Iben

Although I don't agree with Frozen, this is something that's blatantly untrue. G1's story is understandably hard to understand it all. It's not hard to get into the overall story, especially as a lot of things are not important to understand the story to begin with. Seriously, it's like saying you need to know every single magic spell and potion to get into Harry Potter. That's hardly true either. You pretty much can leave out a lot of stuff without it affecting your understanding of the story much. The Time Trap book is an excellent example of this. Do you really need to know about how the Dark Hunters tried to steal the Vahi, or the deal Teridax and Vakama struck to understand the story and get into the next wave ? Of course not. I often get the impression that people who call the G1 story extremely overcomplicated, act as if you're obligated to know every little detail to understand what it is about. Which was certainly not true. If you wanted to know why Teridax didn't attack the Turaga and the Matoran for a year, then you could opt to read Time Trap, but it's not like you couldn't understand the rest of the story without it ? Ancient, Helryx, Botar, Tobduk, Kojol, Trinuma, etc. Never were they so important that you couldn't go without knowing who they were to understand why the set-characters did what they were doing. Destral, Xia, Odina, Stelt. Never did I really feel the need to know where those places were to get the point of the story. Seriously, sometimes it feels as if people act like you can't grasp the story without knowing everything, which really wasn't true. I can agree that there were parts of the storyline that were so unimportant that it was pretty much redundant. Mazeka/Vultraz for instance, that could have been scrapped, and many more things could have been. But other substories and characters simply fleshed out the wave-storylines, and it simply gave people who wanted to learn more, the chance to actually do so. I never really felt left behind because I couldn't read the books, I understood the story pretty much without them. Sure, me and my brothers didn't knew all the details, but they were never so important that we were stuck. The complete story of Bionicle was sure complex. And sure, at the very ending, it became harder to find new things. But saying that it's soooo hard to understand G1 and that you need to know every single thing, just isn't true. However, not giving the current story a chance to grow is stupid as well. The current story and the first year of G1 don't really differ that much, so you can't expect that the current story is as fleshed out as the old one is now. Really, give it some time, it will grow in the future. -Iben

I'm extremely impressed with Darth Vader's build, I never expected them to go for Technic based body builds really, but it looks amazing. My only complaint is that the upper part of the build is in gun-metal, I really thought those were in black and I would have loved those pieces in black. Damn Lego ._. -Iben

Really ? TBH, I hate forums where things like this are done. The "if you ain't got something good to say shut up"-attitude annoys me much more than people not liking something I do like. What's so wrong about him voicing his opinion ? If we are allowed to voice ours when we like it, it's only fair he's allowed to do so if he doesn't. Not allowing someone to have a negative opinion on something just because you have a positive opinion on it is no fun for anyone really. -Iben

Sorry to disappoint you, but I don't entirely agree with that. You see, I'm not saying that that part of the story was pointless or that it had to be left open for imagination. It could sure, but it's not wrong to do it either. What I meant is that you should make a distinction between the overall grand storyline which doesn't need to be fleshed out at all for people to get it, and the fleshing up of individual year-storylines, which do benefit from those extras. The key is to make a story where the extra information in each year-storyline makes you bound to the characters and the setting of the overall story, but without that info being necessary to go onto the next wave. It's do-able, in my opinion Bionicle was capable of doing that, but it got harder every year, that's obvious. For instance, the tidbits on Mahri Nui for instance had no effect on the overall grand storyline, did nothing to make it more complex or harder to follow at all, but it did give people a chance to connect to that location. And that was perfectly fine really. It won't needlessly make things complex so new people can't jump in. It seriously won't. I do have a problem with people who often "complain" about people not liking certain sets. Yes, sometimes the complaints are unreasonable. But often, those complaints are quite reasonable and well thought out. Some of the criticism on the Skull Warriors does seem very valid to me. But that's not really important, because individual people have individual tastes and it's perfectly fine that people say they don't like a certain set. It's fine and no-one should ever feel like they're being wrong because they don't like something. If you can back it up with reasonable explanation or can just stop at " I don't really like it personally", then you should be fine and there shouldn't be others who complain about that. I honestly disagree with the idea that people are constantly complaining about the sets, there are just a lot of different people out there, and it's more than normal that everyone has some set she/he doesn't really like that much. That's just as normal as people who like all the sets. People are allowed to be vocal about their opinions on the sets, even if they're just prelims or leaks tbh. -Iben

To me that's extremely weird. Don't get me wrong, but I'm from Belgium, and the books just really weren't that easy to get hold of. Heck, even the comics were only in English. All me and my brothers had for years were the small story-tidbits you see in the catalogues. That was it. Nothing more, except for the comics we could see online. That's why it's so weird for us to understand that the lore was getting "too complicated to draw in new people", because we never had that. The small pieces of information, in combination with the occasional comics and videoclips, were more than enough for us to get the basics of the story. We never had any problems with adjusting to a new wave. Because in the end, it didn't matter to us to know where they got their masks. Or the fact that the Toa Nuva went to Artakha even. The thing you got was that they got adaptive armour, and that's why they changed. it didn't matter who gave it to them or why, you didn't really need that to understand the story. That's what I tried to explain earlier. There are two storylines in G1. You have the overall story arc, with the Toa Mata until the Mata Nui /Makuta fight. And really, if you wanted to understand that story, the catalogue tidbits, videoclips and comics were more than enough. Of course, each individual year-storyline had their own story to tell, and then you have to flesh that out with more specific information which came in the books and other sources. In the grand total of things, it didn't matter that Artakha gave them adaptive armour, the only thing that mattered was that they had it and that's why they were different. Perhaps it's because we were in that situation that we see it differently, but I have to agree with Quisoves. In the end, my brothers and I never got the impression that we missed a lot of important story matters because we didn't have the books. -Iben

