Nato G

Just for clarification, what is your idea of a reboot? My idea of a reboot is going back to the beginning on the Island of Mata Nui. How would that work if the cat's out the bag that there's a giant robot face underneath the island? As the Big Story Engine is revealed, a reboot would need a new 'mystery box'. This would be tricky, as if the island is still called Mata Nui, how would it be made clear that there isn't a planetary repair robot underground. I can't see it working. I imagine there will be a new location, which is a good thing This is why I don't believe it will be a retelling. The Giant Robot thing has already been revealed. I believe in a much earlier post on this topic someone referred to it as "a one-trick horse", and that's very accurate. If it's a reboot, it will have to take a completely new direction, which I doubt will sit well with a sizeable number of the old fans, myself included. I dont want them to release Mask of Creation as a collectible set only. If the mask on the leaks isnt in fact that, I hope they introduce it later, or, not at all. Mask of Creation is one of the 3 legendary kanohi. I think it deserves a bit more than release as a collectible pack. You're completely right about the Mask of Creation needing more than that. But there's the potential that it may not come in a set in its own right. If the story is a continuation, and Velika did succeed in blowing up the tower, than Artakha is presumably dead. The Mask will either be left in the rubble, or someone else will wear it. (Or perhaps a certain unlucky skakdi will end up with it fused to his face?) I'd really rather they didn't do that. It would entirely demean the idea of a legendary mask in the first place.

I've been with BIONICLE since the very first Lego Mania Magazine promo pic featuring Onua. I pull imaginary rank on all of you - Heir We all survived Bionicle's five-year hiatus and we're still here preparing for it's return. I'd say that makes everyone who fought for Bionicle's return a veteran. (Since Toa are fighters, and we're now veterans, I guess that makes us Turaga. So depending on how you choose to see it, we've all been promoted, or demoted).

Oh. That is actually a really clever idea. And it would totally work, would it not? It would have worked, had the story not come to an end. I assume that's the reason behind Marendar's introduction, but I'm not Greg Farshtey, so I may be completely wrong and there was some other reason for Marendar's introduction, which may have been as simple as "I felt like killing some Toa". That is a very interesting point. I didn't even think of that. Now, I don't know what all of the Rahkshi powers are, but I'm wondering how they would work against a machine that was designed to be able to fight off and defeat multiple Toa at once. There are too many unknowns to be certain. We don't know which powers Tahu absorbed, we have no idea what Marendar is truly capable of, and we have no idea how kraata powers will work on it. But still, and interesting idea.

Greg has essentially flat out denied the possibility of a BIONICLE return being a continuation several times, in fact. That's evidence enough for me, the obvious evidence from the leaks aside. As much as I'd love to see the loose ends of the serials tied up, I'm glad it will be a reboot, because I don't see how BIONICLE could possibly do well by picking up a storyline that, near the end, went off into far too many directions, and was too complicated to draw in new fans. There is a very clear reason why Hero Factory doesn't follow a strict chronological storyline. After BIONICLE's storyline was too complex to accept new fans, they wanted to ensure that people could jump into HF whether the line had just launched or had been running for 10 years. I don't think they're going to make the new BIONICLE storyline this way, but they certainly are going to cut down on the complexity that plagued the later years of the original storyline, and that means reboot. LEGO will not make the same mistake twice, and certainly not by just continuing the old storyline. Greg has also pretty much flat-out denied that Bionicle is coming back as well, yet we've taken that as a given. Until we get an official announcement from Lego, I'm taking anything Greg says with an Everest of salt. He'll say whatever his bosses at TLG tell him to say, until there arrives a time when they're ready to make an announcement and he's allowed to discuss this topic openly. I'm not saying he's lying to us, I'm just saying that he might not be telling the whole truth. And I still don't understand what you mean when you say there's "obvious evidence from the leaks". The only things that the leaks seem to confirm is the original team of Toa will be returning. That doesn't prove anything in regards to whether it will be a continuation of reboot. So unless you know something else that the rest of us don't (in which case, feel free to enlighten us), I really can't make sense of that part of your argument. Sorry. And as for cutting down on the complexity, that's basically what I've been saying the whole time. If they rein in the rogue story arcs and divergent characters into one main plot, a continuation can easily be a feasible possibility. You're looking at this as if a reboot is a forgone conclusion, but we don't have any proof of anything yet. The intention of this discussion is to talk about what we'd like to see in 2015, which is what I've done. I've said I'd like to see a continuation, and then gone on to describe how that could be achieved with relative ease. Irregardless, there's really nothing any of us can prove or disprove until such a time as Lego releases some actual details. I completely agree with you on this. I've been waiting for almost five years for a resolution to the story I spent half of my childhood becoming strongly emotionally invested in. I'm not offended by what you've said, because I strongly support your opinion. I don't see why Lego would finally give in to our pleas after so many years to bring back Bionicle, only to get rid of everything and start over. That entirely defeats the purpose of bringing it back to begin with. My idea of a reboot is going back to the beginning on the Island of Mata Nui. I assume you mean a retelling, then? I have my doubts that Lego would make the mistake of doing that. This has been said before several times by various people: a retelling wouldn't work because us old generation Bionicle fans would ruin the entire story for the new ones in five minutes flat by giving away all of the major plotlines and spoiling it for them. Or do you mean going back to the island of Mata Nui but then taking the story in a whole different direction? (I think this would also be a mistake, since it wouldn't sit well with the majority of the older fans).

