Aanchir

I have a few questions about the 2016 Toa vs the 2015 models.

 

Best I can tell, the mechanics of the 2015 versions seems to be the gearbox that only differs between the Toa in whether one arm swings or both arms swing. I understand that instead of it being mounted like a jetpack, the 2016 versions have the mechanics built-in to the torso itself. Is there a greater variety in the kind of movement provided by the mechanics in the 2016 models or is it primarily a cosmetic change?

The 2016 Toa completely do away with the gear functions in their arms. Instead, each one has a gear on their butt that makes their waist swivel horizontally.

I'm assuming the Toa are color coded for your convenience, but since I can't distinguish colors, there isn't much variety in the armor shells accross the different Toa in the 2015 sets with only a few having armor pieces that really stand out as unique(such as the one that has a chest plate so broad it attaches to both shoulders of the CCBS Torso). Do the 2016 models have more variety in armor pieces between sets?

The 2016 Toa all have the same chest plate as each other and a lot of the same weapon and armor pieces. Onua and Tahu do have shoulderpads that are different from each other and from the shoulders of the other Toa, and Kopaka's shield pieces do not appear in the other sets, and also many of them use the same armor pieces in different ways, but for the most part they still share a lot of the same pieces as one another.

Some of the weapon pieces in the 2015 sets are pretty cool, to the point I don't mind that at least five of the weapons are found in multiple sets, but I do have to wonder how much the 2016 sets recycle weapons and if anything new and unique is added.

All the 2016 Toa besides Onua use the same crystal blade piece as their primary weapon piece, but it is built into different types of weapons. So Lewa has these twin blades with smaller blades on the opposite ends, Gali has hers built into a sort of spear with a propellor attached, Pohatu has a spear with a boulder attached, Tahu has twin fire blades with a gear-driven extending function, and Kopaka has a broadsword made from two of the crystal blades. Instead of using the crystal blade piece, Onua has a sort of combination hammer-drill with a blaster in the end. Kopaka also has a new shield, smaller and more solid than his previous one, with a blaster built into it.

As for non-Toa sets, do the Skull Spider, Protectors, and Creatures offer more differentiation between their siblings compared to the 2015 Toa?

The Protectors in general tend to be more similar to each other than the Toa are in terms of parts and functions. Last year's Skull villains also tend to use a lot of the same parts, but with somewhat varied builds and functions.

This year's Creatures are probably some of the most diverse sets so far. Ikir is a bird with flapping wings, Akida is a fish with twin blasters, Ketar is a scorpion with slashing claws, Uxar is an insect with flapping wings, Terak is a mole with digging claws, and Melum... I'm not sure what Melum is supposed to be, exactly, but he has a sort of a "bear hug" function.

I apologize for my tone in my previous post. However, your note about things in the books being canon because the books are used to tell the story ignores that the Bionicle website has also been used to tell the Bionicle story since the theme began. There's nothing that makes bios and blurbs in books and magazines inherently more canon than bios and blurbs on the website. And again, the things I mentioned like the more minor Rahi and Dark Hunters guide characters, Jaller's mask power, many of Makuta's Kraata powers, and Toa Jovan were only ever mentioned in bios and blurbs, never in actual written stories.

Which brings me onto the main point of mine that you failed to acknowledge, that is that we have a book that features LoSS as the main antagonist, and it clearly shows how the Skull Spiders serve him, without any mask needed.

The Skull Spiders make the choice to serve LoSS when he is unconscious, at which point he could not have been using a mask on them. (If the mask had previously been somehow controlling them, they would have been freed at that point and would have fled.)

You're assuming that if the Lord of Skull Spiders used the Golden Mask of Skull Spiders to control his army, that means they would not follow or aid him without it. I don't believe that, and I don't think we've ever seen anything suggest that. There's plenty of reason for them to be loyal to him even when they aren't under his direct telepathic control, namely that they are more powerful with a leader than without one, and he's without a doubt the most powerful leader they have.

