As a PC stand- alone product, it costs $19.99.Īssassin’s Creed Discovery Tour is available now on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One. It’s available for free, from today, to anyone who owns Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One. It’s left me understanding more about the ancient Greeks, but also wishing that we lived in a world where products like these, on every subject imaginable, were freely available to everyone.Īs it is, Discovery Tour is a rarity an educational game with sumptuous production values and the heart of a genuine teacher. I’m impressed with Discovery Tour’s ability to retain my attention and to teach me new lessons. I’ve read many books on the subject, and once spent a month traveling around Attica and the Peloponnese. Discovery Tour melds together solid research with a Hollywood sense of the spectacular, and of engaging storytelling. It all adds up to a magical tour of a time and place that previous generations only saw through stuffy textbooks, or poorly researched (but fun) movies. I can hang out with Socrates and get a primer on his grand philosophies. I can familiarize myself with the economic management of Athens’ port Piraeus. The quizzes are appropriately straightforward, aimed at students of all ages.ĭiscovery Tour isn’t merely interested in the great buildings of the past. I can ask her to quiz me on the information I’ve learned. A market scene in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey UbisoftĪt the end of the tour, Aspasia greets me again. I’m also offered optional extra information in the form of text and images. These stops trigger short vignettes that explain the thing I’m looking at. After an introduction, Aspasia invites me to follow a pathway, with various stops along the way, where I gaze up at statues and buildings, as they likely looked 23 centuries ago. My guide for a tour of the Acropolis is Aspasia, the wily partner of Athenian leader Pericles. Or I can choose to be immediately transported to famous locations, like the Acropolis.Īt these locations, Phoebe meets a guide, who is generally a famous person from that time. I am free to poke around to my heart’s content. She can run, climb, ride a horse and sail around Greece, which encompasses many islands of startling variety, as well as disparate locations including cities, temples, islands, quarries, ports, forests and mountains. I find myself most comfortable in the guise of the child Phoebe.

The default is the original game’s misthios Kassandra, but I unlock new characters as I travel the world. I take on the role of a character from the original game. This living version of ancient Greece is smaller than the real thing, but it includes a sense of the place, its landmarks, and a series of teachers ready to walk me through its mysteries. It’s a look at a real world where people walk around, dogs bark, buskers play songs, birds flutter about, the wind troubles trees, waves sing along sandy beaches. This is much, much more than a set of interactive index cards, interspersed with images and voice-overs.

The difference with Discovery Tour is that it is built on a lavishly budgeted videogame, in which the world of ancient Greece was superbly researched, written, painted, animated and populated. But they are often poorly funded, and of dubious entertainment value. Of course, we’ve had educational games for decades. These lessons aren’t so much “learned” as inhaled. This is the magic of walking through a colorful world, seeing what we believe history was like in action. They are joyful journeys into useful knowledge.Īny child let loose on this game for a few hours is going to come away with as solid an understanding of ancient Greece as might be gained from an expensive semester in university. But games like Discovery Tour aren’t merely picturesque diversions about the ways of people who are long dead. Books (a format that I revere) must work very hard to grab the attention of today’s reader. This is the magic of walking through a colorful worldĮducation is often, unfortunately, a bit of a chore.

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