That's more or less what I was trying to say, yeah. The backstory isn't hugely important, despite what everyone seems to think. For example, you don't need to understand the old generation of Doctor Who to make sense of the new series, despite the reintroduction of old villains like Davros and The Master. We're given enough info to make sense of the present story without needing to go into a huge amount of backstory. In the same way, Bionicle's return could easily incorporate all of the old characters and pretty much continue where it left off without having to go into the backstory of all of them. It's isn't required to make sense of the story. It helps, and provides more depth to the characters and their stories, but it isn't needed. But if done right, I don't think a massive time skip would be necessary either.

you make an excellent case. I guess you're right. No matter what form it makes the return in, Bionicle is still coming back! We should rejoice that it's happening at all, instead of complaining about how it does or doesn't turn out.

I hope you are prepared for disappointment. Based on things Greg has said in the past, and the difficult story being a major reason for the line's cancellation and stagnation over the last few years, and of course based on things we can't talk about because of the leaked policy, I am going to go ahead and guarantee you that it'll be a hard reboot. No way it continues from the past story. Not a chance. I've learnt to live with disappointment. It started about... four years ago, when a certain theme came to an abrupt end, and it hasn't really stopped since then. One more bit of disappointment is hardly going to kill me. But I don't understand what you mean about the leaks. I haven't seen anything definitive in them that confirms what the story will or won't be like. Unless you know something I don't, there's no evidence either way to confirm what the story will be like for Bionicle's return. Not yet, at least.

Another point that was never explained, I don't think. Where exactly was Marendar's prison? Since most of the serials from that time were primarily set on Bota Magna, I'm going to guess that Marendar was probably trapped there, but the thing is, we just don't know for certain. It could be at the bottom of the Aqua Magna ocean or buried in a GB ruin beneath the sands of of Bara Magna, or on another planet entirely, or up in the Red Star. All we know is that the arrival of the Toa on Spherus Magna activated it. So we don't actually know how long it will take for Marendar to come into contact with a Toa. I've had another idea as well. I think Marendar may have been designed as a plot device for the story, a means of eliminating the excess number of Toa. I think at last count there were 40-something of them left, and only about half of those were named characters. Perhaps the plan was to have Marendar pick off the others so that the remaining Toa could be the primary focus of the story, the same way Velika was eliminating all of the wildcard characters like Karzahni and Tren Krom, because they were no longer important to the continuation of the plot. Just a thought.

This was really quite insightful. I guess I'm plasma, based on your research. A Bionicle personality quiz would be loads of fun, I think.

