Game Critique Blog #3:
ASSASSIN'S CREED ORIGINS:
DISCOVERY TOUR
Mar 13th, 2021
CMU 05-418 Design Educational Game
Students, teachers, non-gamers, and dedicated players can discover these eras at their own pace, or embark on guided tours curated by historians and experts.
UBISOFT INTRODUCTION
GAME METADATA
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Game Name: Assassin's Creed Origins: Discovery Tour
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Developer: Ubisoft
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Platform: Microsoft Windows(Steam), PlayStation4, PlayStation5, Xbox One,
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Link: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/assassins-creed/origins
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https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/assassins-creed/discovery-tour
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Instructional Goals: learn basic history of ancient Egyptian culture, architecture and art.
Assassin's Creed Origins: Discovery Tour is an add-on content package of the ARPG Assassin's Creed Origins. Discovery Mode is a dedicated game that allows visitors freely roam Ancient Egypt to learn more about their history and daily life. All the scenes models like murals, sculptures, buildings or even a simple decoration, a furniture is made with high historical fidelity.
Students, teachers, non-gamers, and dedicated players can discover these eras at their own pace, or embark on guided tours curated by historians and experts. Seriously curated by historians, professors, and experts, the discovery mode includes hundreds of stations and cover a wide variety of topics, ranging from art and architecture to philosophy, politics, and religion. By talking with the non-player characters in the game, the players can even learn more about basic historical fun facts in an entertaining way.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
prerequisite
knowledge.
In this game, though it is supposed to facing to any students or players who want to learn some Egyptian knowledge, if you have prior knowledge, particularly in geographical names (for rivers, mountains, ancient cities etc.) will be helpful for a better understanding of where you start the game and where you are. Anyway, this is a more like a 'tour' or 'travel' other than a 'game', so historical facts provided during the tour are usually closely linked with city names and adjacent rivers. Thus, if you know where you are it will be much easier to anticipate the material you will learn or the potential things you might meet during the tour.
Also, Assassin's Creed series are originally ARPG, which means the players need to have basic operating skill. Even though this tour mode does not involve actions like fighting, evading or using a bow, some basic operations like move, dash, jump and climb are still required. Players need to be prepared for a 3D experience, and they should know that WSAD on PC and left joystick on consoles will be used for them to move, and mouse on PC and right joystick on consoles will be used for them to adjust the view. Although the game will tell you about these operations at the beginning of the tour, if the players are not used to these operations, their experience will be undermined significantly.
Finally, some basic sense of direction may be required. If you keep losing your way in the tour, you may have a terrible experience of this journey, which in turn undermines your learning effect.
During this tour, the players will meet different architecture, 'local residents', sculptures, and some other decorative items such as murals on the wall or furniture, decorations, etc.
First of all, by looking at these, players are definitely supposed to learn the grandeur of Ancient Egypt. Being surrounded by the restored Egyptian ancient works, they will grab the first impression of how great Egypt was from the daily life to the Great Pyramid. Thus, the players are simply expected to know, 'Egypt was incredibly magnificent'.
Second, if the players take more time in reading the additional information provided during the tool, or if the chat with virtual local natives about their daily life, or if they carefully investigate the decorations on the wall, the sculptures that stood in front of a temple, or the ornament on a vase, they will have a basic knowledge about ancient Egyptian aesthetics.
Third, for architect students, the ancient Egyptian architectural structure, materials, or plan/section layouts are also restored with high fidelity. The game designers did this so carefully that players can even treat it as a live history or an architecture instances investigation textbook.
Figure 1. Even an ancient dwelling house is restored with incredible details.
anticipated
learning.
potential
transfer.
Needless to say, this game is information-intense, so there are many potential transfers.
First of all, the knowledge of art, architecture design, history, or even city planning, can be transferred to real scenarios, as most models and designs in the game are directly referred to real art collections with incredible details with high fidelity. These knowledge helps the players to understand and imagine how Egyptian was, so if they are story-tellers, scriptwriters, concept designers... these knowledge will definitely be transferred to their career skills, which rooted in creativity and imagination.
Second, this game also practiced the player's ability to read map. If you are familiar with how to use a map in this game to determine direction, distance, or locate your position and the locations of landmarks, then you are basically prepared for using a map in the reality with enough mastery.
GAME ELEMENTS
MDA FRAMEWORK
M
mechanics.
Mechanics refer to the rules and the concepts that formally specify the game-as-system.
The game Assassin's Creed Origins: Discovery Tour has mainly 4 mechanics.
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Checkpoints are some highlighted, important places, where players can achieve some knowledge.
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Through reading the map, the players can find the checkpoints easier and decide their specific tour.
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Moves are basic operation of this game.
On PC clients, the players can move with WASD, adjusting their viewing angle through the mouse; they may also climb the wall, and when they meet some interactive items, like vehicles (boats, horses, etc) or people, the system will give the prompts for what you are supposed to do. (For example, Press E to land on the boat)
On Joystick platforms (PS4/Xbox One), the players can move with the left joystick and adjust their viewing angle through the right joystick. They can do all the things that can be done on PC, by clicking the correct keys that matches the key-map on joysticks.
