Cressona

I'm not sure I'd rule out a revamp of the classic Vahi being re-released in some form down the line; depending on the significance of those Vahi easter eggs, we could see a similar-looking Mask of Time make an appearance in the story, if only as a precursor to the full-face Mask of Time that I've heard some speculation about. I mean, I'm still pretty sure this has no connection to that Vahi. But as for down the line...

I agree with Iblis, I think the charm of G2 is in the mystic elements, the way everything is shrouded in magic, and to explain all that away with some psuedo-scientific, ancient-alien rambling would really ruin a lot of that charm. G1's handling of the transition from mythological/fantasy to sci-fi, though there are definitely plenty of legitimate complaints to be leveled at it, was definitely a lot smoother than that, and if the science fiction-y is a road G2 wants to go down I'd hope they'd steer away from a big "everything magic is actually science and aliens" reveal.

It could also be that the mask makers are "spirits" like Mata Nui and Makuta were imagined to be in 2001, and their resemblance to the Protectors is so that they can interact with them on Okoto and have kinship with each other, despite the protectors/villagers being ordinary, mortal inhabitants and the mask makers being maybe immortal "spirits" of some kind. We could see some interesting parallels between the mask makers and the toa, who could be seen as sort of like elemental spirits, especially in the mythology-heavy 2001-- maybe there's a connection between the toa and the mask makers as far as origin, or powers, or something.

I was getting pretty attached to the set version of Onua, where he's the shorter, stocky, super strong guy, but it definitely fits with his role as the "muscle" of the group to be huge in size as well as width. When I see him in set form next to the other toa I always feel like his personality makes him seem to tower over them anyway. The LOSS, though, we've got a lot less to go on, and his set form even more off than Onua's-- Onua at least has the proportions right, and still looks like a big guy. LOSS, though, comes off as much less impressive, especially considering how big and threatening he's supposed to be in the animations!

Okay, here's the low-down, the skinny, the "deal", so to speak: Bionicle's G1 story is over. It's gone. Dead. Over. They were never, ever, ever going back to it. Even in the extremely slim chance they somehow tie the two stories together, this hold true. Tying them together would solve one mystery and one mystery only: we know that none of the Toa Mata died. And that's if the two are connected AT ALL. Everything else? There is literally no reason to go back to the wriggling, rotten ends of the serials and try building off them. It doesn't make LEGO money, it wastes Greg's time when he could be doing things that make him money, and it distracts the fans from things that do make LEGO money. The G1 story is frozen in the exact instant Greg stopped writing, forever. So, with those hard, cold, actual factual facts before you, ask yourself, what do you gain by the two lines being linked together? What difference does it make if these are new Toa or old Toa? Why is it so important to have this be a "continuation" of the old story? I see no merit besides pleasing those who have refused to accept the idea of a reboot under any circumstances, and they are the fans that have shown, by and large, to be most unpleasable. (They also usually don't make LEGO money, and, as a business, that makes LEGO cease to care about what they think.) The nature of this reboot certainly does seem to be a highly-charged topic on this site; that's some mighty strong rhetoric you've got there. So... for me, the fact that it's back at all, and that it's doing cool stuff in homage to the original story is plenty awesome. And, hey, I'm with you, those serials got awfully messy post-2009, and before that point the story was so complex and unwieldy it's impressive it managed to sustain itself for that long. And, even though I liked all that complexity and the intricacies of the lore back then, as many on BZP did, I'm looking forward to the clean slate that G2 represents-- we have a simpler, more streamlined story that maintains all the essential elements and character of Bionicle without all the messy extras. Now on the other hand, and I'm sure you and many others are happy to disagree, I think it would be cool, and I think it would add a little subtle depth to the G2 world, if there were some connection to G1. I'm not saying we've got to wrap up all the serials, I'm not saying every character from G1 has to be teleported to Okoto and have his destiny explained to us, I just think a little nod back to the old world from the new, a little "Hey, we're in Okoto now, with Okoto characters and all Okoto stuff, but by the way, there's a link between Okoto and Spherus Magna, or Mata Nui, or whatever, and we won't be exploiting it for storyline purposes, but it's there" would be a nice way to acknowledge the old generation, put it to rest, and allow us to move forward, satisfied that G1 isn't just dead, but laid to rest, and living on through G2. Not something big. Not draining resources away from the story team to spend wrapping up old stuff we don't particularly care about anymore. But some link, wrapped up somewhere in the new story, for the old folks to notice and go, "hey, isn't that neat?" It's not essential, right? But wouldn't it be a little more interesting, a little more fun, than not having any "hey isn't that neat?" moment at all?

