Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel gameplay trailer explores Claptrap's strange skills

If Claptrap's behavior has ever seemed a bit erratic, this 11-minute Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel gameplay trailer recorded at PAX Prime might explain why.

gameplay trailer recorded at PAX Prime might explain why. It turns out that his internal threat response software is actually still in beta, and doesn't always work quite as it should.

Claptrap's action skill, as narrators James Lopez of Gearbox and Joel Eschler of 2K Australia explain, is called VaultHunter.exe. Its purpose is to analyze a situation and then load an "action package" that will enable Claptrap to most effectively deal with it. Unfortunately for the unicyclic bot and those around him, there are still a few bugs in the system.

That means Claptrap will sometimes respond to situations in unexpected ways. He might lay out a little Claptrap turret that fires rockets all over the place, for instance, or he might suddenly whip out a "Clap in a Box," a huge, powerful bomb that's going to explode, one way or the other, in just a few seconds. All his abilities are useful, the developers say, but not always in the most obvious ways.

"We really designed it with his personality in mind," Eschler explains. "It's still beta software, and it doesn't run that well on his hardware."

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel comes out on October 14. To find out more about what's in store, check out our recent interview with Eschler and writer Anthony Burch right here.