dviddy
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Everything posted by dviddy
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LEGO used the term "reboot" no less than a dozen times during the panel. Not once in an interview we did with them, nor in the panel, nor at the event, did any designer, story lead, advance artist, etc, use the term "soft" so I don't know what TTV is reporting (and I overheard a good chunk of their interviews too). It seems more like speculation on their parts. TLG reps did mention the mask of time being only half a mask and the full mask being a plot point, and we were shown an image of the "Temple of Time" during the panel. I'm 100% certain the Toa in this line will not be the same characters from the original sent through time shenanigans by the Vahi. Again, it seems more like TTV conflating the "we are appealing to old fans via easter eggs and references, and the line is a reboot in the way NuTrek was" with "they are connected". I and the other BZP staff took "like the new Star Trek" to mean more "so the old universe is unaffected and still exists, we didn't wipe it out to reboot the line a la DC 52." On that point, I want to mention that I and two other BZP staff members have been under NDA for a large part of 2014 regarding the return of BIONICLE, where our contact told us it would be a solid reboot back in July. (Also they sent me a bunch of pre-release parts which is why I knew the way the masks attached but I was being clever about it.)
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The LEGO panel at NYCC is Thursday at 1PM. There is another event that night at a LEGO store in NYC. Both events are invite-only.
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I don't think any Eurobricks staff members are going, but the overlap between members here and on BZP should alleviate any worry about reporting. And, of course, BZP will have a pretty sizable group, with the twelve tickets we gave away, plus a good chunk of our upper staff.
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I will definitely take pictures, but I don't think I'll steal anything!
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Red Star as jetpack was planned the entire time, but I'm 99% certain Greg has said the revival aspect of it was all him at the eleventh hour.
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As far as I'm aware, LEGO owns all of their actual part molding plants (there are only three or four of them in the world). And while they all share the basic brick molds, things like BIONICLE's complex and intricate parts were and are almost entirely molded in the Denmark factory.
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TLG reps at Brickfair have said the original Kanohi molds are indeed some of those buried in the concrete. I'm going to guess the outdated connection method when the line switched to axle-connectors probably made that decision.
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For them to change what they list them as, someone would need to actually be selling more than a handful of them.
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Lol what? The system community doesn't have these sort of arguments? I know you were in diapers when they switched greys, but the overall online community has always been full of arguments, angry disagreements, personal vendettas, etc. But thanks for playing, George. You tried to cast a holier than thou attitude but you're just being ignorant of the community's history.
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Metru heads on the new body would just need one of those dark grey double socket parts to connect the two sockets and some clever angling, really. I don't think the hau is going to look that bad in real life. The gold mask is clearly squished in the new finalized leaks, and I think it'll be pretty nice in person.
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Fingers crossed! Official release is January, according to the official BIONICLE facebook page. So expect them right around Christmas to, what I'm going to assume, is the real street date of January 1st like most holiday season official launches for TLG.
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I have a reason to believe that too, but it won't be set reviews, I can guarantee that. ;)
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Not entirely true. I had several of the Savage Planet sets back in the first week of May, 2011, when they weren't released until August that year. When we get them fluctuates- are they pre-release hype sets? Are they part of our website support CEE budget? Some sets we ask for and it comes out of our budget, and those are generally sets either already out or a month or so away. Other times TLG contacts us with pre-release sets with review and photo embargoes for things they want to promote (which happened with HF 2.0 [i had Furno, Nex, and Firelord for [i]months[/i] before I could share photos], and the Savage Planet wave). I'm going to guess the BIONICLE launch will be the latter, and I'm kicking myself for letting my official reviewer position at BZP expire. I wish I cared more for system set reviews, but I just have a hard time getting motivated for them. I love building them, but the photography aspect of them is just entirely lacking in the dynamic experience I have with BIONICLE and HERO FACTORY sets. I'd expect pre-release reviewers to have sets in probably November with an embargo on reviews until either late November or early December.
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I don't see why it wouldn't fit a brain attack head. The head might be too short and cause some sliding with the mask, but I bet it would still attach. The glatorian heads might be different, since they have that round protrusion on the sides by the axle holes, which might inconvenience the clips? I didn't even realize they were there until I dug them out to look at them. Very curious to see this new head piece.
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You're thinking backwards- they're friendlier to the environment because they use less plastic to make. They have a lower footprint during production. So even if no one recycles them, by switching from canisters to the bags, TLG has lowered their carbon footprint and that is good for the environment.
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I find the concept of the mask slipping over other masks really really silly. It seems like an attempt to grasp at anything possible to avoid the obvious: this is the new mask attachment system.