Personally, I'd like some of masks we haven't seen in sets as part of the collectibles. Things like Artakha's mask of Creation and Tuyet's Mask of Intangibility. Collectible weapons would be nice too, or differently textured armour that can be swapped for what characters are already wearing. Instead of having something like the Golden armour, where there was a piece that came with each set in the line, they could sell different armour variants or body templates as collectibles, for maximum customisation. Someone mentioned having a third line of Bohrok, but I don't think they're too integral to the storyline anymore. The Baterra, on the other hand... well, that's a whole different story... depending on whether it's a continuation or not... Would you be satisfied if the serials were continued and the main story was a timeskip or total reboot? Doesn't that defeat the entire purpose? Or do you mean having a time skip for the new fan's sake and continuing the serials to fill in the missed time for the old fans?

I think that if the story continued, the viruses TSO took (which were used to bring down the MU robot) could have been used to defeat Marendar as well, which would have meant some kind of alliance or deal being struck between the Toa and the Dark Hunters. It would have been interesting to see. And someone mentioned the possibility of Marendar shapeshifting? I never thought of that, but it seems plausible, now that I think about it. I always pictured a massive, heavily armoured sentinel-esque robot killing machine with the ability to nullify Toa powers, but a shapeshifting assassin machine would be awesome as well. I hope they keep Marendar into 2015, so we can actually find out more about him/her/it.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: a continuation is entirely doable. Personally, I've been waiting five years to find out what happens next with all of the new Spherus Magna storylines, and if they did away with all of that in favour of a reboot or retelling, my disappointment would know no bounds... The writers can easily reintroduce old characters without having to go into all of their backstory, in the same way that the Star Wars EU describing every planet character and species isn't required to understand the films, the 10,000 years of background for every character in Bionicle isn't truly needed to make new fans understand the old characters. I don't fully know half of it myself, and I can still make perfect sense of the story as a whole. The Spherus Magna saga is an entirely new beginning. Old stories and allegiances are largely irrelevant now, and the entire Mata Nui/Makuta dichotomy is in the past as well, since all of the Makuta are gone (with the possible exception of Miserix, since we don't know if he got blown up or not). I think that the leftover material, story threads and characters from the original storyline is enough to fuel future story arcs for several years without the need to introduce even more characters in a retelling or distant future reboot or whatever. Thus I still firmly believe that Bionicle 2015 should, and likely will, be a continuation.

Because the Dark Hunters, Barraki, Skrall remnant and pretty much every other villain left over from Bionicle's ten years were grouping together in the Bara Magna desert. Plus the Element Lords. Plus the Baterra. Plus Velika. If they skipped forward five years to the eventual ending of that war, almost everyone would be dead. There wouldn't be much story left five years into Bionicle's future. Although, I suppose that would be one way to get rid of all of the excess characters... I don't think having the Element Lords, Barraki or Dark Hunters as villains is a good idea, mind. To fully understand them, you'd need a knowledge of the previous Bionicle stories. I'd prefer new villains so new fans don't have to pick up any story 'baggage'. A subtle nod or two for the old fans would be a good thing, though. The best way to start fresh but keep the same canon would be a time jump into the future, when the events of the old story have faded into myth. That way you can reference the events, without requiring new fans to possess detailed knowledge of them. I don't agree with this, mostly. The Barraki and TSO could just be passed off as "evil warlords from the old universe" or something along those lines, and the Baterra, Element Lords and Marendar were barely introduced in the old story, so bringing them in wouldn't require any real background knowledge either. A continuation is entirely plausible, if they pull it off right.

I still argue that a Bionicle Continuation would be fairly easy. In the original, new characters and locations were introduced as the storyline went on, even though most of those characters had actually been around the whole time. Thus Lego doesn't need to reintroduce everything in the first year. It would be very easy to start off on Spherus Magna and work from there. Keep in mind, the original Bionicle started off with a whole bunch of amnesiacs running around an island with no idea at all how they got there. Allow me to demonstrate. Here is a possible way of introducing Bionicle as a continuation to a new audience: "After many years travelling through space, a race of bio-mechanical heroes and the villagers they protect find themselves on a new world, a paradise called Spherus Magna. However, all is not as peaceful as it seems. This new world is fraught with danger, and the new arrivals must make peace with he planet's inhabitants as well before they can combat the evils that await them, and the old enemies that have followed them to this paradise..." It's entirely reasonable to gloss over the details of Mata Nui being a giant robot and fighting agaisnt Makuta, the other giant robot, because it's no longer important to the story. Makuta is dead, and his legions are vanquished. He wiped out the other makuta himself, and his Rahkshi were destroyed, making that the one and only plot point in the old stroyline that was entirely wrapped up. Here's some ideas for Bionicle's return: one year could feature the six Elemental Lords and Baterra as the main villains, and the next could bring back the Shadowed One, Dark Hunters and Barraki as the next set of villains, since they were allied at the end of the story. There's also the Golden Being and Marednar to contend with, which could also make for intriguing story arcs. My point is that there's plenty of material to make a continuation an entirely viable option, and it would be a shame to see all of this material thrown away in favour of a reboot or retelling that could easily be spoiled for new fans by one quick Google search. I'm hoping for a continuation of some kind, but only time will tell what's really going to happen.

