Tresspasser

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 structures, causing the dinosaur models to warp and twist in broken ways. The AI also had an advanced mood and emotion system for each of the dinosaurs where the dinosaurs could potentially hunt Anne or other dinosaurs depending on their mood. Due to a bug where the AI switched so quickly that it caused the dinosaurs to stop moving or responding, a hard-coded fix was put in place where the aggression was set to maximum while all other moods and emotions were set to zero. The game 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 constantly dropping objects its holding when bumped into structures, invisible boundaries, and dinosaurs. A left arm was scraped due to time and technical issues. Other similarly weird bugs, severe slowdown (recommended specs called for a 166 MHz Pentium II), 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 levels cut. 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. Even with the negative reception, it still influenced other games like Valve's Half-Life series and many of its ideas were later realized in better ways in other future products. The arm mechanic, for example, is seen as a precursor to the arm used in Surgeon Simulator 2013 and Octodad. To this day, Tresspasser still has an active cult following with various fixes, mods, and several potential remakes on modern engines.