Good point, I think it's interesting to note the apparent prevalence of "magic" as a feature of G2-- which I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, it makes sense that the legendary mask makers should use "magic" to forge masks of power, and it contributes to that mythological feel. On the other hand, "magic" could open the door to, well, whatever anybody wants it to be, allowing powers to be thrown around without restriction or explanation. Now, lack of explanation I won't mind so much, in keeping with the mythology, but unless there are clear and consistent restraints on that power (which magic, as a vague and fluid term, may lack) it could get out of hand pretty quickly. Just like energized protodermis!

I kind of hope not. Although if regular protodermis comes back as a building block of some part of the island, it could be a hint that something similar to the G1 setting is going on, and we'll have some sort of G2-version of Great Beings or a GSR (hopefully still significantly different from the G1 edition, if still recognizably inspired by it). Energized protodermis, on the other hand, was always sort of a deus-ex-machina in G1. Need the toa to transform? Dunk 'em in EP! Want to combine Takanuva and Makuta, or for that matter any other characters? Dunk 'em in EP! And the whole sentience thing, which we never really got to flesh out, was kind of cool but mostly felt like just too much. G2 is, so far, giving off a vibe of a far more simple, streamlined, mythological approach to the Bionicle story, and protodermis is definitely a complicating element in that narrative. Unless there are very compelling reasons for it to make an appearance, it seems likely it won't be back.

The animations are the only storyline source. This isn't Gen1 where we have three forms of media backing up every story. Yeah, that's what I figured. Still, I'm kind of hesitant to make any substantive claims about the setting or the world in general based on the animations, since they seem to be primarily focused on giving a simple overview of the main conflict, rather than go into any depth or do any significant world-building. If this is all we'll have to go on until the summer, I suppose extrapolating from them is fair game, but I'm not sure how accurate a picture they present of what's "actually" going on-- I mean, they give the impression that the toa show up, almost immediately grab their masks, and then unite and defeat the LOSS in a single, quick confrontation. Maybe that's the case, but it doesn't feel like a substantial enough amount of story, even compared to the relatively simple plot of 2001.

Regitnui, that's kind of what I was thinking, but do we have any source besides the animations? Admittedly they do show a village of identical, protector-looking folks, but do we know that's because they're the same species, or is it just a simplification in the name of not introducing too many new-looking characters and saving $$$ on animation?

I personally hope we're able to keep it simple on Okoto and stick with the classic six elements, alongside maybe Light and Shadow because, obviously, Good vs Evil and all that. Although the Bohrok-Kal having new powers was super awesome... I wouldn't mind at all if we brought back lightning, magnetism, etc. but just had them be powers and not elements-- there's something very mythological about having a limited number of elements controlled by a limited number of toa, and once you start expanding that, there are of course some cool possibilities but you lose that mythology and the uniqueness of being an element-user.

