Evergrey: Toa of Music

My interest in Bionicle diminished once they announced that the Toa team for 2008 was going to be the Nuva team again. I had grown fond of the Inika/Mahri characters, but I also thought, per the Mata/Nuva, the Metru/Hordika, and then the Inika/Mahri, that each team got 2 iterations and that was is it. Knowing that, however, the last set of my childhood that I got was Lego Star Wars. I got a good bit of the '08 and '09 Lego Star Wars sets prior to losing interest in lego all together. (I joined here because I refound that interest later on though )

Deadlock - "The Arsonist" Epica - "The Solace System" Evergrey - "The Atlantic" Solarus - "Reunion"

4/5: I've never been a big Billy Joel fan, but the piano in this song gets me moving!

Just picked up All I See is War by Sevendust and The Shadow Theory by Kamelot. So just a delayed acquiring of these bands' 2018 albums.

"Medicated" - Sevendust

The Heart From Your Hate- Trivium

Ooh! This is something that has bothered me all of G1 and G2... I want a story to take place on a continent! I don't want the toa (or heroes) to save the island from invading evil, I want to have a quest that involves world building spanning across a larger land mass with different cities and cultures. Now, I know what you're thinking: "But Evergrey, we have that! Each element is a different culture and they're just in different regions of the island! And you can still world build on an island and blah, blah..." Hear me out! The toa and matoran/villagers have a home city/metropolis comprised of people living together regardless of what element they are. And the Toa are the guardians of that city from threats in the land outside the city. The threats include Rahi (both a mixture of actual known wildlife and myths (ex. a Bionicle equivalent of a Hydra or something)). and we could have another city that has inhabitants of all the elements and the toa are on a quest to find their mask powers together instead of individually, and they encounter the rahi and bounty hunters, and minions of the evil Makuta who is trying to force all the cities on the continent to submit to his will and join his empire. Or something along those lines? As far as sets are concerned...not sure, but it just bothers me that they always stick to the island thing when they very well could try to make a story based around a continent (and that would give more potential to world build, to expand people's imaginations, and they could incorporate so much more story material into journeys and give the story more breath rather than just always having fights and conflicts.

Haunted - Taylor Swift Admittedly this is way out of character for me to listen to, but it's a good song surprisingly

Toa of Sonics all the way. Though specifically a Toa of Music So as far as appearance, I'd say definitely solid and physically present, but the colors would be changing with the music around me. So if there wasn't any music playing, I would probably say my default would be a blue-grey mixture with gold armour. But if the music is happy, probably a mix of brighter colors, if it's angry, red and black, etc. And depending upon how music the music speaks to me, the colors would be more solid if it's not a good song or more neon/translucent if I dig the song. If it's a favorite song, the colors would be translucent and vibrate to the sonic frequencies of the song. Also I'd have have a slim but muscular physique. Weapon of choice: an Axe-shaped guitar. The the axe would be able to be used as an actual axe, fire elemental energy (like the '03 game), be played as an actual guitar, and/or be strummed and fire elemental energy whilst being played. Mask: I'd ideally like to wear a Kanohi Hau since it's my favorite mask aesthetically, but I'd rather have the power of flight...so a Hau shaped mask of flight.

You made a lot of great points in your post, but I want to focus on this one. I've never liked the foot piece that we've had since the 2.0 HF wave and yet that's just about the only foot piece that ever appears in any constraction set post 2012. I could rant on and on about how much I hate the design of the foot piece... But that would take away from this: The robotic element. Yes, since the dawn of constraction, just about everything has been robotic. Slizers, Roborider, Bionicle & Hero Factory. All of these are based on robots to some degree. I think that because of the gear functions, it's just made sense to have the characters be robotic in some fashion. But we've had this trend for almost 20 years of constraction: something's gotta change. I have another constraction idea. Remember good ole Knight's Kingdom? Or the Marvel/DC liscenced Super Heroes? Those were constraction by definition as well. Actually, Knight's Kingdom would be a perfect revival to constraction: You still have use for gear functions, the characters wouldn't be robotic, and system could definitely be incorporated into the mix. But what about organic parts? Well we could have archers, princesses, and other medieval stuffs to offer parts that aren't sleek or armour based. And that could give way for a dragon and horses and other non-biped creatures for constraction. The big question is though, on a scale that big, would Lego be able to keep the costs reasonable?

Dirty - Sevendust. New song from them as of a few days (or maybe weeks ago). I'm very excited for their new album

which sets do you consider to have an overuse of silver?

2/5- too avant garde for my taste. The guitar intro had me hooked but then the song just fizzled out for me. Didn't do much :/

To whomever set this up: that's just mean-spirited

It wouldn't be too far of a stretch, considering Bionicle started out with (among other things) Flight of the Valkyries on a synthesizer. I had no clue of this. I have to listen to this! I also think that possibilities are endless with goofy combo's like the GNR on a flute. You could have an 80's drum beat mixed with djent being played on a tuba or whatever else. Side note, I think that the Ga-Koro music motif should be soft, atmospheric keys with a soft, but driving beat under it: symbolizing the water is calm towards the surface (hence the melody being in the higher notes) while there is trouble brewing in the depths (the underlying percussion beat)

Honestly I don't have any elaborate ideas on how to "save" constraction or whatever. But I do suggest that there's a mixture of all 3 current building systems from Lego (system, technic, & CCBS) (if there's more than those 3, please enlighten me). I think that CCBS on it's own gets repetitive design wise. I think that technic on it's own requires too many specialized parts. And I think that having system on it's own defeats the purpose of constraction (unless it's like Exo Force or Knight's Kingdom). Just look at how a good majority of the community builds MoC's; I'd say 96% of the ones I've seen recently have blended all 3 Lego systems beautifully and I think that's what constraction lacks overall. The system parts add smaller details, the CCBS is the bare bones, and the technic forms the gear functions. I think if Lego tries to incorporate some more system aspects into constraction, the popularity could rise again because it'll establish that the parts included with those sets can be used with the consumer's "regular" legos. Maybe everything I just said is dumb and irrelevant. It's what I think at the moment though.