Suppose you're a loyal soldier getting radio instructions and intelligence reports from a commander at a home base. These instructions from the home base have helped you win many battles. Then, one day, instead of instructions, they hear a scream, and then communications stop abruptly. Is your response to this "Yay, no more commands, I'm free now!"? Or do you worry that something terrible has happened to your home base and your commander, and decide to go back and see if you can help?

This is what seems to have happened with the Skull Spiders (which seems even more plausible with them than with human soldiers, given the spiders' hive mentality). The Lord of Skull Spiders' telepathic link to the swarm was broken, and thus the spiders instinctively went into distress mode, traveling from across Okoto back to where their leader last was in order to protect him and nurse him back to health.

These are the forces of evil we're talking about, not just a bunch of innocent creatures being forced to do evil deeds against their will. There's no reason to think that without telepathic commands they'd just lose their motivation and go their separate ways — especially when they've grown accustomed to those commands.

Also, just to clarify what we're disputing here: Lord of Skull Spiders' telepathic link with his army is undeniably canon, mentioned multiple times throughout the graphic novel. The only question is whether he needs a mask to maintain that link. But either way, he doesn't need that link for the spiders to make a choice to serve him (which in your words, they did).

That's their source? I could give a link to the equivalent section that "proves" that Kopaka's mask gets drained by a Skull Warrior. Except that isn't canon, because it isn't in the story.

(And wasn't there a section on Skull Basher's "Shoulder Spikes of Doom"? It's almost as if they were just making stuff up to sell sets... )

OK. So by your logic, Jaller's Mask of Sonar has never been canon because he never used it in the story. Toa Jovan was never canon because he only ever appeared in the story as a Turaga. Most of the Rahi from the Rahi Beasts guide and Dark Hunters from the Dark Hunters guide were never canon. Many of Makuta's Kraata powers were never canon. And of course, nothing about the 2016 sets is canon because the Netflix series hasn't started.

Sorry, but your argument is a joke, and not a funny one. Just because SOME things on the Bionicle website have been proven non-canon doesn't mean we have to assume EVERYTHING on the website is non-canon until it appears in the story. It makes far more sense to assume the story and character pages on the website are canon until proven otherwise.

Alright, I admit I was staring at Hewkii Mahri on my desk who uses all yellow for the joints, so I guess I was kinda biased. But I just don't like looking at Kopaka from the side and seeing his entire arm skeleton exposed. And the black and grey bones make it stand out even more.

No neutral colors? Besides his head being grey, Hewkii also uses black extensively throughout his design. And sure, it's a part of his color scheme, but there's no reason neutral colors can't be a part of the color scheme of a Toa of Fire, Air, Water, or Ice too, just like they were on the Toa Mata, Metru, Hordika, and Hagah sets.

The G1 parts were somewhat open on the back, but that was only so that the joints could bend.  Everything other than that narrow cutout had the mechanical armor design.  But with the shells you have to leave the entire back of the joint exposed to get the same kind of motion.

I was generally referring more to shells than beams. Like the Toa Metru thigh shell, Piraka thigh shell, Toa Inika thigh shell, Toa Inika shoulder shell, Carapar shell, Kalmah shell, Mantax shell, Takadox shell, Toa Mahri Nuparu shells, Vorox shell, etc. All of those are open on one side — they need to be, because of how they attach. You even just referenced Toa Mahri Hewkii, and he literally used these parts on his thighs. Those didn't even wrap around the sides of the leg — they were just slapped on the front!

But you're right, the "open in the back" aspect could also apply to most lower leg beams. And you're right, it's for a functional reason. CCBS shells are also open in the back for a functional reason — because the open side is where they attach from, same as with a typical G1 thigh or shoulder shell.

That and the torso parts always had something going on in the back. The Inika torsos, the Mata torsos, all of them didn't look skimpy on back armor.

It seems to me like most of the Toa (2015 and 2016 alike) have plenty going on in the back. Some of that is exposed Technic connectors, but even so, their backs are generally more armored and filled out than Sidorak, Nidhiki, Krekka, Nivawk... and those were all titan sets!

