"Trespassing!" A Jurassic Park: Trespasser AAR/Runthrough

[ThatZenoGuy]

Making this thread for a fun AAR/runthrough of the game Trespasser. It'll also serve somewhat as a prototype for a later project I'd like to do. But the most important part is I hope it entertains and informs people of the obscure and absolutely janky yet adorable game.
Posts for the first level "The Beach" will unfold soon!

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

After a planecrash we awake on a mysterious island, seeing a wooden door floating, some fun ripple effects that were quite impressive for the time, and a shrunken down airplane tail that absolutely could not have been from our large plane.

Welcome to Trespasser, the 1998 game that semi-inspired Half-Life 2.

Turning around and looking into the nearby shrubs and trees we hear birds chirping in the distance. We're alone on this island and nobody else survived the planecrash.

We are playing as Anne, voiced by Minnie Driver, and one of our arms broke in the planecrash, so we're one-arming this whole game. Fortunately she's eerily strong as we'll find out soon enough.

See that loveheart tattoo on Anne's copious 'tracts of land'? That's our healthbar, it'll fill up when we're hurt and this game actually features a regenerative health mechanic. Neat!

If there's one thing you learn while playing Trespasser, it's that the movement system feels really strange. Not particularly terrible but it's a skill to master. Anne is technically a big cube that rolls around using inverse kinematics and there's no sprint function. Smashing Q to jump around does speed you up however.

So going up a hill and jumping up some rocks, we come across an interesting sight, the 'jungle gym'. A series of obstacles and items to pick up and play around with. It's really just a tutorial area you can skip if you want to. So that's what we're going to do! Nothing too fun here anyways. Well maybe just one thing...

Anne shows off her superhuman abilities as she trivially one-arms a huge steel girder like it was nothing. If she had two arms the game would be far too easy. The real reason she only has one arm is because programming two into the game was just not going to work, it already requires a keyboard and mouse for ONE arm, two would require a human to have four arms to operate. Most fans just say she injured the other in the crash.

Using our breasts we smash a wooden door down. Yeah so another thing about this game, it doesn't really have much friction calculations. Every item in the game is 'frozen' in place until touched, where it'll endlessly slide off other objects until it falls to the ground, which is the only way for items to 'stop'. There's also sort-of no real physics shapes other than cubes or rectangular prisms, so you'll notice every item's physics-box is...A box!

We finally find some firepower in the form of some revolvers, a desert eagle, and a SPAS-12 shotgun (called the Bell Shotgun ingame for some reason). Now you might have noticed this game doesn't have a hud, so we get told how much ammo we have by Anne's inner monologue instead. She'll remind us the guns feel 'half full' or 'about ten' or however much the gun has.
There's also no crosshair, so we have to actually aim these bad boys manually and line the sights up.

As far as I can tell the guns don't have spread, so as long as you're on target, you'll hit. But good luck getting on target without practice. And yes, you can hold the gun 'gangsta style' or shoot yourself.

Anne shows off more of her superhuman strength, using a shotgun one-handed to shoot an aggressive wooden box. Her words on the matter? "So THAT'S what that feels like!"

After dealing with the box, we come across an ominous sign. We...Might not be on a very safe island. Good thing we grabbed those guns then!
Anne hears John Hammond's memoirs in her mind as she recollects them. She read his book a while back and they actually got Richard Attenborough to read a script. He does a great job at it too. A lot of people think that it's literally Hammond speaking to Anne psychically or something, but its just her inner monologue.

We come across the most basic box-puzzle ever invented...Just shoot the boxes and use them as a surface to walk on. But we hear a roar in the distance, a loud bellowing roar. That can't be good, right?...

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

We start the next level, without any firearms!? Yeah this game takes away your weapons after each level, it's cheeky but it is what it is. Fortunately they tend to give you a gun of some sort at the start of each level to make up for it. In this case, a desert eagle. You can kill at least 2 Tribe A raptors with your 8 shots if you're good.

There's a damned raptor in the distance, that lil orange smudge in the middle of the screen. Trespasser usually plays by the rules but sometimes it likes to spawn enemies at the start of missions, fortunately their agro-range isn't very big so you can comfortably watch them from a distance.

Another handgun in a mysterious 'gun cabinet' that you'll find across the island. You might be asking yourself why there's no doors on the cabinet. Same reason why there's generally not many doors in general. Physics bugs. Anything that CAN move, is liable to freaking out and busting off it's hinges into some sort of murder-door, or just crashing the game.