I must say, I agree with everyone here. This episode was quite a lot better than the previous ones. My only point of criticism here is that I would like a little more focus on the elemental powers. Hero Factory kinda broke the elemental connection for their theme, and I was fine with that. But to make the difference between the two a bit more obvious I'd like to a heavier focus on the elements. I know there is already more than we had in HF, but I would like to see them do more elemental attacks, to make it even more obvious that they can control their element. I honestly don't care about things like "but they didn't do that in G1 either", this is a new start so I'd like a heavier focus than before. To me that's one of the things that made Bionicle so special. -Iben

I actually would love to see a more "camouflaging" colour-scheme this year. Less gold and silver, not because they are inherently bad colours ( although they sometimes don't work as well as I'd wish they did ), but simply because it would be cool to have a kind of "wild" environment where the Toa would have to "catch and tame" the creatures. I'd love to see what Lego does with a theme where the heroes have to camouflage themselves, and I hope it goes somewhere along those lines. -Iben

All of my MOCs involve a mix of G1, Technic and CCBS really. While torsos and other parts are often more custom, limbs are in 90% of the cases the CCBS limbs. I can agree that it didn't look that out of place on the actual set, that's why I was talking out of a MOC-perspective. I never felt the original Kanohi were oversized, but I guess it's a matter of opinion anyway. -Iben

What I'd like is some more size differences in masks. Currently, I feel like some masks aren't big enough for Toa builds I made, but then again worked quite well on Matoran. I don't really know how to describe it really, but for instance Onua's mask feels a bit small when you compare it to a Pakari. While the latter works well on Toa and Matoran, I only felt the G2 Mask of Earth felt right on a Matoran. -Iben

The one thing I currently dislike about CCBS is its evolution towards the use of multiple different coloured bones in a set. I'm not saying that it cannot work, there are perfect examples of it where it certainly does work ( Black Phantom being an excellent example of this ), but I dislike it when there's no purpose to it aesthetically.The current Toa have this, where the bones alternate between black and grey, and in my opinion it doesn't always look good. I know the reason behind it is to avoid confusion, but honestly, I believe there's a limit to what you should sacrifice in terms of aesthetics in order to avoid said confusion. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure how you'd even confuse the top and bottom bones really, but I guess some people do. TBH, in cases like the figures you built with CCBS, it doesn't have major consequences when you mess up, does it ? It's not like you have to spend 5-10 mins. de-constructing your figure to fix the error. Though, I do understand why Lego does sacrifice the aesthetics for the prevention of confusion ( aka the short axles only being in red now ), to me it's important not to do this with the bones. Especially as the bones are essentially quite visible when building with CCBS, which makes them a very important part of the colour scheme, more so than it did with the G1 "system". Sacrificing the colour flow there to avoid confusion is kinda throwing away one of the few benefits of the more exposed bone pieces. -Iben

These in grey ? Another major reason to buy this set for sure ._. -Iben

My apologies if this is considered bumping, but had something to add. You see, there are two ways to look at this. You can look at it each wave at the time, or at the grand story. And this is where the troubles begin. When we look at it from the grand big scheme behind the story, it's easy to realize that certain names don't matter. To understand the G1 storyline you don't need to know the individual names of the Bohrok, Krana, Kraata, etc. You don't need to know all the powers of the Makuta. Heck, you don't even need to know much of the overall story in order to get it. Big chunks of names and descriptions and powers and whatnot could be removed from the storyline with it having little to no effect on the grand design behind the story. Looking at it wave per wave however, these smaller seemingly insignificant details turn out to be more important. They help to flesh out the storyline of that wave, because without them these storylines start to feel really bare. If we only use the grand details that we'll use to cover the complete storyline as a whole, it feels as if the wave-storylines leave to many things open. So in general, do we need names for every little thing like in the original G1 ? No. Although it pleased a large group of people, it indeed was one of the reasons why younger people had trouble learning about their new toys. Do we need names for characters in each wave ? The answer is both yes and no. No, because in the grand overall story it doesn't matter if the name of Skull Slicer was Walter, Josh or Melissa; or the name of the Protector of Fire being Tabduk, Tavon or Vakama ( whatever you want really). But in a way yes, because without characters getting names in their individual wave-stories, there's less of a connection in that storyline. If everything is let to the grand story-details, then the individual wave-stories will always end up feeling bare. TL;DR: Names and details of side-characters are insignificant to the grand overall storyline, but do have a significance to the smaller wave-storylines. -Iben