Besides, weren't you just referencing Toa Mahri Hewkii? I can't think ANY Toa sets that skimped on armor more than that one did! As I mentioned above, his thigh armor doesn't wrap around his thigh beams at all, his upper arms don't even have shells on them, his shoulders are pretty much fully exposed, and his torso is literally just two beams with no shells. Sure, they might be more specialized and decorative beams than CCBS torso beams and gearboxes, but I don't think that makes his overall design any less skimpy-looking. And you're claiming G2 Toa like the 2015 Kopaka are gappy and skimp on armor? At least with the G2 Toa you don't have giant holes running all the way through the torso from front to back, or fully assembled torsos with hardly any thickness!

For the most part, the 2015 Toa feel much more solid to me than a lot of G1 Toa, especially ones like Toa Mahri Hewkii.

Since the 'Future Set Designs' thread appears to have been lost to history, I guess I'll put this here.  I was looking at my solitary 2015 Kopaka, realized how gappy the armor was, and just how much I loathed CCBS for making characters look like that have giant gaping holes in them, especially on the back.  And I didn't recall G1 having this problem, but then, G1 had all sorts of sockets in all sorts of colors, so the sockets could be construed to be part of the armor/colorscheme.  The G2 Toa, on the other hand, use black and dark grey bones.  Fine on Onua, not so fine on everyone else.

 

So if they used all colored bones in the new sets, it just might make their armor look less terrible when posed with the backside towards the viewer.  This is just a theory and it might limit the MOC-worthy bits on the sets, but it seems like it would help.

I don't see how black or dark grey bones are "not so fine on everyone else". Personally, I've always seen the Toa as being black or grey underneath their outer armor. After all, the Toa Mata, Toa Nuva, Bohrok, Toa Metru, and Toa Hordika all used black or grey for nearly every part that wasn't specifically styled to look like robot armor. For the entire first half of Bionicle G1's run, Toa who used colored faces and/or ball cups were the exception, not the norm. The movie Bionicle: Mask of Light even colored the Toa's torsos grey underneath their outer armor, along with adding greyish muscle to many of the characters' joints.

So to me, there's hardly anything different at all about how G2 does things, except that G2 also uses transparent bones for certain parts of the body to make them look "energized" (like the limbs of the Toa Inika). It's just a textbook case of color layering.

As for the armor being open on one side, that applies to the vast majority of G1 armor too. Armored in the front, open in the back. And on limbs, that's not even all that unrealistic for human body protection — just look at shin guards worn in sports like soccer. The protection is concentrated in the front because that's the side that's expected to be facing the action.

"All colored bones" also sounds like a real waste of money, on top of looking rather terrible since you wouldn't have that nice contrast between colorful armor and a more neutral "skeleton". IMO, one of the reasons the 2010 Tahu's color scheme looked so terrible compared to the 2001 version's was the lack of neutral-colored joints to balance out all his more brightly-colored armor. Even Ackar suffered from this to a lesser extent, with bright colors dominating his color scheme and only his hands, weapons, neck joint, and life counter adding a smidgen of neutral-colored relief.

Granted, the Toa Metru (and for that matter, most sets from mid-2003 to mid-2005) might have had the opposite problem, with repetitive color schemes consisting of little more than one primary color and one neutral color, but I think the G2 sets have generally found a happy medium.

Very graceful looking indeed.  The color scheme and armor design is so sleek and awesome looking.  And the weapons you've paired her with really seal the deal.  Phenomenal work here.

Thank you!

okay so, i really do like a lot of the techniques used here. like, i really love the weapons, and the use of the hero factory claw-hand piece as her back is kind of genius to be honest. but like, were the butt cheeks necessary?

Necessary? Maybe not. But I think they add to the streamlined, humanoid look. Originally, I was contemplating having those pauldron pieces on the hips, the general idea being to fill them out some so the joints don't feel as scrawny and exposed as constraction sets' hips often tend to be. But I couldn't find a way to make it work that neither had huge, unsightly gaps nor impeded posability. When I found a way to angle them diagonally from the back, the hip design started to both look more natural and function more naturally.

