Maxbot is a cleaner droid turned trainer robot turned vindictive machine. He currently serves as the announcer for the Team Deathmatch mode, seemingly watching as the agents fight each other.
Maxbot
Lore[]
WARM UP[]
Maxbot makes his first appearance in the WARM UP cinematic. He was a cleaner droid that received extensive combat modifications by Raze and Killjoy so that he could function as a training robot for the rest of the VALORANT Protocol. Throughout the cinematic Maxbot cements himself as an unstoppable force against the agents, defeating them in one-on-one combat and even pairs of agents rather handily. It took a coordinated effort and an all-out attack by the agents to take Maxbot down. At the end of the cinematic it is implied that he was put out of commission during the final exercise. However, there was a single scene at the end of the cinematic where Cypher walked up on Maxbot in his final moments allowing him to shoot Cypher and keep the running joke of Cypher's death in every trailer.
In-game lore items[]
Maxbot’s whereabouts after the events of WARM UP are relatively unknown. However, information from the Best Served Cold player card along with the voicemails and emails in Brimstone’s office allow us to speculate.
It would seem that Maxbot was simply kept in storage in his derelict state. However, as can be seen in the player card, Maxbot was not fully destroyed and remained at least partially active with his eye still glowing. The name of the player card, Best Served Cold, is also thought to be in relation to the “revenge character” that the devs had been alluding to[1], since it is part of the well-known idiom “revenge is a dish best served cold”. This would be confirmed later on.
The Best Served Cold card shows Maxbot's derelict state stowed away in some storage room. His eye is still ominously glowing however, implying that there is more to come.
As for the information that can be gleaned from the voice messages and emails, it would seem that at some point Raze and Killjoy undid all the modifications they made and Maxbot returned to being a cleaning droid. However, Omen started to become wary of the droid as he believed that the droid was behaving strangely, saying it was “deviating from its usual path, observing the agents train and activating on its own”. He shared these concerns with Brimstone in the form of the patch 6.07 voicemail[2] and requested that Brimstone ask Killjoy and Raze to undo anything they may have missed.
Afterwards, with Brimstone seemingly deciding that this was not a problem requiring immediate attention, Omen decided to confront Raze about Maxbot, among other things, as can be seen in the patch 6.08 email[3] from Raze to Brimstone. The latest mention of Maxbot in the voicemails and emails is the 6.10 voicemail from Omen[4] where he conveys his fears once again to Brimstone. He claims that Maxbot has now disappeared and implores Brimstone to look into the situation further as he fears “something is happening”.
THE GAMES BEGIN[]
These fears would come to be realized. In the Execute R.V.N.G Program // (Y/N)?[5] short posted on the official VALORANT YouTube channel, we see a terminal being hacked and the locations that the Protocol’s teleportal is connected to being changed to new ones.
We get more context behind these happenings in THE GAMES BEGIN trailer. We also get our first real look at Maxbot after the events of WARM UP. It is confirmed that he was in fact made a cleaner droid again. However, it would seem that his personality, and perhaps even his memories, he gained as Maxbot remained. It is shown that he was the one who initiated the hack that disrupted the VP’s teleportal network. They now send the agents to what Maxbot refers to as the ‘Dangerdomes’, where the agents are forced to battle each other for an as yet unknown reason.
He now oversees the agents battling each other as he once battled them and revels in witnessing the conflict and chaos he creates among the agents.
Appearances[]
Maxbot has had 2 distinct appearances, 3 if we include his damaged state.
Cleaner droid form[]
Maxbot in his cleaner droid form before the modifications in WARM UP
In his cleaner droid form, Maxbot is much shorter than your average person, appearing to be only up to about waist height of Phoenix and Gekko in THE GAMES BEGIN trailer. His head is a cylinder with a dome on top, slightly reminiscent of a cleaning Roomba. He has a single eye in the middle of his head that generally glows blue, but can also glow red with an ‘X’ when the ‘malicious’ side of him is present. His chest is cubical with a bunch of vents and a screen in the front and a place to attach cleaning tools on his back. His arms and legs are thin and slender but otherwise seem to have similar dexterity to that of an average person. In THE GAMES BEGIN we also see some scratches on his head, reminiscent of his battles in WARM UP.