4.5/5. The song is beautiful! It's heavy, yet emotional! It's sad, yet uplifing. I love the instrumentation of it and I love the singer's voice! LMAO Ya'll keep sharing heavier music while I've been on a journey through the 70's & 80's recently

I really like the design you were able to come up with! I love the aesthetic of the armor (as others have said). I do have one critique, however; I don't think that specific mask fits with the armor. I honestly don't know what it is about it, but the body and armor look sleek, yet strong and powerful and that mask looks kinda clunky in comparison to the rest of the body. That's just my personal observation on the overall build. Other than that, I really think you did a fantastic job with the overall finished idea! Great use of parts and I love the staff!

"Message in a Bottle" - The Police

I just watched Confidence (2003 Film) It's a crime drama film and definitely in my top 5 favorite films of all time! Pros: Great characters (and the cast is all perfect for their roles) Engaging and unique plot Not too predictable for first-time viewers Great suspense Good plot twists It's a heist film and the big reveal on how they did it is fantastic Cons: The protagonists are objectively crooked people (so you're rooting for bad guys to win basically) The actual main villain chews his gum obnoxiously loud, among other annoying traits It's always about the money The takeaways: If you love mystery movies, this is one of, if not, THE best heist films. The characters are interesting and you want them to succeed even though they are con artists. And the way the events unfold leaves you on the edge of your seat! Similar films: Ocean's 11 (and 12 and 13), Now You See Me (1 & 2), and The Italian Job (all of which are also fantastic films)

The last non-licensed Pirates sets were in 2015, though there was also a Pirates of the Caribbean set last year. And of course that's not counting 2016's Ninjago sky pirates. In general I think a lot of the general categories LEGO's used before could probably do well again at some point in the future. Like you mention, there's the underground, underwater, and globetrotting adventure genres that LEGO has already revisited in the past decade (Power Miners, Atlantis, Pharaoh's Quest) and might be inclined to revisit again. I'd add spy/secret agent themes to that list, which LEGO first touched on in Alpha Team and later in Agents and Ultra Agents. There's also always the classic evergreen series like Castle, Pirates, and Space. If the Jurassic World franchise burns out at any point Dino could become an option again as well. And LEGO being Danish, I wouldn't put it past them to revisit Vikings at some point. Ultimately it's all just a matter of picking the right theme at the right time. One that I don't really anticipate coming around again anytime soon (excluding the possibility of some Hollywood blockbuster, anyway) is Western, because the Western genre simply hasn't been especially popular with kids in a long time from what I can tell. We even talked in my film class last semester about how the ubiquity it once enjoyed in film and TV has largely been supplanted by the superhero genre. Yeah, I'm honestly not surprised that Western isn't super popular. Vikings would be cool to see again at some point. Remember in about 2000-2003 when they did sports? Like Basketball, Soccer, and Hockey? Do you think they'd do that again? I remember owning the big technic hockey set and I thought it was really cool! If memory serves me correctly, I haven't seen any sets like that since the '03-'04 timeframe. Were they just not very popular or more collector's items? Sports could be interesting and LEGO has done plenty of sports-focused minifigure blind bags, including two entire sports-focused series: the Team GB minifigures in Great Britain and the DFB (German Football Association) in Germany. I think, like a lot of early 2000s sets, the original Sports sets probably didn't do very well by today's standards. But it might be something LEGO would be willing to try again with a renewed emphasis on building. That's cool that they do the minifigures for sports teams! I would, though, i like to see a soccer field or a basketball court and be able to play it like some of the old sets allowed you to do. I also secretly want Lego to have an excuse to release a modern update of Soccer Mania

I really have to say that the invasion from below (2014) was easily my least favorite. I had some of the Bionicle play sets and thought they were alright, but I really didn't like the HF playsets because it just didn't feel right. The presentation of the sets felt way too akin to Exo Force without looking as cool as said sets.

What's more surprising to me is that they didn't just keep working on this game while incorporating the 2005 story into it to make a 2-year saga game in the same vein as the OG Bionicle Game (the 2001-03 story saga). The video makes it look like it would've been a quality game and giving them an extra year to flesh out everything would've only improved that imo.You know that’s a pretty good idea. I don’t know why the developers didn’t do that, considering EA did it for the first game. My only guess why is because they would miss the 2nd movie’s deadline. Even though if they kept working they could probably reach the 3rd movie’s release date. Exactly. They could've totally had it out by the 3rd movie. It's honestly amazing to me how we had 2 major Bionicle games get cancelled before they could be released. And even the 2003 game was rushed to be released and had to be trimmed a few levels and had a couple of errors. My question is why? Why did we only get 2 major console games out of the 4 that we know of and even the ones we did get could've been a little more thought out? Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the 2 games and I enjoy playing them, but I'm just curious why the companies involved didn't learn from previous mistakes and correct said mistakes to ensure the game be released on time and/or have everything ready in time. Just curious is all

"No matter how much I might want to, I can't just change" BET