This butt design would definitely look ludicrous on a smaller MOC, but I feel like on this MOC it's in proportion with the rest of the design and flows nicely with the other contours. It's not for the sake of gratuitous sex appeal or anything like that, it's mainly just a matter of filling out the hips in a way that doesn't seem too blocky or robotic.

the, erm... "plates" (i'll call em that) on the back, while helping the shape, probably would have benefitted from not being such a contrasting color, i'll elt it pass on account they don't come in gold yet, but it really doesn't help the model when one's eyes are dreagged to that portion of it so easily. o:

 

otherwise though, seems like a fun, simple, cohesive build!

I didn't want the gold to dominate the color scheme. In fact, pretty much the only reason I used gold was because it was a color I had a matching chest plate and mask in. When I started building, the thighs were black and entire torso was silver, but the only silver chest plates I have are Lewa's and Skull Warrior's, and I didn't have a mask that I really thought fit either of those (plus, I'm tired of so many of my MOCs being dominated by neutral colors). There aren't a whole lot of colors in which I have a matching mask, chest plate, and talon pieces. Gold just happened to be the most fitting.

Truth be told, I kind of regret that the color scheme ended up being pretty much the same as G2 Kopaka, just organized differently. I wish I had those talon pieces in more useful colors. I have a bunch in Reddish Brown but I'm still struggling to use them in a MOC since there aren't a lot of brown shells.

Ideally, I'd like it if I could make those Technic connectors on the sides White and Silver Metallic to continue the alternate-colored look. But they don't come in Silver Metallic.

May I ask that you show us the torso design you used? I'm very intrigued.

Sure! These photos aren't the best (my lighting right now isn't great), but hopefully they're relatively clear. I also took a photo of the leg construction while I was at it:

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If you have any specific questions about the parts I used I should be able to answer them.

They actually made Tahu look cool!

 

Seriously, why didn't they make Tahu and Ikir be the Unity set?

Could just be a matter of price points. Kopaka and Melum Unity Set is a $25 set, but Kopaka has nearly as many pieces and nearly as much bulk as a $20 Toa like Tahu. This means that besides the set lacking a Shadow Trap, Melum also has to be the smallest and simplest of the creatures so it doesn't bump the set as a whole up to $30.

Even if you deducted the eleven-piece Shadow Trap from Ikir's piece count, it's still got 66 pieces compared to Melum's 40. You could make Tahu smaller instead, but I think the designers consciously chose to make Tahu the tallest of the Toa, just as they did last year. And he's already kinda scrawny, especially in his legs, so reducing his bulk might not have been an option.

I really dislike it that the toa are reduced to wearing elemental batteries as masks. I hope they learn to unlock powerful support abilities outside of stronger elemental abilities and without support from creatures.

 

The old abilities like mask of ahielding and invisibility were amazing back in g1, if an element and minor physical skill is what they can do then they are a lot weaker than G1 toa were.

What I like about the G2 Toa's powers is that several of them have support abilities, they're just no longer divorced from their elemental powers. For instance, Kopaka can use his elemental "Frost Sphere" ability to create a shield. Pohatu can generate sandstorms to levitate. Onua's elemental Earth powers come with earth-shattering strength, and Gali's elemental Water powers seem to come with the ability to breathe underwater. This way it feels like the characters' powers are more than just unrelated factoids to remember, they're a part of their identities as the masters of their elements.

G1 had a mixed record when it came to assigning powers to characters in sensible ways. Some powers from the later years made sense with a character's design and theming — for instance, Ehlek had lightning powers because he was based on an electric eel, Vamprah could drain characters' light because he was based on a vampire bat, Bitil could create a "swarm" of time-clones because he was based on a beetle, etc. But other times characters' powers seemed random and discontinuous. Take Thok, for example. What do "spellbinder vision" or bringing inanimate objects to life have to do with ice? His powers had absolutely no unifying theme, and they didn't have anything meaningful to do with the character's design or identity. They just felt like they were assigned arbitrarily to meet a quota of how many factoids kids had to keep track of.

