Print this page

Claptraps

Claptrap robots - properly known as CL4P-TP General Purpose Robots - played a large role in the original game, functioning as both guide and travel facilitator, but in the second game they have been largely rendered extinct – leaving just one surviving robot of the class who as luck would have it is on the scene near where the train was destroyed, and thus being in a position to save the Vault Hunter.

Manufactured by the Hyperion Corporation, the CL4P-TP has a uniquely annoying personality and voice, and in the original game were frequently in need of repair, which offered the player several quest opportunities. That predilection for becoming damaged proves to be an enduring trait, as the first mission that the bot ends up leading the Vault Hunter to is a quest to repair it.

While Claptraps tend to be overly friendly and solicitous, their annoying personality tends to promote a rather uniform measure of hostility that often results in their being used by bandits and outlanders for target practice - which may go a long way towards explaining how they ended up very nearly wiped out of existence.

After Handsome Jack took over the Hyperion Corporation and later, the planet, one of his first official acts was to shut down and scrap every single Claptrap robot on the planet save for a single unit - the original Fyrestone Claptrap that the player met in the first game, leaving it abandoned in a scrap yard in the frozen wastes, surrounded by the dead bodies of Vault Hunters and the dead forms of its Claptrap cousins!

After The Fyrestone Claptrap saves the Vault Hunter it communicates its desire to exact revenge upon Handsome Jack for eliminating his product line and on one Captain Flynt - who previously captured and tortured the bot, who only managed to escape by staging a mutiny on Flynt's barge. Once free the Claptrap takes refuge in the frozen hovel where he remained until rescuing the Vault Hunter.

Leading the Vault Hunters to the nearby town of Sanctuary - with a few stops and more than a few quests along the way - Claptrap proves to be highly instrumental in the battle against Hyperion Corporation and Handsome Jack. The moral of the story? Praise the Claptrap!

"Wow! You're not dead?" - Claptrap