What are your memories of Trespasser? Hopefully you enjoyed this long documentary all about it - please do like, comment and share if you did, and subscribe for more vids like this one. Ta. :)
To this day, I still refuse to touch Trespasser, as my previous comments referring to the game after all the many patch releases and community expansions as a "polished turd" stand as a testament to how much I hate this indulgence of overambition, lack of restrictions to creative control and ego that the game represents as a product. Though I still acknowledge the game's influences within the industry. Remember, Rise of the Robots influenced The Surge games, two of the best souls-like games on this side of the Eurasian continent. And games such as Bubsy 3D laid the foundation work for Eidetic to develop the second-person perspective multiplayer mode for Siphon Filter.
It's one of my favorite games of all time. It's crazy how revolutionary and ahead of its times it was. I play it occasionally to this day and i will continue to play it and create content for it in the future
Thank you for another interesting and well put together documentary. I've never played Trespasser, I knew of its reputation and, thanks to you now, a lot more about its history. The game was clearly a completely broken mess and kudos to the modding community for making so much of it better - but I could be playing Unreal or Duke Nukem 3D with the time I'd spend playing this game, I don't see much in it that would interest me in playing it now. Nobody is ever going to re-release this game in its original form, the owners of the source code should reward the modders who have tried to breathe life into this game and just give it to them and let them see what they can do with it at that point.
Played the demo on a gaming mag cd when I was a young teen. Was first impressed by the atmosphere of the game and amused by the chest tattoo health bar. Became frustrated by the wonky physics and slow pace so quickly forgot about the game until much later.
"Dropped into the world with all these emotions, the dinosaurs didn't know what to do...they chose to do, absolutely nothing." I feel these dinosaurs so hard right now.
I purchased this game when it came out and loved it. It still contains some of my favorite moments in a video game of all time. Trapped in a bus with a T-Rex hounding me. Or on top of a pile of crates surrounded by a pack of raptors with no ammo. This was something you simply didn’t find in other games before it. The “how the hell am I going to get out of this situation?” and knowing there was no clear cut answer. That you had to find a way. The time when you found yourself on your back listening to the raptors devour you was abundant. But this few times when you actually got out of a situation alive was exhilarating. I had trouble finding the necessary keycard to open the gate in the town. So I simply stacked a bunch or crates on top of each other to climb over the gate. This game had a little window into what the future of games would be. Okay it was a choppy mess, but I still loved it.
I loved the part where you distracted the T-Rex with a plant eater and snuck by, or hiding in the barn where it was standing outside. If it had been optimized code, it would be one of my favorites.
A reoccurring story, since Jurassic times. A month after prehistoric man, first learnt to draw, a Neanderthal in a suit turned up, and told him that he only had two weeks to finish all the cave art.
@@bent540 No... it involves a ton of research to get all the history of the subject, hours of planning, writing, editing, capturing all the footage, then editing, recording the vo and more editing. Now let's see your best work. Show us.
Can't believe Trespasser came out less than a month before Half Life. Imagine how crushing it must have felt to have your game not just flop, but ravaged in the press, then Half Life basically do exactly the kind of "emergent" gameplay you always imaged, but then to be remembered as the FPS that changed nearly everything.
Not to downplay the designer's aspirations, but even if Trespasser achieved the state approximated by modern fixes it would have been overshadowed by Half-Life.
I started THS (Trespasser Hacking Society) way back in the day. Our goal was to mod the game as much as possible. I left the scene like a year later, but THS II released a good bit of mod tools, so it was nice to see some of that work pay off. Slap a VR mod on this game it'd actually be really good.
As a long fan of Trespasser (yes, I play the broken game without the fixes back when I was a child and it first came out. I loved every second of it) I thank you for making this wonderful video.
I was lucky enough to play this game in a computer store back in the day and even though I couldn't do anything and it was clumsy as Hell to control, I could still see how amazing it was. The thing that really blew my mind was the procedural animation on the dinosaurs.
I also thoroughly enjoyed playing trespasser and also played it unmodded and unpatched all the way through (I didn't have the Internet when I was a kid unless one of those free AOL cds came in the post so I didn't play a patched version until 2002) I remember spending my first couple hours with the game playing around in the very first area lifting different objects and marveling at how weighty some objects felt compared to others when you lift them and maneuvering and manipulating the arm using it to shoot around corners and things and thinking how revolutionary it was to not just have a dot in the middle of the screen to aim and having to actually use the gun sights properly and I was sure it was the future of fps games. Boy was I wrong about that one.
I love Trespasser. I remember playing it for the first time back in 2000. It looked and felt like real life. I was scared shitless of the raptors. Maybe one day someone will remake this amazing game
This video really hit home, a friend of mine in australia whom I started a modding group for jedi academy a quake engine based game died unexpectedly and it was a little while before we found out, visiting the site knowing we couldn't do anything about saving it as it was all setup by him was a sad time for everyone involved, but we knew when he went radio silent that things were off, the internet im sure has thousands of similar stories noone ever thinks about.