The Toa Inika and Toa Mahri's mask powers felt a bit arbitrary too. A lot of the Toa Mata's primary mask powers were at least tangentially related to their environments. Shielding is useful in a volcanic region that rains fire, as we saw in Mask of Light when Tahu used it to protect Takua from a rush of lava. X-Ray vision is useful in a region full of blinding snowstorms. Speed is useful in a vast desert where everything is spread far apart. Strength is useful underground where you have to create your own tunnels. Levitation is useful in high jungle canopies. And of course, water breathing is useful in the water. But the Toa Inika and Toa Mahri were all in the same environments, and most of their mask powers would have been just as useful to any of them as they were to the characters they were actually assigned to.

Making characters' powers relevant to those characters isn't just convenient for people trying to remember those powers, it's good storytelling. I mean, even with Superman, who was often assigned new powers with reckless abandon, his powers all evolved naturally from his core concept of "a man who can do anything a human can do, but better". He can jump like a human, but better — super-jumping, which later evolved into flight. He can run like a human, but better — super-speed. He can lift things like a human, but better — super strength. He can see like a human, but better — X-Ray vision, which evolved into heat vision when some writer who mixed up absorbing photons with emitting them decided Superman should be able to focus his X-Ray vision into a beam. So while a new reader might get the impression of a character who just has a bunch of powers, they all developed organically out of a single unifying concept.

If you don't understand how those powers came about, though, it'd be easy to try writing a Superman-esque character just by assigning a character new powers arbitrarily. And that's sort of what I think happened with the Toa Inika and Mahri. The writers designed them around the explicit coding that every Toa has an elemental power and a mask power, but lost sight of the implicit coding that those powers should be connected with a unifying theme. What G2 has done to prevent that sort of thing happening in the future is swapped the implicit and explicit coding: now, the theming of each character's powers takes priority over the number of discrete powers assigned to that character.

What frustrated me about a lot of these weaknesses is how rarely they came up as an issue for the Toa. Now, obviously, Lewa ended up going underground a lot of times (because all the Toa did; all their biggest battles in the first three years took place underground), but it didn't seem to affect him much more negatively than most of the others. Pohatu feared water and couldn't swim, but I don't remember him ever actually needing to go in the water. Gali was supposedly weaker in deserts, but that didn't stop her from creating a flood in the Tiro Canyon to take out a bunch of Tahnok in one of the comics.

Kopaka did have to hunt for a mask near a lava lagoon at one point in the first Bionicle Chronicles book, and Lewa had to fetch a mask from underwater in the second comic. But I imagine those particular quests would have been a hindrance to anybody who didn't have a fire Toa's natural heat resistance or a water Toa's natural swimming ability. In fact, Kopaka's ability to cool his surroundings, while weakened in that sweltering environment, probably made that particular quest EASIER than it would have been for a Toa like Pohatu or Onua who lacked that ability.

I don't want to get too off topic or make this a "G1 vs. G2" debate, but I'm happy with how the G2 Toa's weaknesses are more "human". For instance, Pohatu is afraid of the dark rather than afraid of water. These weaknesses haven't all come up in the story, but it seems like it's a lot easier for the writers to really utilize them since they're not so situational — weaknesses like forgetfulness, a poor sense of direction, clumsiness, or exhaustion can be a hindrance anywhere, not just in specific settings.

Wow, I'm not even close to that. I guess the RPG forum makes a big difference. Congrats!

Yeah, I had a hard time wrapping my brain around how the events of that episode worked out as well. Best I can figure is that destroying the mega-weapon in the past using the Golden Weapons of Spinjitzu simply cancelled out the whole time-travel adventure. So everything up to the day before Garmadon created the time portal still happened. And the only reason Lloyd didn't know about the mega-weapon while Skales did is that prior to that episode, he hadn't actually seen Garmadon using it.

