" (ehe) might suck, but if that metaphorical Kanohi is faulty, which in this case it really is, then isn't it best to set that mask aside and recreate it without the flaws? I mean, all that work isn't wasted. You can look back, see what worked and what didn't -- in this case, what fans liked and what snapped their suspension of disbelief in two -- and then make a better, more enjoyable work of art that bears a family resemblance to its predecessor, but is stronger and still holds together when you try to pick it apart.

 

I said "like a faulty Kanohi". In that context, "like" is a simile, not a metaphor. But whatever.

Simile, metaphor. That's semantics. The turn of phrase is "the metaphorical [X]", not the... there isn't even a word that's like "metaphorical" but for "simile". You're ignoring my rebuttal in favor of picking apart my word choice.

An universe where many dubious things are canon while romance isn't.

-cackles- One good thing about my kvetching sprees over the past couple of days is that I've collated a pretty coherent set of rants on what I do and do not enjoy in Bionicle. A less plot-explainy and more my-reaction-explainy sentence from me might be "The first eight years were pretty coherent, but then we found out they all lived in a giant robot and plot holes opened up big enough to drive the sun through."

I'm not even angry about the they-were-AI-all-along thing anymore! Mostly the giant robot, and the attempts at saying all these twists and turns and monumental screwups were actually part of an overarching Plan. I can buy Teridax having a Plan that worked, but the Great Beings weren't even there to do on-the-fly adjustments like Teridax could! Nooo, it was "all programmed in", they had failsafes for their failsafes for their failsafes, and most of the time the fans who try to patch all the plot holes only make things worse. I can't even tell how much of the plot holes are confirmed canon anymore, there are so many fan-attempted patches that amount to epicycles within epicycles, and all the lore and backstory and shocking twists revealed in the last year or two of Bionicle Olda just make me want to tear my hair out with frustration.

... if anyone thinks this is a sore subject for me, they'd be absolutely correct. Ehehe. I'm going now.

I am ignoring all potential leaks with an offended dignity worthy of a cat. Come on, people, if it says right on the image that it's "PRELIMINARY" and "CONFIDENTIAL", you'd do best to not discuss it anywhere that enforces LEGO's Leaked Content Policy. Or anywhere at all, because preliminary means things can and will change.

And I'm still holding out for a reboot. Pitching ten years of storyline like a "faulty Kanohi" (ehe) might suck, but if that metaphorical Kanohi is faulty, which in this case it really is, then isn't it best to set that mask aside and recreate it without the flaws? I mean, all that work isn't wasted. You can look back, see what worked and what didn't -- in this case, what fans liked and what snapped their suspension of disbelief in two -- and then make a better, more enjoyable work of art that bears a family resemblance to its predecessor, but is stronger and still holds together when you try to pick it apart.

I would still say that those are written (especially the Mask of Light Novel) to reflect the movie. Bionicle had a lot of cooks in the kitchen and canon can be muddy. Bionicle does not have a single, perfect canon as we would like to think, and it branches into many sub-continuities. Tiny details like this are not nearly as important as the broad strokes of canon.

As a fanfic writer, I respectfully disagree. The details are very important! Otherwise, if a similar situation happens in a story I'm writing, I waste time trying to decide which version of events to follow.

Excuse my negativity, but I can't help but wonder if any heads have rolled at LEGO as a result of these leaks, including the mask. Or has LEGO accepted it as normal?

Well, the Leaks That Shall Not Be Discussed possibly/probably. The Mask of Hype, on the other hand, is on the public Lego servers as a thing clearly meant to (eventually) go on the Products page, so I'm not sure about "normal", but probably "a foreseeable occurrence". Considering that it's been more than half a week and the image is still on the site, I'd say it's less "leak" and more "sneaky teaser to get the fans flailingly excited and the hype bandwagon rolling".

Nice.

I entirely agree about Kotu's wasted potential. The most underrated character IMO.

But I've always imagined her with a mouthpiece rather than a lightbox if she was Toa-fied.

Yeah, probably. Mouthpieces are more expressive, but I was basing her mask off of Nokama's Great Rau, so lightbox it was.

For years now I've made unhappy noises about Kotu's wasted potential. She's a Rahi tamer with a Rau, just for starters; if she could use her mask's power, that would make her so much better. But then there's also the fact that she's said to have a quick wit and a talent for pranking, and wouldn't she just be so much fun as a Toa? And she's Macku's best friend, supposedly. Those two, together, being awesome...
 
But mostly Kotu. Because Kotu is awesome and got so little screen time compared to how awesome she could be.