You can kill the T-Rex with regular guns, he just takes A LOT of ammo. I remember getting a T-Rex stuck and bringing every gun from the entire level to shoot him. He did eventually die.
With so many games getting a “Remaster” treatment I would love to see this one get remade/remastered. Back then technology really hampered the vision of this game, now on the other hand we have games that utilize huge worlds. If given to a talented team who loves the original and are dedicated to keeping the survival tone and plot I am sure they could pump out an amazing game.
The shame of it is that the game is probably in 3 different kinds of rights limbo. Not that that means it's impossible, but it did take over 20 years for a re-release of 007 Goldeneye to materialize, and that's one of the most popular first-person shooters of all time.
[sees concept art] Huh, so THAT was what Anne was supposed to look like this whole time. And man, that clip of ResearchIndicates's LP brings back some memories... Great vid!
Such a shame, this sounded like it could have been up there with the greats had it gotten those 6-9 months extra. But sometimes, even the worst games can still inspire those who dare explore them. Excellent documentary!
Trespasser is legitimately one of my favourite games. I love the sense of exploration it delivers, particularly in the later levels when you have to pass through deep canyons or scale steep cliffs, all the while scavenging for firearms to defend yourself with. There's something very freeing and immersive about exploring large levels with no secondary character harping orders into your ear, blindly following a marker on the gps, or obsessively searching for pointless flavour text collectibles. I think the contemporary definition of open ended game design is completely wrong; most people agree that if you have a large area to explore, it must be filled with content otherwise it's wasted space. I like to think Trespasser flips that sentiment on its head entirely. Sometimes less is more.
I vividly remember the first time I played this game back in 98. I was blown away by the physics, the graphics and the game world. If only these guys had more time. .This game could have been a revolution in gaming.
There was a group of people that were rebuilding Trespasser from the ground upand were 75% done with the game before Universal sent them a cease and desist letter. Besides a few screenshots and a very short video of gameplay the devs said they had to completely delete all the files to the game.
Kim I just want to tell you how much I've loved your work over the years. As far as I'm concerned there's nobody that comes close to your skills as a researcher and broadcaster when it comes to these long form gaming documentaries. You are in a league of your own.
you've obviously never fired a gun before then....I know when I go to the range I don't hold my arm straight out in front of me while waggling it like im a fraggle with no bones.....IF I drop a dish in my kitchen I don't go get the broom, hold my arm straight out and waggle
The funny thing, in retrospect, is that as awkward as Anne's out-loud ammo countdown may be, it's _nothing_ compared to a power-suited Bryce Dallas Howard neurotically telling herself, _'Hal, Jim, Erica... Hal, Jim, Erica... and I am Claire.'_
I played this when I was 12! I actually liked it back then even though the arm movement was a bit borked 😂 I also have a vague childhood memory of a basketball not bouncing
I don't know why but I can watch your documentaries over and over again. It is so calming. And I never finish them completely so I can watch them again
The only two things I remember about this was the Tattoo Life-Bar and the calling out of counted shots from the gun. I think it's great that even a misstep can make a massive advancement for another series & the idea of factors that give emotions to how dinosaurs act; I know from my personal experience of Lua, Python, or Pascal can say, any of the Java Language or whatever was used in this engine to figure this out deserves a tip of the hat.
My favorite thing to hide somewhere the raptors couldn't get me and then just watch the procedural animation system have a field day... the best was when raptors would just fall over like they forgot how to walk, lol!
Every time you said "noodle arm", I first registered "nude alarm". Even though I knew full well that it was "noodle arm". I don't know whether that gives anybody a fun reason to rewatch?
I had a friend in middle school who when stopping by his house on the way home pulled an old cd from his dad's cd booklet and showed me Trespasser. Even at the time, Trespasser was an evocative game in tone and feel, with the narration driving the game's plot and pulling the player in. Then you would drop your gun on a wall and have to deal with the game's very ehhh physic engine.
Trespasser is what got me into retro computing and still to this day a game i often plays, plenty of great mods, the JPDS mod serie is pretty whole new Trespasser made perfect.
you make extremely thorough, comprehensive, and professionally produced video essays. i do not understand why your videos don't get many more likes. thanks for all the videos and keep up the amazing work !
This game needs a remake in the style of The Long Dark, The Last of Us or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. A remake which involved trying to survive on the island with an end goal to fix a radio to call for an escape. The food could be similar to metal gear solid 3 where you can wait for food to get rotten and you can give it to the dinosaurs and give them food poisoning.
Actually, Open-World survival games are not the kind of game that appeals to everyone. How about a spiritual successor that keeps some of Trespasser's ideas and updates those that work, and streamlines the combat a bit to be accessible to newcomers?
Definitly not "The last of us" . The remaster should be more about isolated exploration with your own decisions what you wanna do and how it should be concluded . There shouldnt be so much story because the gameplay and design of the locations alone can handle the narrative without unnecessary banter that kills the immersion when the character starts talking . I would even say that there is no need for the jurassic park license and should make an own story how the island is infested by dinosaurs and what kind of experiments they also did. A bit more sci-fi and mystery there to give it that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. horror with its own spin without being too predictable .