Even this explanation is a bit contrived and not at all obvious from the events of the episode, but it's what makes the most sense to me based on what we saw during and after that episode. If this is what the writers intended they should have made it a lot clearer. But time-travel episodes tend to be a bit screwy in general so it doesn't surprise me that Ninjago's time travel episode ended up tripping up the writers more than any other.

A graceful Bionicle swordfighter I built this week. I haven't really come up with a story for her. She mostly just evolved out of an assortment of building techniques I'd been fiddling around with.
 
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Flickr album

Please feel free to share any comments, criticisms, or questions you might have!

Biosector01 says that the creature have "creature masks". So those are not their heads? The head are their masks? I'm honestly confused 

It might just refer to them as masks because of the way they go over the Toa's heads/masks. But it's also possible they are masks. Leads you to wonder what the creatures' heads look like if that's true, since they aren't represented in the sets. But it's worthwhile to keep in mind that product descriptions aren't always accurate to the story and might just be describing the parts from a design standpoint, same as how the faceplates of Nitroblast and XT4 are identified as masks despite not really having "heads" they fit over.

Anybody got any idea about the worth of my mint condition Style Guide? Just asking for insurance reasons...

Well, last year one sold on eBay for $349.95, so that might be the closest thing you'll get to an appraisal. That one included a different Rahkshi, but the contents otherwise seem to be the same as yours.

Congrats on your new job!

I didnt even consider it a shield at first. I also dislike that his sword is in his left hand. Kopaka '15 held the spear in his right and and the shield in the left. This would imply that he's right handed. But now he's suddenly swapped the hands that each weapon belongs to.

I can assume that this is due to the parts that make up the shield, but still...

Actually, since both the panels used for the shield have mirror-image counterparts that are presumably the same price, I doubt they're the reason for the shield moving to his right hand. Rather, I think it's likely that they put his new shield in his right hand because it makes it easier for right-handed people to operate the attached blaster.

The weapons are great, but I cannot see how that "shield" could block large attacks.

I'm not a huge fan of Kopaka's new shield, yet I ought to bring up that sometimes a smaller and lighter shield is actually MORE useful than a larger one. After all, the bigger a shield is, the heavier and more unwieldy it is. And when it comes to melee combat, the chief purpose of a shield is to have something to deflect attacks with other than your arm/hand. A small shield used to parry attacks is called a buckler and was a very popular tool during medieval times.

Now, when it comes to projectile attacks (or I guess, in a science-fantasy story like Bionicle, energy blasts), a bigger shield would be preferable, since you can't exactly move your arm fast enough to guard against a bullet, arrow, or energy blast out of the air unless you have super-reflexes of some kind. But then, we've seen nothing to indicate that the 2016 Kopaka doesn't still have his "Frost Sphere" ability, which lets him project a shield all the way around himself using his ice powers. And that seems like it'd be his most effective defense against energy or projectile attacks anyhow.

At first I was disappointed that the "Powered Up" instructions were online only instead of in the booklet like the booklets in G1. Then I was hoping that the online system meant they could release new combined forms whenever online. But that ended up not happening. Haha.

I hope they have combinations for the new sets though, because you can do a lot with the way the new sets are built.

Related: does it bother anyone else that a lot of sets have "worthless" pieces in them. Like there's instructions to put 1/2 pins in the character's arms and legs with nothing to connect them to. I always feel like those parts are meant to be used in a planned future combiner.

In the case of sets like the new Onua and Tahu, I've heard some people theorize that the pins in the legs are so you don't mix up the 6M beams in their legs with the 5M beams of the same color in their arms. If you tried to use the 5M beam on the legs instead of the arms, you'd quickly realize your mistake because there'd be nowhere to add those pins.

Not so sure about the pins in Kopaka's arms. They might just be to help fill in the holes in his arms, which would otherwise be totally exposed from both sides.