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Non-player Characters(NPC) are some non-player roles who 'lived' in the virtual town. By interacting with them, namely chatting with them or asking them questions, bunch of information would be achieved. You may even investigate what they are doing to have a better understanding of ancient Egyptian life.
Figure 2. There are different map legends on the map that tells the player where they can find something.
D
dynamics.
Dynamics refer to the run-time behavior of the game-as-system acting on player inputs.
The following lists the potential experience the players may have when playing the game Assassin's Creed Origins: Discovery Mode.
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Map Exploration. This is the main experience and dynamics of this game. The player reads the map, looks at where he/she wants to go, sets their destination, and learns the materials he/she meets along the way. The player may also interacts with objects that interest them. In the discovery tour, realized by the climbing mechanics, the players can reach some very-high places, where they can even take a look at the city overview, or the architecture details at the top of a building.
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NPC Quests. Not all the NPCs are merely standing there just waiting for you to have a gossip. Some NPCs have a white circle at their feet, indicating they might have something that the players may help them to fulfill. By taking these quests, the players will learn more and deeper about the daily ancient Egyptian life.
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Tour guide. There is a guide line when you are taking your tour, which links checkpoints with checkpoints. By reaching the gold checkpoints in the sequence, players will likely have a complete experience for a systematic understanding of a particular topic of ancient Egyptian life. Usually, the start of a new tour could be next to the end of a tour, so players can continue their tour for another topic if they want.
A
aesthetics.
Aesthetics describe the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player when interacting with the game-as-system.
It is definitely okay to say that "Sensation" and "Freedom" is the aesthetic of Assassin's Creed Origins: Discovery Tour.
Visually, the rendering of this game is magnificent, with photo-realistic high fidelity. You may arbitrarily fetch a single frame of the game and it is already beautiful enough to be a wallpaper. The immerse audio experience is also stunning, as the voice of the NPCs, the wind, the horse running noise ... are all carefully restored, giving the players a satisfactory sensational enjoyment.
The game also shows freedom through all the aspects, from you can freely go to any corners of the map, to you can climb to the top of a building; from that you can ride on a horse, to that you can talk with a NPC. The players will experience what they could experience in their daily life in reality, so they won't feel that they are in a game.
Figure 3. Follow the golden tour guideline to continue your tour.
LEARNING principles
Learning Principles are the key way in which educational researchers communicate the results of their research to their practitioners.
In educational games, these principles are coded in the MDA framework. We will see how they are presented in this game.
multimedia.
This game uses visual aids to enhance verbal descriptions, along with auditory experience incorporated.
As discussed above, not only the appearances of the building, sculptures, or decorations are restored, even the wind noise, residents working noise, or the walking noise are restored in incredible details. Using multimedia, the learning experience of the players is assured and optimized, as they could definitely feel immersed into this virtual world.
modality
principle.
This game presents verbal descriptions in audio rather than text when possible.
Specifically, the chats with local residents -- the NPCs provide a lot of information. Instead of listing Egyptian culture or traditions in text forms, the game designers choose to present these details by having the NPCs talking with the players, so that the players feel that they are indeed another person living in that world. Also, during the tutorial, instead of having a lot of description text showing on the screen, there was a background narrator as well to instruct the players about the basic operations.
Thus, this game presents auditory information when possible, which makes sense -- too much text is definitely detrimental for showing a realistic virtual world; there are never a lot of captions suddenly popping out to your eyes in the real world.
guided
attention.
This game provides explicit instructions as needed to help the player anticipate where they should focus their attention.
The game uses golden tour guideline to explicitly guide the players to move to the next place. By simply moving along the guideline the players can always reach to the next event trigger. Also, the NPCs with white circle surrounding their feet tell that they have quests for you to get. Thus, the player's attention is attracted by these elements, which helps the game designer to introduce the player to a new event, a new knowledge in another sentence.
In conclusion, Assassin's Creed Origins: Discovery Tour is a game that makes it possible for the players to take a tour in a restored ancient Egyptian world with high fidelity and immerse experience.
From the perspective of educative purposes, this game is very successful and professional in offering the necessary information that a player may need. This game also involves very intense exploration, so that the players will enjoy the process they looking for the next destination on the map. The MDA framework assures that the players will have a reasonably interesting exploration as they are living in that world. Players can't fly, they can't do anything a humankind cannot do in the reality, so that they indeed experience as in the reality.
However, from the perspective of game design, this game is more like a live textbook other than a game. There are actually really limited gameplay in this game. Taking NPC quests may be an interesting game element, but the players may also soon feel bored. Comparing its original counterpart Assassin's Creed Origins, the players may have a worse experience in this tour for a simple reason that they actually don't know who they are. Unlike in original game content which has a complete narrative to depict the characters that the player operates, this game starts with very limited information of the character they play. On one hand, the players may recognize it as themselves but on the other hand, the players may also fail in immersing into the game more deeply, because this is a third-person game essentially. Hence, with relatively limited story narrative, this game becomes more like a travel simulator.
Anyway, this tour mode is not designed to be intense but rather casual. The players can also enjoy this world even if they are not proficient in playing any ARPG. As an educational game, this is definitely a game that we can see how dedicated the game designers were when they were creating this game, and they indeed gave us a fantastic and realistic ancient Egyptian world.