At first I was worried that there'd be some story reason that four toa have their masks stolen/infected, and the other two would have to fight them/win back the others' masks.. definitely would want the entire team to have to go through that, just because setting aside Tahu and Gali for story reasons vastly decreases playability outside of following along strictly with the established story. But I like the idea that these are just new masks made by some Mask Maker (Ekimu or Makuta or some Skull guy who has access to a forge) to equip the bad guys with; it'd make sense if Lego's trying to save $$$ by reusing molds instead of introducing new masks, and it'd underscore the importance of the masks to the story, since bad guys and good guys have them, and will probably use mask powers to battle each other at some point. The the half-transparent part of the masks could indicate corruption, because they're being used by villains, or it could indicate either a higher or lower level of mask power, if the bad guys' masks were made by an inferior mask maker, or they were powered up to present more of a challenge to the toa. Either way, equipping the skull guys with some of the same masks the toa has sets up a cool confrontation that could be reminiscent of '01's shadow toa, with the toa "confronting themselves" in some way.

This is the first time I'm hearing about any of this GB Civil War stuff, very cool.. anybody have a source on that? I've always wanted more info on where the G1 story was supposed to be headed. Although I can only imagine the difficulty shoehorning further waves of sets post-2009 into this complex of a story; 2010 was rough enough! Artakha and Karzahni are unique beings, not species, and the latter is dead. Similarly, turaga are a subspecies of matoran, but the protectors are the same species as the villagers, so their relationship his more like the Ta-koro guard and the lava farmers than Turaga and Agori. Is there confirmation of the relationship between the protectors and the rest of the villagers? As far as I was aware, we were totally in the dark on anything about the inhabitants of the villages of Okoto besides the little info we have on the six protectors. Aww come on, if you're going to label this a waste of time, isn't being on BZPower at all a waste of time? A little storyline speculation never hurt anyone, and I remember back when it used to be BZP's bread-and-butter!

Skull spiders should definitely be reanimated/zombified versions of something on Okoto, that's too awesome to pass up-- besides, if they're just ordinary wildlife or a pest like, say, the Visorak, that decreases their creepiness/threat levels significantly. Toa fighting annoying Okoto Rahi swarms <<<<< Toa fighting reanimated army of the undead. There's also got to be a connection between the skull spiders and the summer wave's skull squad; if the skull spiders were just rahi, where do these guys come from? If they're all spooky zombies, though, we've got ancient undead Okoto-an warriors to take on the toa in the summer! Or, if Makuta made the skull spiders, I'd imagine he's connected to the skull squad too? But our Okotoan Mask Maker Makuta seems less likely to have a Rahkshi army at his disposal as the old version; they'd have to be post-MoUP bodyguards of some kind.

I suppose this is as likely as any other G1-G2 connection we could envision, but I hope it's more interesting than a simple hard reboot; it just feels disappointingly empty if we have to give up on G1 altogether story-wise to jump into a simplified, rehashed version of it for the next few years. I mean, as long as it keeps that uniquely Bionicle character that made the original line so special, I'm sure it'll still be an enjoyable ride, but somewhat less interesting than it could be.

Sorry Cressona I don't think I quite understand that post! You say you'd agree if the theory implied that the events DID inspire the MU inhabitants to venerate the Toa Mata. But they don't and frankly I'm not sure the Matoran in the GSR DO venerate the MAta. At least no more than any other Toa as all Toa teams are pretty special! But then the last line of your post says that nobody in the MU would know anything about this (as it would have been part of the GBs design for the GSR before the matoran even existed) and you also say that makes sense. So do you think it DOES make sense or that it DOESN'T make sense?! Also why do you say 'luckily' that isn't the case? Does that imply that you don't want a valid continuation theory? As I'm in that camp too but it's still fun to discuss such things as long as there isn't a huge amount of indisputable evidence proving the theory wrong from the get go Xelphene, there was an emote at the end of the sentence you quoted and removing it in your post simply takes it out of context. I'm not getting into this with you as it hasn't gone well in the past. EDIT : Also we should bear in mind that this theory would allow for additional years of the story to see the return of other popular characters as has been discussed elsewhere, though but personally I'm super against this... Theoretically though, Gen 2 Bionicle could be the chronicles of the prototype giant robot, each year being a different culture or planet that has been observed. Of course this could potentially leave Gen 2 without any particular personality of it's own, especially if each year is essentially a reboot on a whole new planet with familiar charcters from Gen 1 but not Gen 2. In fact in that sense, it would be like moving onto Gen 3 in a year or so as the prototype moves onto another planet. Just a thought though as the GBs may have taken inspiration from more than just the Mata. There were lots of other Toa teams for starters and Toa were far from the only thing the GBs made! ^^^ All the relation between things inside the MU and events on Okoto are, in this view, put there by the Great Beings-- so the GBs know about the legends of Okoto and the 2015 toa and Makuta and Ekimu's eventual fate, and based some of their design of the MU on it, but inside the MU, all they know is the stuff the GBs put there-- they weren't on Spherus Magna and never had the opportunity to hear about Okoto at all.