I tried playing, but it warned me that it wasn't optimized for my phone (an iPhone 4S), and sure enough, it crashed partway through the first level. But I was planning to upgrade my phone soon anyway, so once I've got a new phone I'll give it another shot.

 

That thing just screams Greg Farshtey. Sounds like it could have made for some great side stories.

I would bet $20 that Greg wrote the thing.

 

He is the LEGO Club Editor in Chief, as well as the author of the book that list was inspired by, so yeah, pretty safe to assume he wrote it.

I really want non-angry ninja faces.

We're getting some this year! Ghost Cole in Tiger Widow Island and Jay in Misfortune's Keep both include smiling alternate faces (you can see Jay's smile here). Also, all the Zane minifigures since last year (including Airjitzu Zane) include smiling faces. If you count the smiling faces from Lloyd and Kai in the 2014 and 2015 Target Minifigure Gift Sets, at least one smiling face is now available for each of the ninja!

A Nya minifig in the style of the techno or tournament robes with the half-face mask and hair. I missed out on the first year sets where she had her hair included, so it would be great to see it again.

Nya's hair doesn't really fit with the Techno-style masks. It's too long in the sides.

Nya's hair was included in Final Flight of Destiny's Bounty as an alternative to her mask, though, so it is still in production. I wish more sets would include the ninja's hair like that set does so they wouldn't have to be bald when you remove their masks. And especially since we don't yet have Zane 2.0's hair in the correct silver color.

 

proving once again that our trust in The LEGO Company seems justified.

 

 

I haven't trusted Lego since they cancelled Bionicle in 2010. 

If they hadn't cancelled Bionicle back then, then I strongly doubt it'd still be around today, or have any likelihood of coming back. Nothing good would have come of running it into the ground.

Multimedia intellectual property... sounds like LEGO needs to take notes for Bionicle...

Take notes for Bionicle? They took notes from Bionicle! Bionicle was the LEGO Group's first fully-fledged intellectual property and paved the way for all the others since then — including Nexo Knights.

Anyway all this speculation over the Vahi making a return in G2 makes me want the finalized Mask of Time to look a bit like the Vahi, same way that the Mask of Fire looks like a Hau.

Oh yeah, I can absolutely agree with this. If there were no shared design cues between the G1 and G2 Masks of Time, it would be a huge missed opportunity. And the use of the Mask of Time as an "easter egg" in the webisodes shows that the creators of the Bionicle reboot know that it is remembered and appreciated by the previous generation of fans.

I think the ones with wings are best because not only are they exciting functions, but both of them really enhance the Toa in a really exciting way. However, I'm glad there's as much diversity as there is (an insect, a fish, a bird, a scorpion, etc). I just wish Terak, Ketar, and Melum did more to add new functionality to their respective Toa, instead of just serving as extra armor or blades that stick out in all directions.

I'm still a little disappointed with the creatures. A lot of them don't feel very rahi like which is what I was hoping for them. Only Uxar and Akida really scream rahi to me and even then I wish they had unique heads to better represent the animal they're supposed to be. 

I feel like they're generally very Rahi-like, especially on account of their functions. They may not be shaped like or function exactly like specific classic Rahi, but I think they do a good job emulating those sets in spirit.

As far as builds go, the creatures are definitely a bit more conventional than a lot of classic Rahi, since for the most part they all use head pieces as heads, foot pieces as feet, and torso pieces as torsos (Akida being the exception in some of these cases). That sets them apart from such Rahi as, say, the Takea or Keras or Lava Hawk or Kane-Ra. But I don't think that's really a mark against them. They are still plenty creative for their size, and some standardization is necessary simply because of the way they're meant to unite with the Toa.

Some of them are better than others, of course. I think Uxar, Akida, and Ikir are stronger designs than the others since they not only have exciting functions, but their functions feel just as deliberate in unity mode, whereas Terak's function in unity mode almost feels accidental/coincidental, Ketar's function in unity mode feels awkward and purposeless, and Melum's function doesn't work at all in Unity Mode unless you want to bash Kopaka's ears in. (Do Toa have ears?)