Tresspasser (1998)

by Dreamworks Interactive, Electronic Arts

Genres:Adventure, Puzzle, Shooter

Themes:Open world, Action, Survival

Story:Trespasser is an action-adventure first-person-shooter video game released in 1998 that was billed as a "digital sequel" to the 1997 film "The Lost World: Jurassic Park". The player assumes the role of Anne, who is the sole survivor of a plane crash on InGen's "Site B" one year after the events of The Lost World. With only a single arm and limited weapons, Anne must escape the remote island by solving puzzles and evading the dangerous dinosaurs. The game is noted for the involvement of the film's director, Steven Spielberg, and actors Richard Attenborough and Minnie Driver. Trespasser's game engine was also very advanced for its time, showcasing large outdoor environments, real object physics, an advanced AI system, destructible objects, an advanced LOD (Level-of-Detail) system, and the first ever use of ragdoll physics and inverse kinematics for dynamically generated animations. The gameplay is very atmospheric with no visual HUD of any kind except for a heart-shaped tattoo on Anne's left breast to represent her health points and speaking out loud how much ammo is in each weapon. Tresspasser was one of the most highly anticipated games of the 1990's. Unfortunately, problems arose as soon as development started. The development team was newly formed with inexperienced management and artists who were unfamiliar with basic game development processes and 3D modeling. After a very welcoming and positive reception from early demos and concept art from E3 1996 and PCGamer, the team got overconfident about their skills and started putting in one of the worst forms of Feature Creep imaginable. The game was being delayed and going overbudget as new and never-before-seen experimental features were added or changed with an immobile release date set into the Fall of 1998. While the game was originally conceived as a Survival Horror title, it was turned into an Action-Adventure as the dinosaurs were incapable of doing advanced AI tactics or going near structures without getting stuck on building geometry. The dinosaur models themselves would cause severe slowdown for the PC due to the attached physics boxes to every raptor, along with the blood particle effects. (Recommended specs for Tresspasser at the time called for a 166 MHz Pentium II.) The models would constantly warp, twist, and compress in broken ways due to the animations and physics boxes attached them, making almost every creature stumble around in an incredibly drunken manner. The AI also had an advanced mood and emotion system for each of the dinosaurs where they could potentially hunt Anne or other dinosaurs depending on their mood. It was the earliest time a 3D game tried to create a living world using AI and emergent gameplay. Due to a bug where the AI switched so quickly in the extremes, it caused the dinosaurs to stop moving or responding altogether. A hard-coded fix was put in place where the aggression and hunger levels were set to maximum while all other moods and emotions were set to zero, turning almost all the creatures into mindless hunters. Due to an oversight, only very few raptors in the game (mostly in the Industrial Jungle level) had this emotion system still turned on. The raptors would go up to Anne to follow and sniff her curiously, until they were injured in some way. Tresspasser also conceived a "very immersive" arm system where players could interact with the world through their mouse and keyboard to inspect and look at objects close up. Anne only has a right arm to interact with the world that's capable of being manually turned in 360 degree movements that are impossible to do in real life. While it can pick up and hold objects, Anne be constantly dropping objects she's holding in her hand when bumping into structures, invisible boundaries, and dinosaurs. A left arm was scraped due to time and technical issues. Other similarly weird visual bugs, severe slowdowns, and crashes are a constant feature. Tresspasser had to be pushed out in a very unfinished and unpolished state with a lot of features, content, and several levels cut\merged. Some of which are still found within the game's files. It ultimately received mixed to negative reviews at the time and disappointed many reviewers, with some declaring Tresspasser as "the worst game of 1998". It ultimately sold somewhat over 50,000 copies with the CD-ROM being very rare today. Even with the negative reception, Tresspasser still has an active cult following to this day with various fixes, mods, and several potential remakes on modern engines. The game was the main inspiration of Valve's Half-Life series and many of Tresspasser's other ideas would later realized in other future games.Show more

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@serinitism

January 29, 2025

Duplicate, another entry has 3500 votes I loved the game though, it was revolutionary, and my first tattoo! Sometimes you need to add a story about a monkey in a barrel in order to have enough words

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Tresspasser (1998)