Marendar, the mysterious Toa-hunting invention of the Great Beings. Barely mentioned before the story came to an abrupt halt. So many questions left unanswered... I'm curious as to what everyone thinks about Marendar, so I've created this topic for any theories and such regarding the character. What we know: Was created by the Great Beings to kill the Toa if they ever turned evil and tried to conquer Spherus Magna.Is now running amok on Spherus Magna, likely hunting the Toa.Has the capabilities to bust out of a solid protodermis cage.What we don't know: what it looks like.what it is fully capable of.what it actually is (organic, cyborg, fully mechanical).what part it would have played in he future storyline (before the Bionicle serials were abruptly ended).Personally, I hope Marendar features in the new story, because I think as a character it had a lot of potential to drive the plot. Theories: I have a feeling that Marendar is probably fully mechanical, like the Baterra or the Mata Nui robot, and likely has some kind of sophisticated laser weaponry to combat Toa. If it was built to fight Toa, logic would dictate that it has some kind of invulnerability to Toa elemental and mask powers, or perhaps it feeds on them. (I think the Rahi Nui had a similar capability). I think that the viruses that The Shadowed One gathered (the same ones that were used by Teridax to bring down the MU robot), would have played a part in defeating Marendar (assuming my guess of it being a robot is correct).Right, those are all of my thoughts on the topic. I'm very interested to hear what everyone else thinks about it.

I know the dangers of becoming too attached to a character. That tends to happen when you've got free reign to do whatever you want with no one regulating what you do. Resurrecting Tuyet might have been taking it a bit too far, considering that there were already so many other characters, and that her return didn't really have too big of an impact on the storyline. And as fun as alternate dimensions kind of were, I think that was where it went too far. Don't get me wrong; I really liked the other worlds, but it was too much for a story that already has more characters than I can count and a few dozen intersecting plotlines led by a hundred different heroes, villains and neutrals all vying for power. On your other point: it makes me wonder if he's hinting at a continuation of some kind? Or we could all be reading way too much into it, and it means nothing. We'll just have to wait and see, I guess.

I think the only reason the serials went "out of control" was because he wrote them with the intention of continuing to write them, to carry on the entire Bionicle theme in those serials, since the main story had then finished. From what I understand, he got permission from TLG to keep writing the serials, and it was only because of having to look after his daughter that he was forced to stop writing them. So I would argue that it wasn't the serials that went out of control, it was Greg's life, which stopped him from being able to finish them. But, as they say " happens". Well, I wasn't really referring to The Yesterday Quest or The Powers That Be, especially since I found what little we got of both to be really great. I was thinking more along Reign of Shadows, which had a lot of good parts but other parts felt hastily written and sometimes felt like Greg was having a little too much fun exercising his freedom, and so a lot of plot threads ended up going every which way, and some questionable writing was done (like Tuyet's random revival). I'm a huge fan of Greg's work and he was one of the authors who inspired me to write when I was younger, but I think in this case his writing wasn't up to par. And it was in only a few serials, really, since Greg has proven he writes just fine when given a lot of creative control (Time Trap). Okay, that's a fair point. I see what you mean. Greg inspired me a lot, too, hence why I'm now doing a writing course at university. You're completely right about Reign of Shadows (it wasn't one of my favourites), but I think some of the serials got a bit too big, because they were written, or partially written, before Lego's decision to end Bionicle. Serials like Empire of the Skrall and Riddle of the Great Beings that brought in all of these extra plot points like the Element Lords and the Baterra that never became part of the main story because it was cut short. Those plot points in particular I'd love to see brought back in the new storyline. I think they could have gotten a lot of mileage out of those. And on your point about Tuyet getting revived, I actually had no idea what was happening when that particular event occured. I had no idea who she was or what was going on, because that was around the time I first got into the serials. It was several minutes of frantic googling and reading on Biosector01 to figure out what it was all about, and by the time it was all done, I still saw no real reason for her to be there at all. So in that circumstance, yes, Greg exercised a little bit too much creative licence. That said, if it does turn out to be a continuation, I'd like the writers to keep Tuyet around, because I'm really interested to see how a battle between her and Marendar would go down.