Many items were removed from other items ingame, mostly doors, car hoods and other small interacting things. Even raptors sometimes 'compress' or even 'explode' when shot at or killed. But these are generally much more rare with the modern patches for the game.

We meet one of the few friends we'll ever have on this island, a Stegosaurus! These gentle giants just wander around harmlessly. You can kill them if you want to, but it's best to just give them some headpats and continue on your way. Sometimes they'll actually kill a raptor or two, but anything bigger is guaranteed to kill them.

The island has quite a lonely feel to it, and these guys genuinely can brighten up your island exploring adventures.

After putting another raptor down, Anne wonders how she could possibly get those boxes down from up there...
Yeah the puzzles in this game are never really challenging, its only the janky physics that could ever make it time consuming.

We find an army helmet and a new gun! The Ruger Redhawk. This baby can put a Tribe A raptor down with a single headshot. We can also put the army helmet on our head, but it doesn't actually do anything. It is a sign however that maybe just maybe you're likely to be eaten by raptors on Site B.

Passing the puzzle, killing another raptor and going down a hill we find a genuine InGen Standard Safari Vehicle (spared no expense!) Down from this car is a hidden rifle that we will find useful for the adventure.

Going down the intended path some more we come across another variety of friend, the Triceratops. These gentle giants are just as stupid as the Stegosaurs, but with worse textures. He's under attack by two raptors so I reckon we should save him, as he doesn't mean anyone any harm.

So how do raptors actually do damage? Well every carnivore in the game has a 'strip', an invisible rectangle in their mouths that causes damage on contact. When they open their mouth this strip is exposed and you can be hurt. If their mouth is closed you (in theory) should not take damage. This does mean a raptor on the ground with it's mouth bugged to stay open can gnaw your (nonexistent) legs off accidentally though.

Friend has been saved, repeat, friend has been saved! All within a single Desert Eagle's magazine too! Not shabby for someone who hasn't played this game in a while.

Backing up we see...A house? An old plantation house of some sort! It must be over a hundred years old or something! Lets check it out! There's no way we could find modern firearms in there though, haha that'd be silly.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

The oddly named 'industrial jungle' begins and we start off next to an M14, which I suppose makes up for the fact we lost the M14 found in the last mission due to level transferring. I wonder why the developers took away the weapons between levels? One thing you notice is every level starts where the last level ends, and the end of the previous level is recreated crudely so you feel the continuity.

Two shots from our new weapon puts a Tribe A raptor down with trivial ease, notice his legs are a little bit...Messed up? Yeah that just sometimes happens, oh well.

Anne amusingly replies to Hammond's memoirs in her brain, and we find another Ingen vehicle. Maybe there's another weapon up there? Lets check it out!

A .357 revolver, not ideal but it'll put at least one raptor down. The raptors in this game range from realistically durable to dino-crisis-esque levels of bullet sponge, we're going to need a lot more firepower soon.

A bit further on and after killing another raptor we stumble across an anomaly, a friendly raptor? This silly fellow just wanders around and sniffs you sometimes, but he minds his own business. Remember what I said about hunger and anger? Well this game was supposed to have a super complicated emotions system for the dinosaurs, which fell flat because often their emotions would contradict one another and they'd end up being an indecisive mess of an animal. So the developers just increased all carnivorous dinosaurs to maximum hunger and anger. Anger causes aggression to the player, and hunger causes aggression to herbivores as far as I am aware of.

Some raptors escaped this tuning of their emotions system so they're generally passive unless you attack them, which spikes their anger and thus makes them aggressive. I think there's only 2 or 3 of these oddities in the game and they're fun to play with and pet.

Anne bravely tames the beast by petting it. Which makes amusing 'meat slapping' noises. The game has surprisingly good soundwork, stuff generally sounds as it should, and it has an advanced (for the time) sound randomization feature so the same sound played over and over actually sounds a little bit different each time.

Further up and after killing another Tribe A raptor we find an old Ingen truck with a G3 rifle in the back, this baby is just as good as the M14, and is quite rare on the island. The game really rewards exploration with fancy weapons and more encounters.

Annnnnnnnnd immediately we're given a Mac 10 submachinegun and a desert eagle. We can only carry three weapons at a time so we're kinda overloaded. Lets take with us the M14, the G3 and the Mac 10.

