TRESPASSER
with this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed. restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created.
thankfully i;m god's favourite gamer and have seen the vision. this is a true heir to looking glass' original immersive sim outline, one of very few before tabletop shit started encroaching and everyone got convinced the genre was about putting 3 points in strength to lift up vending machines. no hud. no menus. no ui. everything that conceivably can be diegetic or systems-driven is. physics.. inverse kinematics.. this sits at the table with system shock(1), thief, and literally no one else
and yeah it's totally fucked up. most of the experience is bunny hopping thru maps that were unfathomably big and empty for 1998, the images from pre-release were total bullshit, half the systems didn't make it into the game, and the half that did were half broken. here's the thing tho: it's still sick. i've never seen jurassic park, and my cat hates films (entire medium) and screams so loud we'll get evicted any time we watch one, but minnie driver & richard attenborough's narration alone got me thinking maybe i should risk it
everyone says half-life2 improved on trespasser's physics, but all it did was remove everything that made them so interesting. no game has ever been "improved" by removing the alien arm. sorry, not possible. i checked the data and it says everyone's full of shit. you can laugh about how the dinosaur emotions had to be hardcoded to maximum anger and minimum everything else as result of a bug that made their moods change so fast they were rendered inert, but does a headcrab even feel anything. i didn't think so, buddy
the bespoke control scheme is fabulous; all actions the result of manipulating your right arm, and all objects a direct extension of it. there's a great weight and tactility that makes even the smallest moments like clambering up the steps of an ancient temple or tossing stones feel especially physical. guns clang off geometry upon collision, and when your hands are full you have to use your shoulder to push doors open. everything here exists for the sake of the simulation, and while the "content" of the campaign itself is slender and sparse, it's evidence enough that the team were some of the early 3D era's most accomplished prognosticators. the rejection of trespasser is the rejection of the impossible dream of the future; the dismissal of a project that promised the moon and the stars and wouldn't come back empty-handed. things could have been different.. but i doubt you can even imagine it