UNMADE cinematic

UNMADE
UNMADE cinematic
Release date	June 25, 2023
Setting	Svalbard, Norway
Characters	Deadlock, Dorsey, Anna, Frøya, Killjoy

The UNMADE cinematic was released on June 25, 2023, before the 2023 VCT Masters Tokyo Grand Finals. It was made by Lightfarm Studios, and signifies the start of Episode 7 and the reveal of Deadlock.

Synopsis

UNMADE shows the Ståljeger (Steel Hunters) mission to an enclosed facility located in Svalbard, Norway. With a team consisting of weapons experts, extraction specialists and an out-of-place Kingdom scientist, the group enters the suspicious facility in an attempt to extract a ferocious beast.

• Anna, the Extraction Specialist
• Frøya, the Weapons Expert
• Dorsey, the Kingdom Scientist

1/3

Plot

In the harsh Norwegian tundra conditions a helicopter passes by, likely issued to deploy the Ursa team seen later in the cinematic. As the team arrives in front of this mysterious facility, Frøya unsuccessfully attempts to communicate with the Briar team, which is assumed to have deployed before Ursa. After receiving no update from the Briar team, Anna notes that the whole facility is running on reserve power, including containment. Despite Anna’s hesitance at the fact that the containment unit is running on reserve power, Deadlock is adamant about the continuation of the mission, and the quartet enter the facility after turning on a tracking system.

Deadlock and Dorsey

Thinking the mission will be pursued with ease, Dorsey, the Kingdom scientist, reveals that Kingdom intends to transport the creature within the facility to the USA. Led by the fearless weapons expert Frøya, the team begin their venture into the facility.

While walking through dark, abandoned passages, the team stumble upon a rat, a sign that the facility has been abandoned for a long time prior to their arrival. As they continue to make their way through, the facility suddenly loses its reserve power, leaving the crew to navigate their way in even darker passages.

Per Anna’s initial suspicion, the crew discover something highly awry inside the facility: a broken containment enclosure. Instead of the creature being contained as expected, the enclosure is shown to be destroyed, with a purple substance covering the wall behind it. Aware to the fact that the creature is roaming the facility, the crew goes on high alert. Anna, the extraction specialist, reconnoitres the place in search of the missing creature.

Radivore Bear

In a sudden turn of events, Anna gets silently assassinated by the creature, leaving the trio alone to defend themselves without an extraction specialist. Soon after, the creature goes for the remaining people, but Frøya stands her ground and attacks the creature with an Odin while Deadlock and Dorsey retreat, but ends up suffering the same fate as her ally, Anna.

After observing the loss of her ally through the tracking system, Deadlock deploys her Sonic Sensor ability to monitor a hallway through which the bear could track her and Dorsey. Deadlock hands Dorsey a Classic and the duo come to understanding that Deadlock will distract the creature while Dorsey fixes the software of the containment centre.

Immediately after Sonic Sensor detects the presence of the bear, the plan goes into action. Deadlock fends off the creature with her Vandal while Dorsey attempts to fix the facility. He plugs in a Kingdom device and manages to fix the issues, however, the bear manages to make its way around to Dorsey, killing him and destroying the system.

Being the only hunter left alive, Deadlock has to face the creature alone. Although she runs out of ammunition, Deadlock lures the bear into a less secure containment unit, ensnaring it with her GravNet ability. She runs out of the cylindrical enclosure and attempts to lock the creature in, however, the process isn’t fast enough. After the bear breaks through the nanowire mesh, it bites Deadlock’s left arm through the closing doors, both immobilizing her and blocking the gates of the enclosure from shutting.

Glowing marks cover Deadlock's face as her eyes glow blue and the bear says "Release Me!"

Glowing scars begin to work their way up Deadlock's body, spreading from the creature's bite on her arm. As her eyes become tinted blue, she hears the juvenile voice of the bear calling out to her: “Slipp meg fri!” (Release me!). Before she can process the bear’s cries for help, Dorsey, in his dying breath, shoots at the bear one last time to help save Deadlock. Being snapped out of her trance due to Dorsey’s gunshot, Deadlock saves herself by powering up the enclosure with its gates still open— annihilating both the creature and her arm in the process.