If there was ever one game that needs a remake / fix up it would be this. Even back in the day I knew it was a buggy mess but the premise of being alone on an island full of dinos and trying to survive has not been done as good since... ok dino crisis and this.
Although I'm not into gaming that much, your videos are so interesting! The research put in is epic. The edit is great. Your channel should have so many more subscribers! I realised I wasn't subbed so made sure I have. Keep up the fantastic work Kim
Just found my copy of this last week. I remember it as a glorious failure that I loved to bits. I'm assumed you're about to say the same... watching now......
We keep getting remakes, remasters, and reboots of very good and successful games. I want a remake of failed or unsuccessful games that were great in concept and vision, but let down by time constraints, technical limitations of the time, bad management, lack of reception, or any combination of the above. For that reason alone I want a proper reboot of (at least): 1) Jurassic Park: Trespasser (in VR) 2) Kiss: Psycho Circus (as a horror FPS) 3) Grim Fandango 4) Jade Empire 5) Dark Earth 6) Daikatana 7) Chasm: The Rift 8) Lords of Magic 9) Kingpin
This is the best coverage of trespasser I have seen. Thank you for doing the project justice. It will always be my favorite game and Seamus Blackly my childhood hero. I still remember waiting for this to come out and how real the physics was, which no game had ever had before.
Trespasser is actually really fun, the wonky controls makes Dino encounters really scary and the physics based puzzles are pretty creative and fun to solve. Also the frame rate is actually pretty decent on my voodoo 3 and Pentium iii pc
Enjoyed that Kim, me and my lad watched it together and he had a right old chuckle. Been enjoying watching this on Twitch so great to hear the finer details. Tamochanter
I remember the staff at EB sniggering at me because I was buying one of the Star Wars Gameboy games. I mean, they weren't wrong, but where's yer shop nowawadays, ya bastards?
The research indicates lets play of trespasser was my very first LP i've ever seen back in the day. It blew my mind how well he put it together and i think it holds up to this day.
This game is such a comfort for me. Back as a kid I would watch and re-watch a let's play of this, One of the kind without talking but with text comment's every now and again. I loved the games atmosphere and how those raptors would bob as they walked. What a nostalgic flash back this video brought me!
Reminds me of the King Kong game. Dinosaurs, scarce ammo, no hud, remaining ammo is announced with voice lines, there are puzzles where you shoot one animal so that others will stop to eat it.
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said-“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.
This game is genuinely one of my favourite and most memorable gaming experiences from the 90s, jank and all. I loved the ambition, the unmatched atmosphere, and the emergent qualities of its gameplay which was unique at that time. I remember being chased by a t-rex into a building, being stuck there for hours until I finally found a way to kill it. And I even enjoyed that last third where I had to use what I'd learned about how the creatures moved and thought in order to out-maneuver/think them. And the arm... well, the arm was hilarious. :) Let's call it "an interesting experiment". This is a great little documentary about a groundbreaking game, and I learned a lot about it that I didn't know. Great stuff.
I've never played the full game but watching the video I can see it having influenced walking sims as well. All the background narration while you explore abandoned serene areas. It seems rather neat, especially for the time.
I recall looking forward to this game back when it was first announced. Open-world and Jurassic Park seemed like a no brainer to many fans of both. Even back then, some of us appreciated the vision despite the lackluster product we received - no regrets. Great retrospective, Kim.
I was a part of the trescom community back in the late 2000's. I still have my old pc with all my trespasser mods. The level editor was fairly easy to use, and I had lots of fun making maps. Though they would always crash due to too much foliage.
I didn't realise this game was remembered fondly by anyone, thought it was completely forgotten. We got it back when it came out and though we knew it wasn't good, we had a lot of fun laughing at the weird things that can happen just from the combination of odd physics and awkward controls. I've played it through since and it's still a fun time.
Oh I love Research Indicates' Let's Play of Trespasser! I even fell asleep to it just last night so, great timing! I played Trespasser back in the day briefly, but it always stuck with me.
People always want remakes of games that are already great, but I'd much rather have remakes of stuff like this - games that weren't very good when first released, but had enough potential that they can be more enjoyable with modern technology and hindsight.
Great video, I enjoyed it a lot! Always loved Trespasser. The first half of this was so sad, I’m glad you finished on a high note and highlighted the positives
I remember as a 10 year old in 1998 being amazed at the physics simulation, despite it being frustrating. And as a huge Jurassic Park fan, I felt it was a privilege just being on the island.
Great video, @Kim Justice very comprehensive, thanks. By the way counting your shots is something you should be doing in real world combat, so using it as a replacement for a HUD ammo counter does make sense.