So I decided to draw her as a Toa. Lookit! (It's a thumbnail.)
 

I based her design on the Toa Nuva (specifically, as they're depicted in BIONICLE: The Game) for the same reason Takanuva looked like them when he transformed. I liked the torso from B:TG particularly. Also, masks are hard. Her poor, asymmetrical eye holes...

 

Before I respond in full - when people are saying "reboot" do they mean remake? To me a reboot is more or less leaving the past history of the franchise behind and starting from somewhere and somewhen else with an entirely new set of characters. Whereas a remake starts at the same origin point and goes from there. Personally I feel a reboot as I've defined it with some continutity from the past franchise is the best option (enough continuity to not make it pointless bringing back the line but not enough to confuse new comers). A remake would feel a bit odd (I'll explain in more depth later if that is what we're talking about), especially given the 10 year line ended only a couple of years ago.

 

EDIT: That all being said I think I'd still enjoy a remake or a re-imagining if it were done well or differently enough from the original run. If it was too similar it'd feel too familiar.

That's not what reboot means, especially in the context of a media franchise. A reboot specifically refers to a brand new, re-imagining with familiar characters and locations (at least initially) in a new story completely untethered from the original, a la Trek 09, each new Transformers cartoon, etc. think of it as a completely new timeline or an alternate universe.

 

It will be disconnected from the original story in a way that implies the original never happened, because for this story, the original -didn't-. I am certain this is what we'll be getting. The same characters in name, in a similar starting point as the original run. But they won't be the same versions of those characters. A continuation, no matter how far in the future, would be shooting the line in the foot and handicapping it from the get-go.

 

All the "we'd know everything already" comments don't seem to understand the significance if a reboot- it isn't simply a re-telling, it can be a brand new story with its own mysteries, villains, worlds, locations, characters. Who says there would even -be- a Matoro to die in a reboot? Maybe the story engine won't revolve around a giant robot? A reboot with familiar starting characters allows for a faint feeling of familiarity, and then allows for brand new stories unencumbered by past stories.

 

This, this, this, this, this. Same starting location, familiar characters, and then everything goes off in a completely different direction. Maybe the Endless Ocean isn't and they're still part of Spherus Magna! Maybe Mata Nui is an island out in the middle of the ocean that the Great Beings played around with and then populated with their biomechanical experiments, and some intrepid adventurer (cough Takua cough) ventures underground and finds the research base where the GBs monitor their experiment! So many possibilities!

There are so many different directions you can take the universe if all you know is, say, what we knew at the beginning of 2001. Or a bit less than that; take the Makuta out of the picture, for instance, and then you don't have infected Rahi. Then you'd need a different conflict, and that could be any number of things. Spiders, for instance. Oops, a golden crystal the size of somebody's head just landed in the middle of Po-Wahi, and now you have a bajillion spiders swarming you, have fun with that!

No one could replace Matoro. I don't think it would feel right, in-story or out, for anyone to take Matoro's place as an official Toa Mahri. I think Takanuva would work together well with them, though.

... also, not on the list, but I have a mighty need for Toa Kotu. Because. Because TOA. KOTU. She has a Rau! She's known to be a good Rahi Tamer! She'd be awesome! And she's apparently a prankster and has a quick wit and she deserves so much more screen time than she ever got

Macku and Kotu as Toa. Just. In general. Not as part of the Toa Mahri or anything, just because they're awesome, should become Toa.

Anything from the MNOG soundtrack because yESSSSSS NOSTALGIA, but especially the epic fighting music from when the Toa faced down against Makuta. And I've always liked "Closer to the Truth".

Ahkmou was a false Turaga! Boooooo! Boooooo!

... ahem, anyway. Nokama! She told the future Toa Inika what they needed to know when the rest of the Turaga were dithering and wringing their hands about the Matoran falling into despair if they learned about Mata Nui's condition.

I think they will do a reboot. with spiders it makes me think that the visorak will come to mata nui.

(not sure if im aloud to talk about them now. if im not, im sorry)

Haven't seen anything about any spider guy on anything Lego's released to the public, soooooo let's not.

But, as a hypothetical wild guess, a visorak'd Mata Nui could be interesting. Mutated, cranky Rahi everywhere! Spiders... wait, what do Visorak do when they're not being directed by an outside force? Snack on people?

Yes, it's a good game. And a Canon one. You basically play as Takua in a sometric view through the whole Island trying to find the turaga and throwing fruits at everyone .

Throwing fruit, rescuing the Turaga, finding their Badges of Office and collecting the Toa stones... wacky fun!