Of all the amazing mocs you've shown lately, this one is the most mind-blowing really. I love the custom legs and the way you make the standard bone torso piece so much more complex is just astounding really ! It's certainly one of your best. But now I'm quite curious to where you got that blue chest plate, I assume the small shoulder shells are from those Ninjago Knockoffs, but I've never seen that chestplate before... -Iben

I'd also like the same head-piece. In terms of looks I prefer it to the Glatorian/HF head, and although the Metru head will always be my personal favourite, it looks quite good. However I'd really like a new eye stalk that prevents the mask launching part. I certainly understand that it has its play-value, but to me it's quite often more of an annoyance than a nice extra feature. -Iben

I don't know if I'm alone in this, but I don't see it as something that you need to evolve beyond really. I mean, I don't consider clone-sets to be inherently bad sets or at least worse sets than none clone-sets. I mean, sure, I do like unique sets a lot, but I have to admit that sometimes clone-sets are a better option. Things like the Vahki, Bohrok, Skull Spiders can perfectly be clone-sets in my eyes. I often feel that people see clone-sets as less creative ( not saying that's the way you think of it ), but they certainly can be more creative. Finding subtle differences that are enough to differentiate two sets but still keep a uniform feeling in itself is a form of creativity really. What I'm trying to say here I guess is that I don't think that clone-sets are necessarily or inherently worse than non-clone-sets, to me they are just another form of sets you can use. Sure individual characters are nice and really cool as well, but so are clone-sets. Swarms of animals or hordes of robots look amazing to me as clone-sets. What might have caused a general dislike towards clone sets is that we've gotten quite a lot of them in the past ( Bohrok, Kal, Rahskhi, Visorak, Vahki, etc. ), but throwing in a bunch of clone-sets in the current mix ( whether it be good guys, villagers, bad guys, whatever ) could spice things up too and could boost creativity as well. -Iben

We do ? ._. I wasn't aware of that ! Where is that shop located then ? :p Brussels ?

This made me laugh, because we literally got a mask hunt, which is a rehashed idea of old. Not that I'm against that in any way though. However, I do agree with you, I would love to see more ornamental armour pieces. I basically want the connection of the Toa with their element grow stronger every wave ( at least for this 3 year arc), and it would be awesome if this could be shown in the armour of the Toa. -Iben

A G2 equivalent of these : . It's one of the things I want the most. As much as I like the torso armour, and as much as I'm aware of its usefulness when it comes to using it as shoulder armour or leg armour, it it's often too large and too gappy. -Iben

Mine just arrived today, the plastic is indeed almost undistinguishable when holding it next to other Lego, except for it being harder to connect. I'll probably order two more once I see how the tan pieces work on my Matoran :P -Iben

I also bought one a week ago, I'm happy to see that the tan pieces actually match well. If I like the set enough, I made order a second one for more tan parts :P -Iben

I literally just made this a few hours ago because I didn't have the connector piece used in the first one xD This one indeed is a bit simpler than the previous version. :P -Iben

Am I the only one who's more excited about the new recolours/pieces in the Ninjago sets than the new pieces in the Bionicle Summer Wave ? I mean, spring-/skullspider-green blades, even more spring-/skullspider-green elements and wings and white Protector feet and golden lightning spikes ? Seriously, these are all extremely awesome and useful :o Although I probably won't buy the sets, I can't wait until these pieces appear on Bricklink ! -Iben

I really love how the lower legs actually remind me of the old Piraka legs, that's really amazing ! Splendid work on this, I really love it. -Iben

@Nick Wolfe : Yeah most certainly ! I'm still working on Onua atm, I want to give him those big beefy technic-like fingers sooner or later, I simply lack some of the pieces I want to use for it. It's also why the complete arms and legs are still pretty normal looking. But thanks for the compliments, it really means a lot to me ! Anyway, here I have a WIP of Gali, Guardian of Water. She isn't completely finished yet, I still need some extra pieces in different colours as you can probably see for yourself. So again, as always really, this is still a WIP and I'm open to criticism in order to improve my mocs as much as possible ! Larger pictures can be found on my Flickr. Thanks for your time ! -Iben

I personally try to combine G1 and CCBS as much as possible, simply because it forces me to think outside the box. I like to challenge myself and I personally love to come up with unique designs to incorporate a G1 piece in a more CCBS typed moc and vice versa, or simply going for something more in the middle. Although I have to agree that it sometimes frustrates me a bit, the end product always pleases me more than using only CCBS. The increased amount of Technic in the new sets doesn't bother me that much, because it's all relatively simple but still gives you some challenges. Although I really love the relatively "easy" way of building that CCBS provides, I simply love the more complex building that a combination of both provides more. Not that I think you need Technic to make complex models, but I just like the extra complexity it can give. The only thing I really prefer in G1 over CCBS is the coloured "bone" pieces G1 had. The long connector pieces were available in many different colours, and I certainly miss that in CCBS. I believe that the colours of the bones are as important to the overall colour scheme as the armour is, and at this point I'd really like to see more colours. At least some white bones. -Iben