We can and must keep doing better at creating games that entertain while also providing modes to focus on education, but the discovery tour in Assassin's Creed Origins is a bold first step.
Extra Credits “education games” have been getting better. Games like prodigy (a game that my sons’ school actually encourages play at) come to mind. I really have wished I could play an engrossing game that would teach me another language, or could teach people actual skills that would be useful in a real life. For instance, gathering small clues and learning to value and evaluate the reliability of the source of the clue is not only what intelligence analysis is like but generally useful for any “analyst” field. If, for instance, you hide a bunch of clues on a battle field that the soldier would later recount in the debriefing that player would then have to weigh and evaluate as either fitting with an established hypothesis or against. And then the player would then have to determine if that new information is viable, could result in additional helpful NPC and supplies in the next level were you “really need it” vs where you don’t. If the clues are randomly generated then the player would be forced to figure it out and think critically vs following the beats of a strategy guide. Now take this to the this video’s example... Assassins Creed. Imagine if the player was presented conflicting historical facts and had to determine what was Templar propaganda and what was the “truth” by reading actual historical accounts hidden in the game. And what if those accounts where in a language you’ve been learning throughout the game? Maybe the “truth” is simply a matter of a translation error? This all stuff that would teach people but at the same time be a “puzzle” to solve, provided the game play was fun enough, and just debriefings were welcomed rest-bits of a chaotic and stressful battlefield.
Yeah, this is an amazing idea, and it's already got me thinking about different things you could do with it. Like imagine a Time Traveller game, where you're a scholar for a Historical society that has a time machine that can send you back to replace a single person in any period of time. You've been sent back to (insert time period/Event here) to see what day to day life was like for (insert person/demographic here.) Normally, you can just bug out back to your own time whenever you want, but the device that let's you do that is malfunctioning/broken, so now you need to go to the Emergency Exit point, which just your luck, is way out of the way, so now you have to get to it, while still maintaining your disguise, lest you change the future. You could use this frame work for just about anything, Roman Soldier, French Peasant during the Revolution, WWI officer in the trenches. Or the idea that started this off for me. You are a Scholar for a Historical Society, and you were supposed to be sent back to take the place of a Jewish Survivor in one of the Concentration Camps on Monday, June 5, 1944, the day before D-Day until the Concentration Camp is liberated, for the Historical Society (because this is in the future, and all the survivors have died from old age at this point,) for first hand experience. But something malfunctions, and you wake up as a low-level Nazi Soldier around the beginning of World War II, and the only Emergency Time Pick Up you know about is after D-Day, roughly 5 years away. In the Handbook, it states that you can do whatever is necessary to survive, as long as it doesn't Drastically change the future. So now you have a choice, do you follow your computer's recollection of this Nazi Officer's part in WW2 for the highest possible chance to not change the future, or do you subtly try to save as many people as you can, because you are not, in fact, a Nazi? Following the Computer's "Least Damaging" Path will run you through the Rank of the Nazi Regime, giving in-depth descriptions of the Heirarchy of the Regime, as well as historical facts about what was happening in Germany, Poland, and other Nazi controlled areas for Officer and Citizen alike, the propaganda, the bribery and threatening that lead people to turning in neighbors, friends, and even sometimes family. While taking the "Schindler's" path (because I can't think of a better name right now,) you would play-through what it was like trying to save people, finding places to hide, figuring out who you could trust to help, bribing/threatening people into looking the other way when they found out, or were beginning to figure out what was happening, as well as sending your own family into hiding, in case everything goes south, using your knowledge of past event's to try and out smart people. I really like this idea of making times in history into games that aren't FPS's, just going around learning what it was like.
Given my professional background in museums, I feel like we could learn a LOT from this critique too! TBH, that's actually why I started watching this channel; games and museums both centre around engagement. I've oft felt that museums can learn a lot about engagement from games, and that some of the techniques for engaging the public, while not the same, are certainly analogous. A pleasure to watch, as always!
I am a big museum studies nerd (well, insofar as I have time for hobbies) so it makes me so happy to know that there are others also passionate about the intersection of games and museums! --Belinda
Something I have envisioned before are VR experiences in museums and other sorts of historical places. While I am still a little skeptical with VR in gaming, I do think that it has a big future in entertainment, and museums are part of that. Imagine if museums had these little VR kiosks you could go to for a sort of tour through the subject of the room you are in. Let's say it's dinosaurs. You go in the room, you see the bones and other exhibits, but then you put on the VR headset and see what it was really like. A narrator tells you about the various dinosaurs, what environment they lived in, what they ate, how they were adapted to their environment. Not only do you get to learn about them, but you get to see them too. This could apply to pretty much everything too. Virtual battle reenactments, what a city looked like though the years, even just a bird's eye view of where you are. And this could be both on rails and free roam for different situations, or even a mix of both. There is so much potential.