Good video. There's a few things I consider noteworthy, that haven't been mentioned here. Both, the arm and hand, per mouse & keyboard, can be aimed and twisted, independently from each other. That means you can point your arm straight forward but turn the wrist and shoot in an off-screen direction. They will not automatically return into a default position for aiming ahead. That was one aspect that made the game a disaster to play, as it takes a long time to get used to that weird control scheme. Added to that, every single object/creature can potentially collide with your arm/gun/item and push it away. The game seems to encourage building piles or walkways out of crates and planks. The horrible control scheme makes that concept a nightmare. The dinosaurs cannot ascend/descend *a single step* (at least in the original game). That means whenever you reach a staircase, you're safe (unless their heads can still reach you). The demo level (which was not part of the single player story) was (IMO) the best experience you could get out of the game. In it, you started on a helicopter platform in a jungle, roughly 8m (~27 feet) above the ground. With the staircase broken off, you had to figure out a safe way to reach the ground. On the platform were several barrels & crates (too small and too few for a pile) and some guns. The solution was to shoot two small supporting blocks from underneath a big trailer (container-type), causing it to fall to one side and then tumble down an incline, leading to the (thick metal) legs of the helicopter platform. You could then jump down onto the trailer. In '98 that was special, since there had never been another 3d game with such physics before. It certainly caused a player's imagination to run wild with ideas for hundreds of exciting physics puzzles. Instead it ended up being the same 3-4 puzzles over and over.
Superb doc Kim! It's the usual tale of grandiose dreams and a poor outcome most of the "worst games ever" get. Watching this made me want to play Dino Crisis. Gosh I love that one! Probably my fav dinosaur game by far :D
One of my favourites as a child back in 2002, glad it's still being talked about and remembered! Watched some great Lets Plays of it on here and I've still got the Trescom site bookmarked in my favourites, it fills me with nostalgia...
Kim, that was a fantastic video where time just flew by! I remember getting a demo of the game from one of the PC magazines and being utterly disappointed with it. The physics were truly amazing for the time but everyone I knew who tried the demo where just unimpressed with its performance. I never realized how ambitious the game was trying to be.
What are your memories of Trespasser? Hopefully you enjoyed this long documentary all about it - please do like, comment and share if you did, and subscribe for more vids like this one. Ta. :)
To this day, I still refuse to touch Trespasser, as my previous comments referring to the game after all the many patch releases and community expansions as a "polished turd" stand as a testament to how much I hate this indulgence of overambition, lack of restrictions to creative control and ego that the game represents as a product. Though I still acknowledge the game's influences within the industry. Remember, Rise of the Robots influenced The Surge games, two of the best souls-like games on this side of the Eurasian continent. And games such as Bubsy 3D laid the foundation work for Eidetic to develop the second-person perspective multiplayer mode for Siphon Filter.
Played the demo on a pc gamer demo disc. It was awful but amusing to play. I liked waggling the arm around 😅
It's one of my favorite games of all time. It's crazy how revolutionary and ahead of its times it was. I play it occasionally to this day and i will continue to play it and create content for it in the future
Thank you for another interesting and well put together documentary. I've never played Trespasser, I knew of its reputation and, thanks to you now, a lot more about its history.
The game was clearly a completely broken mess and kudos to the modding community for making so much of it better - but I could be playing Unreal or Duke Nukem 3D with the time I'd spend playing this game, I don't see much in it that would interest me in playing it now.
Nobody is ever going to re-release this game in its original form, the owners of the source code should reward the modders who have tried to breathe life into this game and just give it to them and let them see what they can do with it at that point.
Played the demo on a gaming mag cd when I was a young teen. Was first impressed by the atmosphere of the game and amused by the chest tattoo health bar. Became frustrated by the wonky physics and slow pace so quickly forgot about the game until much later.
"Dropped into the world with all these emotions, the dinosaurs didn't know what to do...they chose to do, absolutely nothing."
I feel these dinosaurs so hard right now.
_Tyrannosøren Kierkegaard_
Buridan's Astrodon
So the dinos in this game all had anxiety disorder?
@@ElvenRaptor Except the Velociraptors. They had an eating disorder. By which I mean they had ''hunger'' and ''aggression'' set to 100.
@@nickdahl203 They just need some Snickers!
I purchased this game when it came out and loved it. It still contains some of my favorite moments in a video game of all time. Trapped in a bus with a T-Rex hounding me. Or on top of a pile of crates surrounded by a pack of raptors with no ammo.
This was something you simply didn’t find in other games before it. The “how the hell am I going to get out of this situation?” and knowing there was no clear cut answer. That you had to find a way. The time when you found yourself on your back listening to the raptors devour you was abundant. But this few times when you actually got out of a situation alive was exhilarating.
I had trouble finding the necessary keycard to open the gate in the town. So I simply stacked a bunch or crates on top of each other to climb over the gate. This game had a little window into what the future of games would be. Okay it was a choppy mess, but I still loved it.
I loved the part where you distracted the T-Rex with a plant eater and snuck by, or hiding in the barn where it was standing outside.
If it had been optimized code, it would be one of my favorites.
@@charlesburris6314 You mean like this? :D
ua-cam.com/video/eBWD-WsGEb4/v-deo.html
A reoccurring story, since Jurassic times.
A month after prehistoric man, first learnt to draw, a Neanderthal in a suit turned up, and told him that he only had two weeks to finish all the cave art.