That's the MU GSR so the prototype didn't cause the shattering but could still have detonated in orbit as opposed to on the ground. That isn't very promising either, though it does leave a little room for artistic license! After all, a short amount of time could easily be a few thousand years given the ridiculously long timeline Bionicle is known for. In fact, the same page on the wiki states that this prototype was built a full 50k years before the MU GSR! It could easily have flown a few missions for them in what little time it remained stable for, though the wiki DOES suggest the GBs just basically built it to see if they could do it! I usually don't like these theories because they're all a bunch of unsubstantiated nonsense This one could be made into a workable story though so I'm interested to see where further discussion will take it Munty, I agree that your points would all be valid if the theory implied that the events on Okoto directly inspired MU inhabitants within the GSR to venerate the Toa Mata-- but luckily that's not what the theory says at all! It instead postulates that the events of Okoto were know by the Great Beings on Spherus Magna before the GSR was even built or the MU even inhabited, and that the Great Beings, aware of all the Okoto legends, referenced the events of those stories within their creation, most obviously by creating Toa Mata who are directly inspired by the legendary Toa heroes of the myth of Okoto. So nobody within the MU needs to know anything about Okoto at all, and you're right that it probably wouldn't make much sense if they did, given the information we've currently got!

I should be clear-- I'm suggesting that Okoto has nothing to do with the MU at all. Matoran would have never heard of this legend. The Toa Mata are revered heroes because of their actual heroic actions within the Matoran Universe-- I'm suggesting that the GBs were originally inspired to name/design these particular Toa after legendary heroes from their own culture or one they were familiar with. Do humans on Earth remember the location of Atlantis? Okoto is a "mythical" island-- if we are to make anything of this at all, we shouldn't look for evidence of this mythical island actually existing, as if there was a historical Okoto somewhere in SM's distant past, it probably faded into legend and myth long before the GBs heard of it. I mean, technically yes everything is better as a general "reimagining" than actually being connected at all, but why can't it be both? I think it's very obvious that Gen2 is a "reimagining" of the original Bionicle storyline, and there's certainly lots of aspects of it that are paying homage, or just re-inventing, various aspects of the 2001 story. But do you really think no one had ever heard of powered masks on Spherus Magna until the GBs built them for the Core War? Maybe they borrowed from particular legends about elemental masks, maybe the idea of masks with powers was a common cultural trope on Spherus Magna. The presence of masks in the legend doesn't invalidate the GBs development and use of similar masks however many generations later. I should be clearer-- when I throw out the Vahi as evidence, I mean it's a symbol that some time-related stuff is going on in Gen2 (because Mask of Time) and that this time-related stuff might be connected in some way to Gen1 (because the Vahi is from Gen1). I'm not suggesting the Vahi actually originally existed on Okoto and Vakama made the same one, that would be absurd. If it's even the same Mask of Creation, hmm? Both Artakha and Ekimu have good reasons for having a mask with the power of "Creation", independent of each other, and this is the kind of thing that works waaaay better as a reimagining-- Ekimu is inspired by Artakha to an extent, I'm sure (by the folks at Lego who came up with the 2015 story, not the GBs), and we don't need to speculate on connections between a Mask of Creation that seems to have a central role in Gen2 and a never-actually-seen mask from Gen1 that had minor storyline importance at best. Ah, who knows? Is Makuta a villain? Is he even a tragic incompetent? The view from January says yes, but what's the myth that the GBs are actually familiar with? I think if Makuta starts in on a redemption arc at some point in Gen2, this whole theory becomes a good deal more likely. You're right, though, if