streak1 Some museums around the world are indeed already starting implement VR tours in ways similar to what you describe. There are areas of the world that are currently too fragile for too many people to see, think cave paintings and certain ancient structures, but with VR, museums can provide a space for anyone to (virtually) see these places up close, allowing us to learn from them while also keeping them safe. (I've been working on a museum studies degree for over 5 years)
It's kinda funny. I'm currently taking something called "classical studies", basically a 6 year university course where you learn ancient Greek, but also learn about Greek and pre-Christian roman culture, history and so on. But another aspect is we also have to learn about archaeology. Two or so weeks ago, we had a small lecture, where someone was showing off how they had meticulously recorded an old roman burial site, and basically turned it into a VR program, They even had a HTC vive a long where students and teachers could try it out. Moving around the burial site, able to study inscriptions and details closely. They were able to reconstruct the ruined doorways and roofs, peel away later constructions to see how the burial site had looked at different Roman periods, there was even an option to simulate flooding. While it's not exactly the Animus. I do feel that VR tech will do a lot to help preserve, if not the physical remains of ancient sites, then at least the details of those sites for future historians, archaeologists, students, and... well, everyone. II truly believe, especially with how the world seems to be going these days, that "backing up" important historical sites digitally, is of utmost importance to preserve our past. We've already had several places irreparably damaged, either by intent ( such as Palmyre and Nimrud) Or places destroyed by our rapidly changing climate, accidents, wear, or simply by neglect. Heck... we should be "backing up" modern sites of importance as well.
finn the frog One day writers of whatever fictional medium there will be at the time will look to ancient works of liturature and wonder what this "white house" from the alien invasion movie would be like to really expirience. Or the city of New York where all these detective fictions happen. Someday we Americans will be the ancient Egyptians, the Romans, and the cowboys.
finn the frog I'm Danish. Classical studies is a bit more common here as part of our "old style" of classical higher education. Basically the step you have to take after your basic education, but before you can start on something like a university degree, it will often include the student learning either latin, or studying classical civilization, such as the greeks or romans.
On a related note: The University I studied at - the University of Reading - has created this digital, scale model recreation of Rome. See here: research.reading.ac.uk/virtualrome/ It's astounding in its sheer depth and content, but not the most easily accessible thing in the world, whether in presentation or the fact you've got to sign on for a university course. Not even sure how well the project is actually integrated with VR, though I know they had been looking at it. The reason I bring it up, and in relation to your comment in particular, is that companies like Ubisoft, and franchises like Assassin's Creed, have that which such projects are otherwise often desperate for: Resources. Both in developing the content but also distributing it to people, if game devs were willing to put themselves out there for this, they could honestly make VR into a key aspect of how the past is studied, both casually and professionally.
If there was a genuine intent to get this into school curriculums, that is why the rail mode tour would be used instead of free roam. Rail mode guarantees a consistent and ordered experience you can plan teaching around, whereas free roam doesn't guarantee you'll find all info required or find it out of order.
Vincent Del Vecchio totally agree but I think they should have done both for task flexibility, like in class the teacher would put rails but for hw they would assign to search and find information on any 5 noticeable land marks, for example
True, true, but a free-roam mode would be great as an interactive form of reviewing the material for the class. I can easily see it being a team activity, where each team has to use a list of clues to identify, locate, and take an in-game selfie/screencap of certain landmarks, places, etc.within a set period of time~
I think that could be easily modified in free roaming mode where the teacher can tell each student to find one cool location. Then the student has to do research on the location they found and give a presentation about it. Then maybe they have go and try to find different locations not previously found by other students.
We are very, very good at directing people where to go in games without forcing their hand, and the experience feels all the more rewarding for it. Even if that fails, imagine a section of a city where, once you find the pieces of information, they're fit into a timeline or the like as you finish, granting context to everything you've just experienced.
Don't forget the other Impressions historical city building games like the Caesar (Caesar III is so good) series and Zeus: Master of Olympus, as well as Emperor: The Middle Kingdom and Children of the Nile (I think they were both Tilted Mill?). Then you've got more recent games like Quadriga for chariot racing and i there've been several gladiator management games as well. (Plus other city buildings like Grand Ages Rome and strategy games like Great Battles of Rome) So many really good ones. Most just make a good starting point ot do some actual learning wit hthe setting mostly being window dressing with a theme, but some of them (Like the Impressions and Tilted Mill games) put in a lot of effort to include historically accurate information for you to read (Which reminds me- Age of Empires 1 and 2 and Age of Mythology!)