Maxbot post WARM UP. Note the damage on his chassis.
Being a robot, he may be able to turn most if not all of his joints 360 degrees (his arms and torso are definitely capable of this in his trainer droid mode at least). His right arm also has a vacuum cleaner attachment under his hand. In THE GAMES BEGIN we also see his left arm having the ability to switch out for a tool that allows Maxbot to interface with a terminal so that he may hack into the teleportal system. He is also shown to be strong enough to crush an empty aluminum soft drink can and is adept enough to discretely hack into the VP teleportal network without setting off any immediate alarms that the VP may have put in place.
Trainer droid form[]
In WARM UP, Maxbot received significant modifications from Raze and Killjoy’s tinkering in order to allow him to function as a training partner for the agents. Maxbot is made much taller, now slightly taller than Raze. His arms and legs seem reinforced and his legs have received some decals from Raze. His right arm now has a modified Vandal in the place of the vacuum cleaner and his left arm has a flame thrower. A shoulder mounted turret sits on his left shoulder sharing a very similar appearance to that of Killjoy’s Turret and a collection of grenades, courtesy of Raze’s Paintshells, round out his arsenal. The shoulder mounted turret also has the capability to switch out its gun for a remote hacking tool that can disrupt opposing technology and turn it against its user. His eyes also permanently flash red with an ‘X’.
Maxbot after the fights in IWARM UP
In his damaged state Maxbot has his left arm ripped off and his screen displays a blue screen in WARM UP and has been completely destroyed in the Best Served Cold player card. His legs may have also suffered significant damage as he is seen limping.
In this form, Maxbot was durable enough to shrug off bullets of various calibers, ranging from pistol fire all the way up to the those fired from the Odin. His own Vandal ammo reserves seem greatly expanded over that of a regular Vandal, boasting what seems to be a helical magazine instead of the standard magazine. His arms and torso can be rotated at high speed to give himself more throwing power or to force an opponent back when flailing his arms in close quarters. His feet are also capable of boosting his jumps either up or sideways, much like Jett’s Tailwind and Updraft. He also seems to be mostly unfazed by Phoenix’s Hot Hands though it does seem to have some sort of effect on him as he tended to blow away the flames if he could. He also seemed briefly capable of replicating KAY/O’s NULL/CMD ult. His combat ability is also shown to be unprecedented, being able to consistently defeat the agents in 1v1s and 1v2s.
Sustained fire towards his components may be able to destroy or at the very least break them off of him, as we see in WARM UP when Killjoy broke off the shoulder mounted turret. And while his combat prowess is impressive, he is nonetheless a single unit and is prone to being overwhelmed by numbers. His weapon can also not be constantly fired for long durations. Whether this is because of an ammo issue or because the weapon can jam is not clear, as in the cinematic we hear Maxbot’s gun produce the telltale ‘click’ of an empty weapon but we never visibly see him reload the weapon and he resumes firing it just fine a few moments later, leaving it unclear on what the issue was. Maxbot is also extremely vulnerable to explosive and blunt force, taking the most damage when Raze’s Blast Pack exploded on his back and when he was crushed into the ceiling by Sage’s Barrier Block.
Notes[]
- Maxbot is one of only two named NPCs who have been voice acted, the other being Captain Greaves.
- Maxbot's voice actor is Phil Dunster<ref>Phil Dunster being Maxbot's voice actor (must join VALORANT Lore // Art Discord)Go
Sources[]
- The WARM UP cinematic Go
- The Execute R.V.N.G Program // (Y/N)? short Go
- The THE GAMES BEGIN trailer Go