Dorek

What TCO said. Also, so it is. I'm honestly shocked. I can't seem to log in, but I'll figure it out. I dunno, I thought she got enough characterization in RotR, but maybe it's because I didn't really have too much to do with all the interim stuff between RotR and OoF, which is why I felt like it was such a 180; suddenly her personality is ALL about how she's an independent woman, and there's little else to her. My point being that if she has to ram the point down our throats, it's an overcompensation for the fact that she isn't; by saying she wants to be treated like everybody else as a women, then screaming about to everyone in earshot isn't likely to help her get what she wants. If her personality can be reduced to a trope, I feel like there's little point to her in general, which is why I was glad to see her go in SP. If she's a little more moderate with her feminism and actually tries to be a character in the upcoming wave, then I don't think there's anything to fret about. I just disliked her (a lot) in OoF, which happens to be the last time we saw her.

I was okay with Breez in RotR; she wasn't stereotypical in any way, and she had her own traits and defects, and was fairly well rounded overall. But they just completely dashed that in OoF: the line "I'm my own woman; I'll protect YOU" comes to mind. She is utterly repulsed at the idea of romance, etc etc; I just found it so obnoxious. I'm hoping that she's a bit more tempered in the upcoming wave. Also, I liked Gorast; she wasn't exactly obedient, she was just totally fanatical, which I found interesting. Edit:@DV: That's just trolling. I don't have a problem with equality, I have a problem when it's used as justification for reverse chauvinism.

As long as they don't make her a feminist. Like Breez. Blech.

Curse you Front, and your tantalizing tidbits of intrigue! Does this mean Black Phantom is Metru red? Because I'd like that...

As I've said from the beginning: I'll believe these assertions of "soon" when I actually see it, and so far, I haven't. Also, I've had people tell me that Rocka's first name is actually identified on the SP DVD, but this seems like a hoax. Anybody have the DVD to screenshot?

1. Ooooh, white. Nifty. 2. More reds? Huzzah! Metru maybe?

That's what I was hoping for from the archive (also I wasn't sure if we could mention forums here >>. BZP has me afraid) but it doesn't seem like anybody did. The closest I got was the DBME guy, who appears to have that image (with full quoted text) as his profile image. I can only hope that he still has it, and we can still contact him when BZP actually goes live (so, say, another six months or so?), or if someone on BZP copied it down as well. If anybody can actually find out the comic included with that, I could definitely be inclined to purchase it; if it has unique art, I'd definitely be into that.

Amazon.co.uk HF book, for release next year. Sounds like 2012 stuff, but it looks more like an activity book than a story thing. However, it would be cool to get some story in book form, because that's the one media we haven't seen much of; I still have no idea what happened with those way old polish books, and what they said.

General question, does anybody have a screenshot of the blurb that the Hero Recon Teaser site, about Merrick Fortis? It's the one thing I didn't think to copy down or anything, and now I have no idea what it says. I have a picture of the website itself, but the wayback machine doesn't have an archive for the teaser site, and I don't have a copy of the text.

I'm assuming Lime Green will be one of those? XP. Also teal/whatever that new color is. And who what now? He splits? Like, full on can be pulled apart? Baller. What about the helmet?

Color is for Heroes, silly. But realistically, each of these guys has plenty of color; Von Nebula less so than others, but even he has his moments of blue (and looks rather dashing with a blue Hero 2.0 core on him, but I digress). Witch Doctor has tons of red, and Fire Lord's entire skeleton had orange on it. Even with the dominant color being darker (which is used as a good identifier of their status as villains), they still have tons of color, and BP (/Overlorde? Need an official name sooner or later, or this'll get confusing) is no exception. I'm hoping that's Metru red on him, but it's probably just regular red, not to mention the green bits and his cute white critter launcher.

It is possible that they will be, but I'd much prefer the 1.0 helmets (in 2.0 styles). It's nice to have things brought full circle, to have the characters more properly identifiable (even Evo has those nice grates on the side of his face that resemble his 2.0 headgear). Also, Overlorde? I could get used to that as a name. I've always liked the term. If it is a VN+Fire Lord combo, all the better =P.

Yeah, the scuttlebutt about the Heroes being heavily prototyped was from BrickCon, and the officials there; as I say, probably just a general misinformation campaign. Considering the overall designs, and the similarly unchanged prototypes from years past, I don't expect the Heroes to change, nor do I want them to. Anyway, I'd probably be okay with BP either way; as with BIONICLE, titan designs are often rehashed, but in this case, it's not a completely horrible design; hopefully it actually improves upon what was there before, as opposed to simply re-armoring at, a la Rocka XL. That and 2009 were pretty much the only ones (and 2008, to an extent) =P. It's because 2003 was contingent on owning previous sets, which they soon realized was unfeasible, so all subsequent years were made to have both villains and good guys.