Now it makes sense why we're given so many guns, say hello to the first Tribe B raptor of the game. These guys are bigger, faster, tougher and nastier. And more red. Their actual coloration is basically stolen from some old dinosaur book and they look lovely.
Raptors of different tribes were supposed to attack one another, but cutting corners to get the game released means they're all on the same team now, if you see multiple raptors of different tribes, shoot them all.

A car over a raptor, who is suspiciously programmed to stand under the shadow of said car, what if we were to shoot the car...

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

Our adventure continues as we spawn in to see a walled town of some sort, and a huge red house. That house belongs to John Hammond because he spared no expense, but it looks like there's some sort of security system or locked door ahead of us.

Burroughs huh? Odd name for a dinosaur-island town but I'll accept it. Established 1983 too! I love the worldbuilding the developers added to levels. This was before wikis and other online aides really allowed developers to get lazy with lore.

Inside the door we find a locked door, some handguns and the word "Big Lie". Hmmm it looks sort of like numbers upside down?...What if we type in 317618?

Anne, with all the grace of a toddler manages to input the numbers and the door opens! It worked! Now lets grab those handguns and carry on our way.

A house to the left of us, and Hammond's mansion are both locked, maybe lets check out the church.
Okay so this level is actually somewhat complicated, the game is over 20 years old so I think spoilers won't hurt.
We have to get a keycard from the church to open the visitor's centre at the end of the town, then we need to press a button inside the centre to open Wu's house (the house to our left).
Then Wu's house has a keycard to get into Hammond's mansion which will require a white Keycard hidden in his back yard. With THIS item we can enter Hammond's office and open a door to leave the town.
How anybody was supposed to figure all this out on their own is beyond me, its not exactly hard and the tasks are simple but poor new players would just wander around the town for an hour not knowing where to go...

The town is full of little houses which all have (very primitive) decorations and furnishings inside. The houses themselves float an inch off the ground like everything else in the game but what blows my mind is that it's not really until lately where AAA games have allowed players to just enter houses without loading screens. This 1998 jank game which barely functioned at release is objectively superior in...*Checks notes* interior transitions?

Killing three Tribe A raptors and a Tribe B raptor we make it to the church. Use the rear entrance? Well I mean it's not like services are going to be active while there's dinosaurs running about so we're going in the front.

See it's stuff like this which makes me love Trespasser, they could've NOT put this plaque here, it'd simplify the level budget and wouldn't really remove anything from the game of importance. But they added these lil tidbits of lore and worldbuilding to make the game feel eerily realistic and lived-in for what is basically 'baby's first physics simulator with dinosaurs'.

The blue Keycard inside, just what we needed. There was two tranquilizer guns in here but all tranqs do is 'freeze' dinosaurs into their natural pose, which they recover from eventually. It's just plain easier to shoot them dead and not have to deal with them again. I guess a no-kill run of this game could be done with them?

Scariest place in the game, an innocuous diner that has no important loot, but spawns a raptor on the roof once you enter. Dinosaurs cannot enter buildings so you're safe inside, but the raptor up-top has a nasty habit of dropping onto players in an unexpected way when they try to leave the diner.

Tribe B bastard thought he could get the jump on me, the rest of the desert eagle and a Norinco that I found in one of the houses was more than sufficient.

The town has a huge number of firearms all over the place, way more than needed for the raptors on this mission. The town is an example of Trespasser doing what it does best, making large open 'realistic' areas for you to explore and have fun with. I'll show off some of the other places in this town once we deal with the visitor's centre.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

Level 5: The Lab starts us with a hunting rifle and desert eagle nearby, moving forwards by ten meters we see a triceratops and a green (male) rex fighting. So this guy is the fourth rex spotted so far.
The triceratops is way WAY weaker than a rex so he stands no chance, all we can do is run past the rex.

Escaping the rex we find a locked gate, a bus, a keypad and a code! The bus had a silenced MP5 inside and a nearby crate had a VP70, I threw guns over the gate because we need to get into there anyways. Here's the fun part, that code of 1018 isn't correct.
Why? Because we have to remember it's written there for the bus driver, who is looking at a mirror, so the real code is 8101!

I could speedrun this level but I'm going to do it 'properly' for you guys, besides it's more fun that way. First step, grab that white keycard and open this ingen hut.

Oh right lmao, there's only a Mac 10 in there and the white keycard is kinda pointless...Oops. Well lets grab the gun and continue!

We shoot some bars on a window after shooting a raptor with our hunting rifle and hop inside it has a yellow keycard in the bathroom and a silenced MP5 hidden behind those boxes. We're going to need every gun possible for a fun purpose.