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I definitely don't have any of the sets. That would be pretty cool, but I can't imagine review sets being out this early. NYCC is where I'm betting we'll first see finalized sets. That's one of the main reasons I'm going to it! Wishful thinking combined with ten years of analyzing every detail of a leaked picture possible, coupled with a decade plus of intense MOC building and deconstructing. I don't have any sets yet, and if BZPower had gotten review sets already (which I don't think we have) I wouldn't have any, as I'm no longer an official reviewer, which makes me ineligible for receiving them according to BZP review policy (as you know, but others here might not). I mean, why hedge your bets when you're right. ;) Besides, this way, when it turns out I'm right, we can all say (again) "DV was right, dang it". (Plus I like the idea of the mask-knocking-off game coming back, and I've become attached to the concept. Like how people keep looking for proof of a continuation or reboot in any tiny thing, I'm going to look for the mask thing. Childhood nostalgia makes fools of us all.)
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All six Toa have gear functions. The only one that isn't at least slightly visible is Gali, but they'll all have them. I think the knocking-off mask function is more than plausible, I'd say it's pretty likely. The method for holding the masks, the gears, the blatant attempt at capturing the 2001 atmosphere? The heads seem to be one colour from the parts we can see very small amounts of, and the eyes are a different colour. I don't think we're looking at a KK style face underneath.
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Doctor Who also doesn't rely on toy sales as the primary means of profit-making. The two are not comparable, especially considering how Doctor Who's plot is almost entirely told via one medium. Sure, you could jump into BIONICLE at any time and enjoy the surface of that year's story, but after the line had run for awhile, and with the advent of the books, serials, and films, the media was split too deeply across different platforms, and consumers reportedly (from TLG themselves) found it often too daunting. Even with Doctor Who, despite all the new incarnations, you have had one single lead the entire time: The Doctor. BIONICLE changed leads basically every two to three years. Consumers (again, we're talking about a toy company, not a television production company, so the comparison you're trying to make is not valid) did not like attempting to dig deeply into a story to understand where the character they were buying fit in. It's why the story-telling methods the first few years always seemed better to me. The MNOG did world-building better than any other piece of media from the line, bar-none. You were introduced to different villagers in each village, settings, locales, random bits of mythology and lore, you saw little cutscenes of action. Each of these told a story, but they also hinted at the idea that you were there for but a moment in the life of these characters. There was space to breathe with fan-fiction, with theories, with the mythology, with the island and its history. This is what I mean when I talk about the line not actually being deep in later years, just complex and busy. In the first few years we built a world, and we showed it. In the latter half of the line, we needlessly connected every single character, device, plot, location, background image, etc, all to the main plot, and then split that plot up between books, comics, films, and online serials. The world was no longer deep, it was just wide.
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Not entirely sure I follow the comments about the spiders. They seem to have prongs pointing down in several of the leaks, which was one if the reasons I suspected this side connection to begin with.
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I mean, the Bohrok faceplate shuts quite tightly, but hitting the eyes still caused the pan to strike the plate open. Those clips don't look like the deepest or biggest nubs, they're fairly rounded and shallow. I expect knocking them off would either involve a wedge system inside the head, or that with enough pressure they'd just pop off. Assuming, of course, that a mask-knocking-off function is what we're going to see.
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COME ON! I think it's safe to say all the masks will probably attach like this. Considering the gears are back, I'm guessing the mask fits on like this to once again bring back the "knock off the masks" functions. I mean, look at all the other early year BIONICLE nods we're seeing in these. It just sort of makes sense. And while people will be quick to say "this is just how sales of every theme work", the 2001-2003 era of BIONICLE was massively more profitable than the later years. I can see LEGO looking at that, analyzing their sales, media, etc, and deciding to do something similar in order to try and capture lightning twice.
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While these may indeed be close to final, I can guarantee we'll see some differences between these and the finalized models. For one, I expect all the Toa to have chest printing to match Lewa and Tahu's on the more final-ish looking renders. The packaging design is not done entirely after the set design, the last steps in the set finalization process and the packaging are done in tandem. You can see the best example of that in many of the Toyfair HF boxes- like the Witch Doctor render with the black skull shell staff and more toes. Things like that. I expect parts that are newer molds to change a little here and there between the renders we see here (which are clearly earlier in the design process than the standee, with the Ignika standing in for that new mask on the stand, which in turn was probably standing in for the finalized mask we've actually seen, which I would bet cash is the -only- finalized thing we've seen this far).
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Which is interesting, since this seems, to me, at least, to be purposefully harkening back to that era specifically. I have always felt those were the best years, as far as story and design direction (mask and part design specifically). These new sets seem to be doing their darnedest to replicate that. I, for one, love that.
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Or maybe they attach in a completely different manner... The lack of injection points on the fronts of the mask coupled with Antrozek's comment about the earmuff looking parts has me suspicious.