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Teridax's Matoran form in 2001


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When Teridax was saying this

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"You cannot destroy me, for I am nothing."
— Teridax to the Toa Mata, Mata Nui Online Game

Could this have been a early hint where he meant that the Toa Mata had no idea how to actually hurt a Antidermis creature or that they fought a shadow puppet that had no essence in it and their victory would meaningless or he was toying with them?

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I suspect the broader concepts like antidermis and the Makuta being a species hadn't been decided at that point. In those early years, Makuta was depicted as more of an ethereal existential threat rather than a mortal being. 

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There are some interesting indications about the authorial intent behind Makuta's remarks in that scene in a Tumblr post that Templar Games made a few years ago. They wanted to complicate a simple good/evil dichotomy by positioning Makuta's destruction as the essential correlate to Mata Nui's creation. They say pretty explicitly that

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We knew that while building was fun, it was just as much fun to destroy. They were two sides of the same coin, and neither were wrong: it was all part of the play, part of learning, part of having fun. Not good or evil: Creation and Destruction, equal powers in the universe, natural and necessary. Both good. Both bad. Both neither.

In the post, they note that was influenced by LEGO's insistence that the weapons used by the Toa Mata were not weapons, but tools. This being the case despite their obviously weapon-like appearance! And consequently, the action scenes in that game are generally set up so that no one does obviously lethal damage to each other.

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No Rahi were outright stabbed in the making of this game. Buried alive, maybe. And if a “tool” did find its mark - it did so off-screen.

(Also contributing, according to that post, was the writers' dissatisfaction with the simplicity of a good triumphing over evil conclusion in the wake of 9/11. Somber, but interesting in terms of historical detail on the game's development.)

This is all to say that both Makuta and the Rahi were, in the end, not thematically associated with evil. Instead, Templar wanted to position them as destruction or uncreation, a concept which they suggest is just as capable of being good or evil as creation. So I think it is in that sense the Makuta both cannot be destroyed, and is nothing. He is nothing because he is, in some sense, destruction itself, and he cannot be destroyed because so long as creation exists it is necessary that uncreation exists also. The two cannot exist separated from one another.

Obviously, a lot of story beats in later years outright contradict this reading. In that respect, your interpretation of that dialogue makes a lot of sense. But, to my mind, the MNOG provides a glimpse of a more thematically rich direction that the story could have been taken. Perhaps another reason why the MNOG has such enduring appeal.

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10 hours ago, (-Kopaka Toa of Ice-) said:

When Teridax was saying this

Could this have been a early hint where he meant that the Toa Mata had no idea how to actually hurt a Antidermis creature or that they fought a shadow puppet that had no essence in it and their victory would meaningless or he was toying with them?

Nope. The idea of Antidermis wasn't even close to being conceived at this point, and Early Installment Weirdness was in full-effect. Mata Nui and Makuta were both considered Great Beings at the time, for example.

Furthermore, Antidermis isn't exactly that hard to destroy anyway. It can be frozen, burned, or dissipated. It also wasn't a puppet or anything, that was the man himself.

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12 hours ago, oncertainty said:
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We knew that while building was fun, it was just as much fun to destroy. They were two sides of the same coin, and neither were wrong: it was all part of the play, part of learning, part of having fun. Not good or evil: Creation and Destruction, equal powers in the universe, natural and necessary. Both good. Both bad. Both neither.

In the post, they note that was influenced by LEGO's insistence that the weapons used by the Toa Mata were not weapons, but tools. This being the case despite their obviously weapon-like appearance! And consequently, the action scenes in that game are generally set up so that no one does obviously lethal damage to each other.

This is fascinating, and a really great example of a top-down philosophy of play in application, from conception to consumer. Especially the word choice of having tools, not weapons, putting agency and responsibility with the person wielding it. That LEGO and its partners can weave these lessons into their product and the marketing/lore that goes with it is really uplifting to me, for some reason. Like, the world they made is one I'd trust to give to my kids someday, if I may be sentimental. But some of my early literacy and language development textbooks have definitely referenced LEGO and creative play for social learning and problem-solving skill development. 

I think the responsibility/agency message goes along really well with the 'chipping away at the good/evil dichotomy' you highlighted. It can help learn early on that "I did a good/bad thing", without falling into the trap of "that makes me a good/bad person".  They did a good job there.

 

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