This keycard opens another building which we need to explore, this level has a lot of keycard stuff and not too much combat. I actually kinda like the less action-based levels, the puzzles are dead simple but enjoyable.

Upstairs we find a whiteboard with "Card is in the Atlantic". Now remember we're in the pacific ocean, so this whiteboard initially seems silly until you paid attention earlier in the level and saw that some shipping containers have "Atlantic" written on them. So THAT'S where it is...There's another keycard hidden after some box puzzles but we're not going to be doing that lmao. Apparently this alternative keycard doesn't work either.

While systematically collecting almost every weapon on the coast we spot a similar ship to the one the protagonists used in The Lost World. It has a drum mag Norinco which we'll need.

Now you understand why I needed all those weapons, our target, a female Rex, has eaten a stegosaurus! And we are not going to tolerate that, now are we? They ARE killable but we're going to use up most of those guns in the process...Eughhhhh. X_X

Actually managed to kill it without using too much ammo, had to use two benelli shotguns, a SPAS-12, a silenced MP5 and an entire AK with stick magazine to put it down, all aimed at the head.

That means we can keep a Callico and a drum mag AK for the rest of the mission!

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

Oh boy my fun has immediately dropped as we enter level 6: Ascent Part 1. This was supposed to be joined to the next level (part 2) but it was just too big for the game to handle in 1998. Maybe nowadays it could run it with ease, but it really screws the pacing of the end of the game. These levels just go onnnnnnnn and onnnnnnnnn with little more than shooting raptors.

But on the bright side our starting weapons is a shotgun, revolver and the one-of-a-kind TOXIC RIFLE! This is the rifle used in The Lost World, loaded with 'instant kill' venom from a sea snail. It's the only weapon in the game that can kill a Rex by itself. We're going to carry it through the whole level for an obvious purpose. ;D

An Albertosaurus stands in our way, our shotgun is expended to put it down. We really didn't NEED to shoot it, but they're something different to shoot at compared to raptors.

Three headshots from the revolver puts a Tribe B down, we're down to three bullets, uh oh...But a nearby M14 gives us 20 more rounds to work with.

Four more raptors swarm us and we're forced to use up a desert eagle and some M14 rounds, we pick up another Desert Eagle to carry with us though.

Somehow we're back at the coast, the ocean looks nice but we aren't taking a swim, so lets keep going.

Another stegosaurus saved from pesky raptors, I think this is the last friendly dinosaur in the entire game. From now on it's carnivores only. Sad because I wish more of these guys were present.

My nightmare has finally arrived as a Tribe C raptor appears, these guys are smaller than the Tribe B's but are tougher, faster, meaner and are what we'll be facing for the rest of the levels. They actually are so bullet-spongey to the point of making the game feel more like a chore, you can empty a revolver into the limbs of these guys without them dying.

Albertosaurus vs G3 rifle, guess who wins? This is probably my favorite gun in the game, shame it only appears a couple of times.

Ancient 'mayan' ruins...On an island in the middle of nowhere lmao. Those 'walls' will fall on you if you step on those pressure-plates. These traps are easy to avoid but can surprise you if it's your first playthrough.

Braving some wall-traps and some big indiana-jones style 'watch out for the large rolling stone object' traps we make it to the top safely.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

The Ascent Part 2 starts us without weapons and looking at a Tribe C raptor charging right at us. GREAT! This is the worst start in the game by far... X_X

You have to keep moving around Tribe C's because they're so tenacious, staying still for too long is a sure way of dying. This one somehow crushed himself on that nearby rock pillar. I think they're traps of some kind because on contact I was insta-killed by one of those walls. Ancient Mayan magic I tell you!

Another one of those damned rock-climbing 'puzzles' like from the earlier missions...The devs got particularly lazy with both parts of Ascent.

Two more Tribe C's attack us, two handguns are needed to put them down with accurate hits. They're so much more agile than the derpy A's and B's.

This damned bridge killed me at least one time, jumping on thin/small objects is a nightmare thanks to Cube-Footed Anne's locomotion.

A couple shotguns in a mayan ruin and a big mountain-side road with a bunch of Tribe C raptors in 'frozen' state. This part of the level is a bit more fun but still a bit of a chore. I liked the keypad puzzles more. When Trespasser loses human-made constructions it really drops in quality.

We make some jumps over some rocks, there's small 'ditches' under the rocks that originally would've had 'kill boxes' to simulate a failed jump killing the character. But they were moved under the ground so they are harmless.

