I've been obsessing so hard over the robot designs of the mercenaries in TF2 for almost quite literally no reason other than I guess me playing MvM and getting an epiphany at how amazing they are.
Robots whose sole purpose is to perfectly mimic the stats of the mercenaries, they literally aren't better in any way they are built to go as far as what their human counterparts can manage. Mix that with the fact that they are running on paper cash powered combustion engines as a canon explanation as to why they drop money that burns up after some time is amazing and hilarious in it's own right.
As for the actual designs, I adore that they all have their own little quirks to more perfectly replicate the class they are and how it to an extent affects certain parts of their designs, and I will speak of those I really like AT LENGTH so be warned:
While every robot has fairly stiff movement the Scout bot is the only one that is entirely erratic in an effort to replicate the Scout's speed, effectively making him look like a Slinky that's constantly falling down a flight of stairs as any movement causes an extreme counterreaction. Scout bot is also the only one to only have 3 fingers - it's middle, ring and pinky finger being one solid block for the express purpose of paddling Scattergun reloads. (Final note on the scout, despite the fact he was designed to go fast, he was still given scout's bag which is, quite literally, just a block of metal with no function weighing him down for no reason)
Speaking of fingers, Spy bot is the only one with 5 of them, most classes having their pinky and ring finger fused together, since the Spy is technically the only class that has tools that need all of them to be properly used - those being the butterfly knife, because Spy bot probably still does tricks with it, and the sapper since it has a few buttons to press, knobs to turn and wires to hook up to sentry guns.
Pyro bot is the only one whose legs are on 2 Axes, their legs being connected to the side of a pelvis block on their lower torso, this is only notable because of their Headshot death animation where they end up spinning around their legs like a cartoon. Also Pyro bot is very chunky to replicate the fire suit's bulkiness and I find that cute (You can go here to see what the headshot animation looks like, while also appreciating all the other bot's animations!)
Sniper bot is the only one capable of suppressing the shakiness caused by the combustion engine but only while using the sniper rifle, obviously it was given this ability as to not throw off it's aim but it can only do this with the sniper rifle because it doesn't need to move around a lot; The second it's given a bow and arrow the shakiness returns since it's most likely going to be moving AND aiming at the same time and these trash bots likely can't handle suppressing it and moving.
Medic bot being atop one wheel is amazing because other than being an absolutely awful design decision because of the many issues with balance it'd cause on a metallic man, it also makes it so the Medic bot looks like it's being ferried along by whoever their heal target is, as if the medi beam was somehow a lasso or... leash.
Soldier bot STILL has it's eyes covered, and while the model itself shows it's just a solid X-men Cyborg like line, the impression it gives is that Soldier bot still has 2 glowing dot eyes but the light is reflecting off the helmet back into it's face. Also Soldier bot has a few extra flaps of metal for the express reason of replicating soldier's coat and nothing else as I doubt it provides any extra protection.
Demoman bot only has one centered eye, which, ya know, it would've been a pretty easy way to improve the projectile class robot by giving it depth perception... and honestly there really isn't that much more to say about Demo bot which is a bit of a shame, biggest thing of note outside that is the sword swinging animation, as it literally just does a 90º overhead chop in the most stilted way possible.
Heavy and Engineer bot are probably the ones that have the absolute least to say to them, Heavy bot has just a huge metal block replicating heavy's ammo belt instead of just giving it a ammo belt cause, apparently, it's not robotcore enough for Gray Mann to be happy, and Engineer bot has a really funny placing down building animation, as it can barely handle the weight of the tool box.
Now each class definitely has a few more cute details but let's go for more general details:
- Instead of proper leg kinematics like the actual mercs, the robots are divided at the waist so their entire lower body can turn in the direction they are walking (only Heavy bot doesn't do this, once it's walking backwards it's legs actually properly scooch backwards like the real Heavy, probably because it's legs or waist are too small to do the full turn around);
- All of their movements are very fast and sudden like classic robot archetypes, the fun part is that the animators did a wonderful job of making these sudden movements from big hunks of metal be reflected in how their bodies react to it, newton's law and all that;
- Soldier, Demo and Pyro bot's grenades are replaced with batteries, once again only to fulfill Gray Mann's robotcore love;
- Their eyes can actually come in 2 colors, blue when you're playing on easier tours and yellow when you're playing on harder tours;
- Their voice lines are just the regular voice lines passed through a filter, which they probably applied automatically since there actually are robot voice lines for payload objectives and voice commands that the robots would not have access to. I imagine it was so nothing got past them and a Scout bot wouldn't say "Hey! I can see my base from here!" in a completely normal human voice because it happened to double jump.
- Obviously couldn't finish this off without talking about giant robots, their heads remaining the same size while the rest of their body, mainly their torso, scales up significantly makes them look so funny. And their voice lines were probably passed through a second filter to make them even MORE garbled then they already were.
Bonus fun fact: Super Scouts don't run at full speed in game because the Source Engine has a limit on how fast something can go, so if you ever let slip a Super Scout and thought they were too fast, remember that Valve intended them to be faster. Here's linked a demonstration of the differences, the 3rd place is what we get in game, 2nd place is the speed they were SUPPOSED to go and in 1st place is an unused boss!
And that's basically it! I love these robo dudes so much, they absolutely rock and I wish MvM's last update hadn't been Two Cities. Mind you, it's great! But it introduced a bunch of stuff that they never followed up or innovated on, the silver lining is that this is TF2 baby! If valve left a hole to be filled the community will do it and so I'm gonna urge you to play Community made MvM missions! As of this post Potato's MvM is hosting the Galvanized Gauntlet Tour, which is also a Charity event! While they've already hit their goal I'm sure you're aware that a charity can always use more, so go play it, have fun and donate if you can or so wish!































