Discovery Tour: Ancient Greece encapsulates the majesty and depth of Assassin's Creed Odyssey into a full-blown learning experience. Ubisoft's expansive recreation of Ancient Greece becomes an open book of educational opportunities that should thrill anyone with a thirst for knowledge.
When I was growing up, educational games were about as well-intentioned and underwhelming as clothes for a Christmas present. Being on a healthy diet of Nintendo I was able to recognize the shortcomings in school offerings like Math Blaster. Solving math problems using the simplest of mechanics was elevated by the sole fact that I got to play a game during school hours. Mario is Missing! was one of the first times I felt genuinely misled by a product. Why would I not have wanted to play as Luigi in a quest to rescue Mario? Instead I was treated to exhausting fetch quests and trivia that happened to be contained in the husk of a playable game.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a game containing multitudes. As a game, it is one of Ubisoft’s most fully realized worlds. Few games can rival its recreation of Ancient Greece in size, spectacle, and scope. Since its release last October, Odyssey has grown into a platform of DLC meant to draw players into its story and gameplay. Though the mythical trials of Alexios and Kassandra represent my favorite Assassin’s Creed game to date, they would have meant nothing without its backdrop. Ancient Greece’s culture and civilization have rippled throughout the centuries and Odyssey managed to capture many of those flashpoints over the course of its various missions.
Set in the 5th century BCE, Greece’s Golden Age, Odyssey gives players a whirlwind tour of characters and visuals meant to touch on Greek life at the time, while also embracing a fair bit of mysticism. But, depending on what kind of player you were, the time for absorbing any historical information may have been at the bottom rung of concerns. In Discovery Tour: Ancient Greece, there is no combat or questing to be concerned with. The player’s singular purpose is that of exploration and education.
Available as a standalone product for PC players or as a free update to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey owners, Discovery Tour: Ancient Greece is a fascinating piece of gaming. The Tour never strays from its main purpose as being an interactive tool for learning the history of Ancient Greece. But it also comes across as a very deserving vanity piece for the developers, containing behind the scenes looks at the creation of Odyssey. Exploration is also gamified in the most Ubisoft way by featuring unlockable skins. And for me, it served as a second dive into one of the most stunning games I’ve ever played.
Are you the kind of player who comes across an unscripted visual moment in a game and lingers there almost too long? I think of the snowy peaks of Skyrim at night or a wide shot of Nathan Drake against a foreign land. While playing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey I took over a hundred screenshots of moments that just left me in awe. Some were the result of a well-timed sunset against the ocean or a character’s funny dialogue. But many of those screenshots were taken after Kassandra had climbed to the top of an impossible height and felt as big as an ant in this virtual landscape. Players who embrace those picturesque moments in a game will easily lose themselves in the Tour.
A large factor in those moments of pause is because much of what is seen in Odyssey is no longer standing. A few thousands years, wars, and burgeoning modernization have not been kind to the ancient history of Earth. What hasn’t been lost to time or faithfully depicted in stories and art often has to be conjured up by historians. The Ubisoft teams behind recreating Ancient Greece will forever deserve my respect. The sources they pulled from to bring this world to life as it was over 2000 years ago shows. Even if this game world was empty, it would still be a technological and historical achievement. Once players begin to dive into the meat of the Tour, it becomes apparent why the Assassin’s Creed take on Ancient Greece blossomed with life.
The Tour is based around 30 guided tours that are separated into five different categories: Politics and Philosophy, Daily Life, Famous Cities, Battles and Wars, and Art, Religion and Myths. Five historical and fictional tour guides from Odyssey will greet you at the beginning of your tour. Players can then follow a golden path line to each station of the tour to learn more about that particular leg. At the end of the tour, players speak with their tour guide and can take a no-stress quiz about what they just experienced.
Tours can be started from the tours menu, from the map, or from the timeline to ensure that it’s easy to figure out what has or hasn’t been seen. Scattered around the world are discovery sites and behind-the-scenes points that reveal more facts, museum artifacts, on-site photography, concept art, and developer quotes. Players can also call Ikaros the eagle to view the world from above, take their mount across the countryside, or use the game’s photo mode to capture a particular moment. Over the course of the Tour, new character and mount skins will unlock as discovery thresholds are met.
For an experience about unraveling the life, times, and history of Ancient Greece, this is all expected and welcomed. The incentive to see and collect everything just to have every skin is fun. Players can ride a flaming horse or Pegasus around the world as a small child or member of the evil Cult of Kosmos. It allows for both younger and older players to have their own sense of expression when navigating these tours.
Anyone can have an anecdote for learning more about making perfume or the history of the Minotaur or why people oiled up for the Olympics–the depth of topics covered baffles me. But what’s really special about the Tour‘s existence is how all this information is presented to the player. The voice actors for each tour guide maintain their personality and charm from Odyssey‘s story. The narration during each guided tour is also expertly done, as if it were straight out of a professional documentary which, in a way, this looks, feels, and sounds like. The narrators speak with confidence and clarity and since each tour is broken up into multiple legs, the narration never comes across as long-winded. During most moments, control is handed to the player to move the camera around the scenery to further soak it in. And, because this is an Assassin’s Creed game, most things can be climbed up, even when you’re a kid.
This educational whimsy is then buffered by the supplemental reading and viewing of museum exhibits and photography. Any of the narration can be read in a separate part of the tour menu, as can any of the information found from discovery sites. My first tour took place in Athens and I instantly felt like I had been taken back to the first time I saw it in Odyssey. But this time around, there was no sense of urgency. Curiosity and a thirst for detail take over. Now the world is full of NPCs and loading times are shorter meaning it takes less time to get between fast-travel spots. Ancient Greece is now ripe for the picking in a new way.
The Tour‘s potential for assisting with school lessons or research or any educational endeavor should not be ignored. If I had this in front of me during my tenth grade history class instead of boring lessons on a white board? I would have hated that hour of class just a bit less. For educators, it would be easy to sit a class down for a week of Ancient Greek history just by playing this game. Progress is easily visible as the game keeps track of what tours and locations have been seen. The quizzes at the end of each tour are also fun. Get an answer wrong? That’s okay! Ubisoft actually wrote the quizzes so that when picking a wrong answer, the guide will explain why that answer is wrong, usually resulting in further education about a person or place that may not have been covered. There are dozens of practical applications of Discovery Tour: Ancient Greece that could be used in libraries, schools, and more but it never comes across as tedious. Rather, this is an experience that invites the player in. Those willing to learn more about the world have an easily accessible space that does the perfect amount of hand-holding and teaching.
Discovery Tour: Ancient Greece does not feel like a novelty product. It is not bogged down by technological limitations or crude attempts at integrating gameplay mechanics into a vessel of education. Ubisoft uses the foundation of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, one of their finest games to date, to take its audience on a journey. Appealing to a wide demographic, this tour through Ancient Greece does not require a known mascot or even an appreciation for Assassin’s Creed. When viewed as a virtual tour, a walk through a museum, a time machine, a history book, entertaining diversion, or a classroom lesson, Discovery Tour: Ancient Greece is perhaps one of the finest educational tools available.
