DGC Ep 372: Trespasser (part three)

Dev Game Club

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we complete our series on Trespasser. We look through the glass darkly at the mistakes and how they illustrate some things, before turning to our takeaways. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: Finished the game!

Issues covered: the funhouse mirror, writing the weird things on the whiteboards, voice acting, a game lost to time, the inner monologue, some good set up of a level, the invisible blocking wall surrounding Hammond's, box lifting master, weird technical friction about saves, looking for the white keycard, a misaligned bookshelf and visual language, the green disc, the personal memoir, rubbing the disc on the drive, the keycard mess, finding an alternate solution, immersive sim stuff, parallel developments, shining a light on something you didn't know you wanted, the preset objects, restoring forces, deconstructing what the designers put to place your own, contrivances, more keys that aren't keys, not leaning on the license, a more straightforward puzzle, 526327, the extending weird finger, modeling "dexterity," throwing the keycard in the Atlantic, a helpful (?) velociraptor, pressure plates in the ruins, playing something mid-development, games that should be canceled, deals that forced the game out, breaking your game while you build it, getting better at making the game, hitting the board in the wrong place, setting up the physics and seeing the world a certain way, shaking the Jell-O, letting the Jell-O settle, learning how to kite the dinosaurs, spawning three dinosaurs, making terrible mistakes, choosing appropriate goals, not knowing if a thing is possible, mashing up things, being aspirational, leading the way, admiring the purity, dinosaur ecology, getting to see something like this, being consistent in your rules, providing clarity.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World, Through A Glass Darkly, Minnie Driver, Richard Attenborough, Jimmy Carter, Populous, Civilization, Peter Molyneux, Sid Meier, Ultima Underworld, Half-Life 2, DOOM (1993), Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Spielbergs, Bethesda Game Studios, Call of Duty, Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, Skyrim, Todd Howard, Velvet Underground, Jell-O, Fallout 3, Hal Barwood, Ray Harryhausen, Land That Time Forgot, Zoo Tycoon, Far Cry 2, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.

Next time: ??

Notes: Having not seen 1974's The Land That Time Forgot in quite some time, Brett misremembered the movie. He was actually thinking either about scenes from a movie called The Valley of Gwangi, which is from 1969, or One Million Years BC, (1966) both of which feature stop-motion animation by Harryhausen.

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