Makuta stays a villain or otherwise doesn't wind up being the type of character you can imagine naming Rahi scientists after, it's all a bit less likely. If the Toa Mata were directly inspired by the heroes of the Myth of Okoto, the GBs might very well have programmed some Golden Mask subroutines into the GSR surrounding them and their missions, as an intentional nod to the old legend; independent of that, I don't think it's all that novel an idea, for a culture to whom powered masks are important, to make extra powerful Golden ones for big-shot heroes. This could be, in-story, a case of relatively independent invention and, more obviously, the story team using bits of the classic 2001 story in their reimagining. I doubt Occam's Razor actually applies to Bionicle in any way, but with faith in the story team that they're going for something simple, and with my belief that, if there are connections between Gen1 and Gen2 Lego will acknowledge them only subtly and not by making a big deal out of it and thus confusing new fans less-familiar with Gen1 story material, I feel your suggestion is way too complex and way too reliant on knowledge of Gen1 details to work for Lego. You do like your idea that it's just a reimagining, don't you? I don't blame you, because I 100% agree, and I think the first explanation for any similarity between Gen1 and Gen2 (and especially between 2015 and 2001) is that, yes, we are reimagining the classic story (and it is awesome). But is that all we're doing? I've seen a few folks floating around the internet with various levels of substantiation to their suggestions that Gen2 is somewhat less than a complete "hard" reboot of Gen1. And I think placing Gen2 in the distant, distant past of Gen1 as a legend that inspired the actual events of the classic story is a cool way to connect the two that doesn't require too much extra storyline effort put into it (so we can focus on our new Gen2 story and not all the old stuff), and won't need too much explanation (well, until bonesiii replies to one of your posts, that is ).

What led me to start thinking this: much has been made of the “mythical” island of Okoto— but myths don’t take place in the far future, they take place in the far past; historical events have ascended through retelling over generations to the status of legends; we even have the same narrator through all the stories so far (without even different voice actors to give the impression of a currently occurring story) as if he is telling us a legend or myth of this sort. Are the 2015 toa the same heroes we know and love? Perhaps the Great Beings, familiar with the legend of Okoto and the events of the Gen II storyline, were inspired to create the Toa Mata as some of the GSR’s greatest heroes. Thus the conflict between the Toa and the Skull creatures we're experiencing now is an ancient legend of Spherus Magna that the Great Beings incorporate, in the form of the Toa Mata, into their creation. The appearance of the Vahi points to the importance of time to the story, but why does it have to be in the future of the Bionicle universe? It makes more sense to me that what we’re witnessing here in 2015 is literally a legend of Bionicle, an ancient story passed down through generations that will echo through the ages as it impacts and influences those that grow up with it. Does this mean the Protectors/villagers are Agori? Is Okoto located somewhere on Spherus Magna from the distant past? We may not get a direct answer to all these questions, as Lego may not want to make explicit links between Gen I and Gen II. I am confident that the Gen II storyline will be something that can be enjoyed entirely on its own, and will probably have no direct connection to Gen I (I wouldn’t go so far as to speculate time-traveling Gen I characters visiting Okoto, for instance), but I wouldn’t be surprised if this version of events is made known in some subtle way to fans to tie the two stories together. Thoughts? Any evidence for or against this idea I may have missed?

Lewa Mata. That's right, I went classic.

More Stormer, less Furno. That's all I need to see. Maybe some more Rocka; he's pretty awesome!

Yes, if only because nostalgia overwhelms common sense. Ever since Bara Magna it wasn't really the same, but it was still Bionicle, and I just can't get behind Hero Factory in the same way.My two cents.