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Yeah Tres gives a bit of a vibe like that. As well I am thinking the consistent non-mainstream theme of the art assets throughout the ingame settings.
It would have been fairly mainstream for its time, aside from the overall scale of the environments.
I think part of what makes the game great is that there just isn't anything else like it. Sure, there are plenty of games with larger worlds and better graphics, but do any of them allow you to pick up objects and move them around as part of their puzzle-solving mechanics? Maybe Half-Life, but there really hasn't been anything after that, and Half-Life was inspired by Trespasser anyway. Something else which I really enjoy is the fact that it feels so much like a sandbox without ever being completey unclear as to where you should go - this is especially true in the Town level. There are no contrived "go here, do this" quests, and the fact that never once does the game take control away from you to enter into some excessively long, unavoidable cutscene really makes it feel as if you're the only one moving things forward - not the game, not the story, YOU. Again, nothing else I can really think of like that.
I for one don't care whatsoever for "immersion" in video games, but I have to say any game which makes you feel like you're the only one deciding what happens, how it happens, and when it happens, is one which would definitely entice me more than a game which gives you a series of shooting galleries and tells you to make it from Point A to Point B before some animated guy nobody really cares about gets executed or whatever. That might be part of the reason why I really enjoy sandbox-type games, because I hate being told what to do and how to do it - I want to create my own adventure, not play one laid out for me, and Trespasser manages to accomplish that in is own unique way. You never feel like you're playing a series of levels laid out in a row, you feel like you're really journeying across this massive island, coming up with your own solutions to problems and such. Which is why I feel like some of the mods which we made later outdo the original game, as they eliminated the level structure and just gave us an open world to find our way out of.
As for the whole graphics thing...I have friends who are big-time Ubisoft or EA fans who have loved this game, despite complaining whenever I try to get them to play good games from a similar time period due to the old-timey graphics. Proof that graphics don't make the game, although I definitely appreciate nice visuals, so long as they have complement a solid foundation.