Plato's Caveman
could be your best work ever Kim, this was brilliant
Get your hands on that source code baby let's dissect the physics
Never expected that you would comment on this video!
Na Road rash was the best, still waiting for Rock & roll racing.
imagine a person which "best work" was to sit an talk about a game for an hour!
@@bent540 No... it involves a ton of research to get all the history of the subject, hours of planning, writing, editing, capturing all the footage, then editing, recording the vo and more editing. Now let's see your best work. Show us.
Can't believe Trespasser came out less than a month before Half Life. Imagine how crushing it must have felt to have your game not just flop, but ravaged in the press, then Half Life basically do exactly the kind of "emergent" gameplay you always imaged, but then to be remembered as the FPS that changed nearly everything.
Anybody can dream. Few can deliver. Half Life delivered.
@@edgepixel8467 Boy was Half-Life a game-changer. Amazing achievement.
Such is the life of pioneers.
Not to downplay the designer's aspirations, but even if Trespasser achieved the state approximated by modern fixes it would have been overshadowed by Half-Life.
@@GeorgeNoiseless Oh absolutely, mostly because Half Life's story is told in such a fast and effective way.
I started THS (Trespasser Hacking Society) way back in the day. Our goal was to mod the game as much as possible. I left the scene like a year later, but THS II released a good bit of mod tools, so it was nice to see some of that work pay off.
Slap a VR mod on this game it'd actually be really good.
My thoughts exactly
A fanmade remake it's being made, looks really promising.
As a long fan of Trespasser (yes, I play the broken game without the fixes back when I was a child and it first came out. I loved every second of it) I thank you for making this wonderful video.
I was lucky enough to play this game in a computer store back in the day and even though I couldn't do anything and it was clumsy as Hell to control, I could still see how amazing it was. The thing that really blew my mind was the procedural animation on the dinosaurs.
I also thoroughly enjoyed playing trespasser and also played it unmodded and unpatched all the way through (I didn't have the Internet when I was a kid unless one of those free AOL cds came in the post so I didn't play a patched version until 2002) I remember spending my first couple hours with the game playing around in the very first area lifting different objects and marveling at how weighty some objects felt compared to others when you lift them and maneuvering and manipulating the arm using it to shoot around corners and things and thinking how revolutionary it was to not just have a dot in the middle of the screen to aim and having to actually use the gun sights properly and I was sure it was the future of fps games. Boy was I wrong about that one.
I as well had this game at release as a teenager. I admire this game and will always respect it
I love Trespasser. I remember playing it for the first time back in 2000. It looked and felt like real life. I was scared shitless of the raptors. Maybe one day someone will remake this amazing game
there was someone remaking it on the unreal engine. I think that is dead now
@@testaccount4191 it’s thankfully not dead, but the creator is just busy with life at the moment.
"If I have seen so far, it is only because I stand on the mangled wreckage of several previous trainwrecks."
It's nice that you can now listen to the entire memoir of John Hammond which was compiled by the fine folks at Jurassic Time.
I didn't think I could sit through a 70m doc on Trepasser but here I am at the end and thoroughly pleased. Thanks, Kim.
Holy crap, is that how long it was?? Barely felt time passing at all I was that hooked. Great piece of documentary!
This video really hit home, a friend of mine in australia whom I started a modding group for jedi academy a quake engine based game died unexpectedly and it was a little while before we found out, visiting the site knowing we couldn't do anything about saving it as it was all setup by him was a sad time for everyone involved, but we knew when he went radio silent that things were off, the internet im sure has thousands of similar stories noone ever thinks about.
Jedi Academy mods got me through some of the darkest times in my childhood, the work of people really does matter
God the ending to this is so powerful. Came back to this video just to experience it again. Richard Attenborough did a fantastic job voicing his lines
You can kill the T-Rex with regular guns, he just takes A LOT of ammo. I remember getting a T-Rex stuck and bringing every gun from the entire level to shoot him. He did eventually die.
With so many games getting a “Remaster” treatment I would love to see this one get remade/remastered. Back then technology really hampered the vision of this game, now on the other hand we have games that utilize huge worlds. If given to a talented team who loves the original and are dedicated to keeping the survival tone and plot I am sure they could pump out an amazing game.
The shame of it is that the game is probably in 3 different kinds of rights limbo. Not that that means it's impossible, but it did take over 20 years for a re-release of 007 Goldeneye to materialize, and that's one of the most popular first-person shooters of all time.
this game and the Peter Jackson King Kong game both deserve remakes
took me a while to figure out what nude alarm was, turns out you were saying noodle arm!
[sees concept art] Huh, so THAT was what Anne was supposed to look like this whole time. And man, that clip of ResearchIndicates's LP brings back some memories...
Great vid!
Brilliant video, and that reading of Ozymandias at the end is just....perfect.
Absolutely. I was about to pause the video just before that moment hit, and instead I could do nothing but listen.
Such a shame, this sounded like it could have been up there with the greats had it gotten those 6-9 months extra. But sometimes, even the worst games can still inspire those who dare explore them.
Excellent documentary!