A hidden area with 6 Mac 10's. We're already loaded with 2 Norincos and a Desert eagle so we don't need them. In any case it's a nightmare to get up there with how boxes work ingame.

Another damned bridge to jump over! These cliffside areas are actually not too dangerous because the raptors tend to jump off the edge by accident. Also somehow we're expected to believe that people and CARS would drive up this rickety old mountain road!? To get to work!?

Two see-saw puzzles are also something Ingen staff had to deal with every day!? These are easy to get past with an accurate rock throw.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

Thanks to the level "Pine Valley" and it's geothermal plant being cut, we're led to believe this small wind farm installation powered the park. The buildings up here are demonstrably cleaner and nicer than most, indicating they weren't stripped of their parts in the evacuation because they were too isolated. Immediately Tribe C raptors pursue us and we're forced to grab any weapon we can.

All the damned doors are locked from the inside and we have no keycards...Hmmm...
I wonder if the solution is to jump over some placed objects like 90% of the game!

Oh who am I kidding? Of course that's the solution. XD Jumping up here we find a catwalk of sorts we can use to get into the radio building which conveniently has an opening on the roof!

Smashing the emergency beacon some helpful United States airforce people tell us to stay put. We actually need to go up to the peak of the mountain, staying here won't win us the game. Although I wish there was an alternative ending where waiting here for half an hour would auto-win the game.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

Going to add some more to this thread because I think the weapons should be discussed. I'll be using pictures from IMFDB if only because they're perfectly functional.

Jurassic Park: Trespasser - Internet Movie Firearms Database - Guns in Movies, TV and Video Games

www.imfdb.org

.357 magnum
Found all over the island, the gun is probably the worst gun in the game. Works just fine on Tribe A's, but against B's and C's it isn't ideal because it only holds 6 rounds. I think in context of the game it's actually loaded in .38 special instead, which is why it's underpowered.

Desert Eagle
Way better than the .357 in basically every way. Has 8 rounds, more damage and a high rate of fire. Not the best 'belt holster' weapon but its not the worst. They're pretty common too, and it makes a lot of sense that they're on the island because contrary to most video games, it's a sporting-use weapon not a sidearm for soldiers.

Ruger Redhawk
One of the sidearms I like a lot, I think it one hit KO's Tribe A's with headshots, but it needs more for Tribe B and C. Only holds 6 rounds but it's easy to aim and hits like a truck. One thing you notice with some weapons is that their 'total damage' doesn't change from other weapons, I think with 2 extra shots the Desert Eagle matches this thing's potential damage, but being able to 1 hit KO makes it feel better.

VP70
Fucking worthless, I shouldn't even be writing about it. It shows up like three times in the game and I'd rather a .357 magnum for any scenario. Because of a programming issue Anne will say "About empty" when it runs out of ammo, fooling you into holding onto it instead of throwing it at your foe.

Beretta 93R
So rare ingame I don't think I actually used it in my AAR? I've used it before in the game, but it's just a VP70 with 2 extra bullets. Still worthless.

Lindstradt tranq pistol
These guns aren't terrible, but they don't kill raptors. In a normal playthrough I might've used one or two, but for the AAR I just went full-lethal. They would be way more useful if some levels had way less firearms, forcing you to use tranqs.

Hammond's revolver
As my AAR showed, this gun is a complete beast, six rounds of 1 hit headshot, even to Tribe B's. A little hard to aim with it because the sights aren't great, but if you fire at point blank its hard to miss. Just a shame it only shows up once...

Calico
Probably the best 'belt slot' item in the game, it holds 100 rounds of piss-weak damage but that means you can stunlock raptors to death. Very rare though and usually only in hidden areas. I think I found two or three of them in the whole game? Now that I think about it, the number of a lot of items are about 2-3...

MP5 (silenced and normal)
Great gun, big magazine capacity of 40 rounds lets you 'tap fire' raptors to death with accurate shots. Don't go full auto with this weapon unless you have to. The silenced version is just plain worse than the regular sort, but not TOOOO much worse. Good 'belt slot' weapon and you should never squander one of these as they'll take out a lot of raptors. I think it's supposed to have a vertical front-grip but it was removed before release for optimization reasons and because Anne never uses two hands anyways.

MAC-10
Super high rate of fire, not very high damage, and inaccurate unless fired in controlled bursts. Probably better than any of the 'single shot' handguns, but not the best belt-slot weapon. You really want to aim for headshots with this weapon or you'll waste it's potential.