Disoriented from her fight with the bear, Deadlock walks over to Dorsey's body, mourning his death and giving him a farewell. From the ground, she grabs Dorsey's previously used Kingdom device and walks away, revealing the loss of her left arm. Stumbling to the ground, she activates Dorsey's device and calls for help before falling unconscious in the burning facility.

Deadlock inspecting her ult

In the next scene, we see Deadlock fully recovered, now in Killjoy’s lab. With the scientist's help, Deadlock gains possession of a new mechanical arm, fully adjusted to her abilities and preferences. As she tests the spool capacity within her Annihilation ability, she aims at Wingman who happens to be in the lab, purposefully scaring the creature. After mentioning how radivores are more dangerous than they think in response to Killjoy's disapproving comment, Deadlock balls up her fist, asking Killjoy when the team is leaving, possibly for a mission.

Lore

The Facility

The Project Landfall facility in the cinematic was featured in the NIGHT.MARKET background, and also in a social media teaser prior to the cinematic’s release. One of the playercards in Deadlock's Agent Contract titled "Into The Vault" also features this facility. Since it is referred to as "The Vault" and is located in Svalbard, Norway, there may be a chance that this facility was inspired by the real-life Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

Kingdom and Radivores

We first hear of the term “radivore” through Jett’s email in which she eavesdrops on Kingdom employees’ gossip, and mistakenly hears this eccentric term as “rad or four”. Through Jett’s input, the VALORANT Protocol keeps tabs on Kingdom’s missions to Norway, and ends up sending Sova to recon the place. Deadlock's beacon sent at the end of the cinematic is fortunately heard by Sova, which is how Deadlock is theorized to have survived and ended up joining VALORANT.

Radivores are theorized to be radianite-consuming creatures that were intentionally mutated under laboratory conditions. Currently, there are six creatures that can be labelled as “radivores” in the lore: Gekko’s critters Thrash, Wingman, Mosh, Dizzy, the bear that makes an appearance in the UNMADE cinematic, and an unknown radivore named ZN-35 (from the Sunset announcements). All of these creatures are known to have been produced by Kingdom.

Deadlock and The Bear

Scars appearing on Deadlock's face

As the radivore bear bites Deadlock's arm, we see scars appearing along her face. These patterns match that of Gekko's scars on his arms, and they are assumed to be acquired through a bond between a human and a radivore. In fact, just as Gekko hears his creatures speak coherent words (made apparent by his in-game voicelines), Deadlock hears the bear's cries for help. The bear, and the arm through which the bear formed a connection with Deadlock is annihilated soon after the bond is formed, so the long-time consequences of this bond on Deadlock are currently unknown.

Project Landfall

The events of the cinematic are a part of the recurring project called Landfall. This is made evident both from in-game Kingdom emails acting as a harbinger for the execution of the mission, as well as various clues throughout the cinematic, such as "Project Landfall - Svalbard" imprinted on the gate that leads up to the broken containment enclosure. Although the in-depth details of this project are yet to be revealed, it is heavily hinted to be related to Kingdom's production and experimentation of radivores.

At the start of the cinematic, the Kingdom scientist Dorsey mentions that the mission is about “getting [the creature] stateside.” Apparent from his use of the term “Stateside”, along with the coordinates in a social media teaser under his dossier showing Los Angeles’ location, it is assumed that the Project Landfall’s laboratories are located in Los Angeles. This assumption is in line with Gekko obtaining his radivore creatures while being situated in Los Angeles.

Notes

• As Deadlock checks her surroundings, we see extraction samples in vials on a wall, numbered from 1 to 6. From Dorsey’s display, we learn that there are a total of 10 testing enclosures in the facility. Out of these 10 enclosures, Chamber 2’s testing process seems to have been interrupted, but Dorsey still successfully manages to start a data transfer in Chamber 9 in which results have been obtained. These numbers show us that Project Landfall’s scale has not been small and it presumably has been going on for a while.
• The containment enclosure that the radivore bear escaped from has visual resemblances to the teleportal Gekko uses to acquire his critters, as seen in patch 6.05 homescreen.
• Towards the end of the cinematic, a map of Los Angeles Boyle Heights is visible on Killjoy's monitors. This location was also featured previously in Cypher's social media teaser for the UNMADE cinematic, and also is renowned to be the place Gekko's reveal trailer took place in. With multiple clues pointing at this location, it is likely that a big event will be taking place here in the near future.