Trespasser is legitimately one of my favourite games. I love the sense of exploration it delivers, particularly in the later levels when you have to pass through deep canyons or scale steep cliffs, all the while scavenging for firearms to defend yourself with. There's something very freeing and immersive about exploring large levels with no secondary character harping orders into your ear, blindly following a marker on the gps, or obsessively searching for pointless flavour text collectibles. I think the contemporary definition of open ended game design is completely wrong; most people agree that if you have a large area to explore, it must be filled with content otherwise it's wasted space. I like to think Trespasser flips that sentiment on its head entirely. Sometimes less is more.
I vividly remember the first time I played this game back in 98. I was blown away by the physics, the graphics and the game world. If only these guys had more time. .This game could have been a revolution in gaming.
There was a group of people that were rebuilding Trespasser from the ground upand were 75% done with the game before Universal sent them a cease and desist letter. Besides a few screenshots and a very short video of gameplay the devs said they had to completely delete all the files to the game.
This is one of those games that could be rebuilt in a modern engine and set up for VR, and it's be awesome. Just... Stuff all the sound into it.
Great idea. UE5 and VR, with Dolby or THX sound.
Kim I just want to tell you how much I've loved your work over the years. As far as I'm concerned there's nobody that comes close to your skills as a researcher and broadcaster when it comes to these long form gaming documentaries. You are in a league of your own.
I don't see anyhting wrong with her arm. That's exactly how my real arm works.
you've obviously never fired a gun before then....I know when I go to the range I don't hold my arm straight out in front of me while waggling it like im a fraggle with no bones.....IF I drop a dish in my kitchen I don't go get the broom, hold my arm straight out and waggle
@@lutherheggs451 I’ve fired a gun before, and can confirm that her arm in the game is 100% accurate, there’s nothing wrong with it
@@lutherheggs451 lolol holy shit dude, how did that joke go over your head
I too can lift an oil drum over my head using just my fingertips and shoulder.
@@lutherheggs451 Fun fact. I served in the airforce and have used fully automatic rifles. Us pros hold them exactly like in the game.
The funny thing, in retrospect, is that as awkward as Anne's out-loud ammo countdown may be, it's _nothing_ compared to a power-suited Bryce Dallas Howard neurotically telling herself, _'Hal, Jim, Erica... Hal, Jim, Erica... and I am Claire.'_
I played this when I was 12! I actually liked it back then even though the arm movement was a bit borked 😂
I also have a vague childhood memory of a basketball not bouncing
Still laughing my ass off every time a dino "attacks"... Looks like one of my best friends on his way out after half a bottle of Jack... 😂
I don't know why but I can watch your documentaries over and over again. It is so calming. And I never finish them completely so I can watch them again
The only two things I remember about this was the Tattoo Life-Bar and the calling out of counted shots from the gun. I think it's great that even a misstep can make a massive advancement for another series & the idea of factors that give emotions to how dinosaurs act; I know from my personal experience of Lua, Python, or Pascal can say, any of the Java Language or whatever was used in this engine to figure this out deserves a tip of the hat.
My god, I don’t think they even made glasses of that size. Mr. Gates must have them custom-made. :)
My favorite thing to hide somewhere the raptors couldn't get me and then just watch the procedural animation system have a field day... the best was when raptors would just fall over like they forgot how to walk, lol!
I've always had a soft spot for this game, I still have my original big box edition.
This is one game would benefit from a vr conversion, I think.
porting it to the source engine ironically would have done it a lot of good
@@testaccount4191 I just think it would be cool if you were able control your character's arms with Oculus touch/knuckles controllers.
Director's Chair is worth playing just for the batshit crazy appearance of Quentin Tarantino.
These are seriously the best documentaries i have watched about gaming as a hole. Your channel is a goldmine, Kim. Thank you so much :)
Extremely great documentation! Please make part 2 with more details around the implementation.
It was nice of AVGN have the developer explain what went wrong in his review. A bit of clas
I always found Trespasser a bit too janky for me but this video has helped me see the gold amongst the dirt. An excellent ending in particular, Kim.
Every time you said "noodle arm", I first registered "nude alarm". Even though I knew full well that it was "noodle arm". I don't know whether that gives anybody a fun reason to rewatch?
I had a friend in middle school who when stopping by his house on the way home pulled an old cd from his dad's cd booklet and showed me Trespasser. Even at the time, Trespasser was an evocative game in tone and feel, with the narration driving the game's plot and pulling the player in. Then you would drop your gun on a wall and have to deal with the game's very ehhh physic engine.
This is going to be a wild ride.
It looks like they even used inverse kinematics for the dinosaurs... in 1998. That's just insane.
What's that?
@@CaptainSlowbeard basically: limbs and feet reacting correctly to the underground.
Trespasser is what got me into retro computing and still to this day a game i often plays, plenty of great mods, the JPDS mod serie is pretty whole new Trespasser made perfect.
I love how much credit you give the developers while also giving very strong criticism. The detail and context is crazy good. Great video
you make extremely thorough, comprehensive, and professionally produced video essays. i do not understand why your videos don't get many more likes. thanks for all the videos and keep up the amazing work !