Okay, seriously, here's a perfect example of why this policy makes no sense to me: https://community.lego.com/t5/BIONICLE/Bionicle-2015-Set-Information/m-p/10767993#U10767993 Even the Lego Message Boards allow blatant discussion of the leaked information, and their posts are approved by moderators before being allowed onto the website! How is it that our policy is harsher than Lego's own?!

I think the only reason the serials went "out of control" was because he wrote them with the intention of continuing to write them, to carry on the entire Bionicle theme in those serials, since the main story had then finished. From what I understand, he got permission from TLG to keep writing the serials, and it was only because of having to look after his daughter that he was forced to stop writing them. So I would argue that it wasn't the serials that went out of control, it was Greg's life, which stopped him from being able to finish them. But, as they say " happens".

I agree... I think. Maybe we need some sort of bionicle history page for new fans to refer to That's basically what I meant. I was just trying to make it sound cooler than that. I may have gone a tad overboard. Or a lot. I think updating the website's main page has already been discussed, but that needs to be done, and some sort of history article either tacked onto the front page, or linked directly to it for ease of access.

Yes, okay. Focus on Bionicle and BZ's future. We're already getting a lot of new members, but I think that's mostly old fans joining up in response to the recent rumours. So if and when we start getting new members, what measures do we need to take to integrate them into the community? I think we should put a sort of story timeline recap thingy on the frontpage, explaining that Bionicle has existed before 2015, so new fans understand that this is a ancient and powerful community, whose exploits are the stuff of legend...

Lol that "Crazy Thread" can't even decide what it is most of the time.. Probably because a certain policy isn't letting us discuss anything... So if we're discussing Bionicle's and BZP's future, I think we should be talking about tweaking the leaks policy, which also has its own topic.

Ah, good point. I live on "that crazy thread". Okay, back to the original point of this conversation, we should try our hardest not to cause a divide between B1 fans and B2 fans. We're all one community, and we should celebrate the thing that created our community: Bionicle. No matter what form it comes in.

I agree completely. The problem is, Lego wants their products to be bought by children (at least mostly). That's why the current themes are so light. But yes, I enjoyed the small snippets of humor we got in Bionicle. Ah, Vezon... good times, good times. Exactly. Good old Vez. The fact is, Lego has so many themes tailored to younger audiences that they sort of need one for older ones. That's what Bionicle was, at least to me. Hero Factory didn't have that.

I didn't really appreciate the comics once I started reading the novels. The comics seemed almost trivial and empty in comparison. That's a fair point. I think the comics were meant to engage younger audiences by simplifying the story or something, but my point about consistency still stands. The books and comics were completely disjointed, with entire scenes happening out of sequence and stuff, as well as skipping over huge chunks of story. I almost did. And since when were Skrall green? At least they didn't try to make a mini-Stronius for the stars. That would have irritated me beyond the scope of human tolerance. What annoyed me the most, I think, was when they called the Skakdi a Piraka. I know it was for ease of understanding or something like that, but why didn't they just call it Nektann then, since that was his name? Another thing that bugged me is that in the story, Nektann is referenced as actually being bigger than most other Skakdi, but as a set he was far smaller. All in all, I really didn't like the stars. At all. Ever. Hopefully Lego will learn from their mistakes and not give us such awful sets ever again. (The sets themselves weren't all that bad, to be honest, it was the fact that they were so expensive for their actual size, and that they were all we got in the last year of Bionicle).