Well, I'm hearing talk that everything here is extremely preliminary, and that the final results will look radically different, but sounds like a typical misinformation campaign. And honestly, how on earth could anything different than these things be BETTER? I know we always fall in love with prelim images, but still; I'm liking everything I see here, and I can't imagine it being terribly different in the end.

Well, the comics are just adaptations of the TV show; the only exception, thus far, is comic 5. The working theory is that Comic 5 was initially based around the TV show (which was presumably longer), but for whatever reason, the TV show was scaled back without enough time (or enough money left) to construct an entirely new comic. Rather than make a new comic, they simply published comic 5, but instead of adding the standard "to be continued" tag that they have on every other comic (except for 4, apparently, but that's unrelated), they urge readers to follow the story on HF.com, which they followed up with by quickly banging out a series of web updates that spelled out the rest of the story, but also made sure to distinguish themselves from the events of the comic. So the comics actually do follow the TV story (obviously adapted into a different format, and so omit certain details to keep a page limit), but there was the unfortunate incident of comic 5, which gives everybody a hangup in regards to the comics =P.

Surge actually gets a secondary weapon, as opposed to Evo =P. Heck, Furno and Rocka don't really get secondary weapons either, so Surge comes off looking pretty fly. It's all just for the sake of variety, which I love.

Thought I had seen it somewhere else, that's right. I did see the spears, but it seemed counter-intuitive because it appears to be feeding into a sphere launcher =P. But he also has a spear piece on top of that, so I guess it makes sense somehow. Fun concept. He has a launcher, as do all the Heroes (kinda funny how the first two waves have the villains with standardized launchers, then the third wave has launchers on only the large sets, and now the Heroes all have them), and his other weapon is an awesome recolored version of his old one, with a tube attached to it.

Pretty sure that kind of thing is what slowly killed BIONICLE =P. I don't forsee these Heroes going away any time soon, but we'll see. I'm really liking Rocka and Furno the most; even with an added joint, the crossbow idea is too cool not to love, and I'm looking forward to finding out what those chains around him are (as well as that weird hexagonal shield piece); they remind me of a uniform tentacle piece. And Furno's turbines are awesome. The cuff piece, though, is something that has me really excited. It uses the BIONICLE style chain links, so you can add more as necessary, which is super cool.

One of the reasons I think Black Phantom is Von Nebula in one form or another; all of these villains have great return potential, and seeing as how we don't see them at all after the fact, this Breakout theme is exactly what they need to come back.

I've heard of other such gifts being distributed with international LEGO orders (German ones got this 2.0 promo comic) so that's pretty nifty overall. I quite like that door hanger, even if it is a bit out of date =P. Enjoy the fun little goodies. On an unrelated note, I've only just noticed (Erebus pointed it out to me) that Merrick 3.0 actually has alternating silver armor on his legs. I don't really understand why. I'm not going to make my Fortis 3.0 like that. It's weird.

Don't think that's what he was saying, but I doubt the villains will ever actually be victorious; it works with BIONICLE because you have a longer story time and more potential for the good guys to make a comeback, but with the target age for Hero Factory being young kids, it doesn't really do any good to advertise the villains winning. The breakout theme is probably the closest we're going to get to that, and it's something I'm looking forward to.

Haha, yeah, we still have Comic 7 to go (and yes, there will actually be a comic seven, next LEGO mag issue). Then we'll get stuff about the new line.

Very interesting. General assumption (because of your location marker) being that it wasn't the American version of the website? Funny gifts overall, but kinda cool. Think you could get some pictures of them? A news post that I crafted ;D

Lol, I lost the link for a sec (had to go to school) and googling "Russian Hero Factory fansite" didn't get me anywhere, so. Same diff. Also I thought the social networking people were part of the same group (realistically, they probably are). I can't imagine them not reintroducing old villains, but it remains to be seen if this is when it will be.

The Design byME team mostly just facilitates it, as opposed to updates it; they're in charge of matching the software and ensuring the site runs (and the news updates, as opposed to the story updates, which I'm pretty sure come from the HF team). However, most of the funding probably comes from HF instead of DBM, because you don't see this application anywhere else =P. We actually got a few new names (for instance, you can now add "the" as a middle name, which I'm pretty sure wasn't an option before) but yeah, no female names is fairly disconcerting. I didn't really expect stats thing to be upgraded, but it would be nice. On an unrelated note, we appear to have found the fourth comic cover from the Russian HF fansite whose link I am now having trouble finding, so, fingers crossed for the whole thing.