Great video. Always heard of this game but never knew much about it so thanks for that. Would love to see you do Omikron - The Nomad Soul.
This game needs a remake in the style of The Long Dark, The Last of Us or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. A remake which involved trying to survive on the island with an end goal to fix a radio to call for an escape. The food could be similar to metal gear solid 3 where you can wait for food to get rotten and you can give it to the dinosaurs and give them food poisoning.
Actually, Open-World survival games are not the kind of game that appeals to everyone.
How about a spiritual successor that keeps some of Trespasser's ideas and updates those that work, and streamlines the combat a bit to be accessible to newcomers?
Definitly not "The last of us" . The remaster should be more about isolated exploration with your own decisions what you wanna do and how it should be concluded .
There shouldnt be so much story because the gameplay and design of the locations alone can handle the narrative without unnecessary banter that kills the immersion when the character starts talking .
I would even say that there is no need for the jurassic park license and should make an own story how the island is infested by dinosaurs and what kind of experiments they also did. A bit more sci-fi and mystery there to give it that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. horror with its own spin without being too predictable .
Hearing you describe the pitch, it sounds like the progenitor/precursor to the first far cry. That's really impressive.
Fantastic video. I remember this game from back then, and I remember thinking it was special even in that state. Amazing to see it live on.
If there was ever one game that needs a remake / fix up it would be this. Even back in the day I knew it was a buggy mess but the premise of being alone on an island full of dinos and trying to survive has not been done as good since... ok dino crisis and this.
Although I'm not into gaming that much, your videos are so interesting!
The research put in is epic.
The edit is great.
Your channel should have so many more subscribers!
I realised I wasn't subbed so made sure I have.
Keep up the fantastic work Kim
Just found my copy of this last week. I remember it as a glorious failure that I loved to bits. I'm assumed you're about to say the same... watching now......
We keep getting remakes, remasters, and reboots of very good and successful games. I want a remake of failed or unsuccessful games that were great in concept and vision, but let down by time constraints, technical limitations of the time, bad management, lack of reception, or any combination of the above.
For that reason alone I want a proper reboot of (at least):
1) Jurassic Park: Trespasser (in VR)
2) Kiss: Psycho Circus (as a horror FPS)
3) Grim Fandango
4) Jade Empire
5) Dark Earth
6) Daikatana
7) Chasm: The Rift
8) Lords of Magic
9) Kingpin
I'll add Brutal Legend to your list
@@Vesperitis That game was brutal and a total legend. Love it to this day.
This is the best coverage of trespasser I have seen. Thank you for doing the project justice. It will always be my favorite game and Seamus Blackly my childhood hero. I still remember waiting for this to come out and how real the physics was, which no game had ever had before.
Such a great documentary. Awesome! :)
How could anyone thumbs this down 🤔 thoughtful and insightful content as usual!!
And now we can never know whether a video is good or bad. If course Kim's vids are excellent.
Trespasser is actually really fun, the wonky controls makes Dino encounters really scary and the physics based puzzles are pretty creative and fun to solve. Also the frame rate is actually pretty decent on my voodoo 3 and Pentium iii pc
Enjoyed that Kim, me and my lad watched it together and he had a right old chuckle. Been enjoying watching this on Twitch so great to hear the finer details. Tamochanter
This is the only PC game I returned to Electronics Boutique.
Ah, EB. The memories.
I remember the staff at EB sniggering at me because I was buying one of the Star Wars Gameboy games. I mean, they weren't wrong, but where's yer shop nowawadays, ya bastards?
That last choice of quote is amusingly meta. A tale of man's hubris on three separate layers.
The research indicates lets play of trespasser was my very first LP i've ever seen back in the day. It blew my mind how well he put it together and i think it holds up to this day.
This game is such a comfort for me. Back as a kid I would watch and re-watch a let's play of this, One of the kind without talking but with text comment's every now and again. I loved the games atmosphere and how those raptors would bob as they walked.
What a nostalgic flash back this video brought me!
Reminds me of the King Kong game. Dinosaurs, scarce ammo, no hud, remaining ammo is announced with voice lines, there are puzzles where you shoot one animal so that others will stop to eat it.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said-“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Your writing and narrating skills are of epic level. Thanks for those brilliant videos.
Omg, this is the Documentary I’ve been waiting for on this game! Thank you so much Kim!
I really enjoyed this documentary. Thanks a lot for such a great work Kim Justice!!
This game is genuinely one of my favourite and most memorable gaming experiences from the 90s, jank and all. I loved the ambition, the unmatched atmosphere, and the emergent qualities of its gameplay which was unique at that time. I remember being chased by a t-rex into a building, being stuck there for hours until I finally found a way to kill it. And I even enjoyed that last third where I had to use what I'd learned about how the creatures moved and thought in order to out-maneuver/think them. And the arm... well, the arm was hilarious. :) Let's call it "an interesting experiment".
This is a great little documentary about a groundbreaking game, and I learned a lot about it that I didn't know. Great stuff.
Great video! Production values are top notch. Keep em’ coming :)
I've never played the full game but watching the video I can see it having influenced walking sims as well. All the background narration while you explore abandoned serene areas. It seems rather neat, especially for the time.
Ah you're saying "Noodle arm". It took until my second listen through to really think about what a "Nude alarm" was :)
That hand holding a gun makes stormtroopers look like competent snipers.
That was a wild ride. I've only ever ready about Trespasser but it looks fascinating
Great video! I love these long, in depth looks.
I recall looking forward to this game back when it was first announced. Open-world and Jurassic Park seemed like a no brainer to many fans of both. Even back then, some of us appreciated the vision despite the lackluster product we received - no regrets. Great retrospective, Kim.
Dino: "It wasn't me, it was the one-armed Ann!"
I was a part of the trescom community back in the late 2000's. I still have my old pc with all my trespasser mods. The level editor was fairly easy to use, and I had lots of fun making maps. Though they would always crash due to too much foliage.
Every time I see your intro, I expect Faulty Towers to begin 🤣
Really enjoyed your content.
Got my discord group to watch your content.
Keep up the good work.
Another great video, i wonder what is the contest of the upsetting audio log is really strange
I didn't realise this game was remembered fondly by anyone, thought it was completely forgotten. We got it back when it came out and though we knew it wasn't good, we had a lot of fun laughing at the weird things that can happen just from the combination of odd physics and awkward controls. I've played it through since and it's still a fun time.
A remaster of this game in VR would be great to see
another academy quality documentary from Kim, every single video of yours has been an absolute gem
Oh I love Research Indicates' Let's Play of Trespasser!
I even fell asleep to it just last night so, great timing!
I played Trespasser back in the day briefly, but it always stuck with me.
People always want remakes of games that are already great, but I'd much rather have remakes of stuff like this - games that weren't very good when first released, but had enough potential that they can be more enjoyable with modern technology and hindsight.
Great video, I enjoyed it a lot! Always loved Trespasser. The first half of this was so sad, I’m glad you finished on a high note and highlighted the positives
Wow Kim, what a video. There was me thinking this was a video about a bad dinosaur game and next thing your serving up Games Documentary of the year.
Damn. I'm absolutely downloading that clip of "Ozymandias." What a horrible irony, sure, but what beautiful art.
I remember as a 10 year old in 1998 being amazed at the physics simulation, despite it being frustrating. And as a huge Jurassic Park fan, I felt it was a privilege just being on the island.
Great video, @Kim Justice very comprehensive, thanks.
By the way counting your shots is something you should be doing in real world combat, so using it as a replacement for a HUD ammo counter does make sense.
I remember really getting into this game when I first played it, loved the atmosphere and semi sand box play.
Good video.
There's a few things I consider noteworthy, that haven't been mentioned here.
Both, the arm and hand, per mouse & keyboard, can be aimed and twisted, independently from each other. That means you can point your arm straight forward but turn the wrist and shoot in an off-screen direction. They will not automatically return into a default position for aiming ahead. That was one aspect that made the game a disaster to play, as it takes a long time to get used to that weird control scheme.
Added to that, every single object/creature can potentially collide with your arm/gun/item and push it away.
The game seems to encourage building piles or walkways out of crates and planks. The horrible control scheme makes that concept a nightmare.
The dinosaurs cannot ascend/descend *a single step* (at least in the original game). That means whenever you reach a staircase, you're safe (unless their heads can still reach you).
The demo level (which was not part of the single player story) was (IMO) the best experience you could get out of the game.
In it, you started on a helicopter platform in a jungle, roughly 8m (~27 feet) above the ground. With the staircase broken off, you had to figure out a safe way to reach the ground. On the platform were several barrels & crates (too small and too few for a pile) and some guns.
The solution was to shoot two small supporting blocks from underneath a big trailer (container-type), causing it to fall to one side and then tumble down an incline, leading to the (thick metal) legs of the helicopter platform. You could then jump down onto the trailer.
In '98 that was special, since there had never been another 3d game with such physics before. It certainly caused a player's imagination to run wild with ideas for hundreds of exciting physics puzzles. Instead it ended up being the same 3-4 puzzles over and over.
Superb doc Kim! It's the usual tale of grandiose dreams and a poor outcome most of the "worst games ever" get.
Watching this made me want to play Dino Crisis. Gosh I love that one! Probably my fav dinosaur game by far :D
Cheers Skipper. Great little documentary on a game that shouldn't be forgotten.
Can't believe I've never seen this video. One of your best, Kim.
One of my favourites as a child back in 2002, glad it's still being talked about and remembered! Watched some great Lets Plays of it on here and I've still got the Trescom site bookmarked in my favourites, it fills me with nostalgia...
Kim, that was a fantastic video where time just flew by! I remember getting a demo of the game from one of the PC magazines and being utterly disappointed with it. The physics were truly amazing for the time but everyone I knew who tried the demo where just unimpressed with its performance. I never realized how ambitious the game was trying to be.
The end of this video made me want to stand up and start an ovation of clapping. Well done mate!