So, i feel i must mention The World Ends With You. See, the entire game happens in Shibuya, and the city is pretty much a character in the game. there is one chapter that you can freely roam around that has some very cool dialogue, which is your current partner, who obviously love the city(and man is that important to the gameplay), talking about the monument or street that you're in. You learn the history of those places, and it doesn't feel invasive at all. It's one the reasons that game is awesome.
True! When I eventually visited Japan and ended up in Shibuya with no plan on what to do, I thought of the game and was like 'oh, I gotta' check out the dog statue...! And the scramble! And I wonder if this place was real, can I find this or that if I walk around...'. It's such a good game.
YUUSSS! I loved that game, and that was one of the reasons. It really felt like you were in a real place, anime art style or no, and it really felt alive with other people and a whole culture. Part of that was because that was part of the game's theme and style, but a lot of the same ideas could be used in others. Also, it means that i now have to check out Shibuya myself if i ever go to Japan.
Roger Ogue I dunno bro, have you seen the backgrounds in anime? They look pretty realistic, especially compared to the backgrounds in American animated shows. Hell, that's not even mentioning the likes of One Punch Man, Lucky Star and many others that use real locations as the basis for their backgrounds. I guess what I'm saying is, dude, what was up with that "anime art style or no" back-handed compliment? You're making it sound like anything that uses an anime art style will always be unrealistic, when I think the main issue is TWEWY is a game and it uses a heavily-stylized art style. Not sure if that's what you intended, but that's how it came across. Something doesn't need to be photo-realistic to accurately depict the subject. After all, we've all seen paintings of historical figures and places that would would have no problems recognizing if we saw them in-person after all. It certainly wasn't an issue for me when I first went to Shibuya.
Thank you for talking about this! It is a really cool addition to the games for education tool set. Just one correction: you mention that you can't observe the NPCs in their routines and daily lives in this mode but that isn't actually the case. In fact there is one tour that focuses on exactly that - explaining the daily lives of common people at the time. How they baked bread, how they spent their days and so forth!
In fact htat was my favourite part of the tour. Because I think it's were this kind of things have more potential to teach people. It's not the same to for example learn about the daily lives of people tahn to actually saw them. For big events there were always will be movies, plays, videogame main quests, but those little details about day to day life in the past are not only interesting, but better experienced through small interactions tahn dry scolarship reading (of course the dry scolarship is necessary to accurate represent that life, but to teach it...no)
Imagine you find a monument you then are transported during an event relevant to it. You get to participate to the battle of Waterloo, try to catch Lincoln's assassin, as an assistant to a medic during the Great war, sailing with Darwin or Magellan, riding proud side by side with Gengis Khan but after trying to protect your family from the Mongol's massacre, being a russian soldier trying to escape the first gas attack from the Germans and then a German civilian escaping his home with an unconscious infant when the Entente also used gas attacks near villages on the west front. It would be a fantastic way to make the history feel live and also protraying more point of view.
Very well-deserved praise for AC: Origins. The game itself is stellar, but the addition of the Discovery Tour is such an unprecedented gem. Apart from the historical notes, I especially loved the BTS bits and the creative decisions the dev team made while crafting the game. I also love that the dev team's putting so much focus into putting in more content for AC:O rather than rushing to the next game in the franchise.
Nice. Reminds me a little of what Valve did for their in-game commentary when the released The Orange Box. Granted it was about game development and not history, but it was all in game, and I found it very interesting.
Imagine if there was a game where you can parkour through different periods of history, and a narrator tells you about all the monuments and maybe even events. I would love to be walking around 1920s Weimar Republic Germany and wander into the Beer Hall Putsch. The game could have tons of periods and locations, and obscure ones as well! Imagine seeing Kamehameha taking over Maui or something, or seeing Yi Sun-sin and his turtle ships at the battle of Busan. I would enjoy just walking around in an Incan city and exploring.
What if the game was about putting together broken memories from a corrupted gene strand in the Animus ? The "detective" has to put together the "crime scene" before living through it and there would be story consequences befitting how correct you were, wouldn't that also be engaging ?
lammer17729 Narrative wise, the Animus gives writers access to an entire world that can be completely controlled, which can also distract the characters while things go on in the real world. Arguably, you could even play with their minds and sense of time. Its an incredible design and story vein that lies untapped.
Scratch the Animus and I think you just described the Carmen Sandiego game series, there even were some involving time travel. Unfortunately Brøderbund is not around any more and their successor in the franchise isn't that successful.
seriously in AC there is always a whole lot of background info about buildings places and people that i never read cuz im playing a videogame and then dont want to sit down and read but if instead of that there is a golden thing i can pickup that is an audio log id totaly do that maybe replace the animous fregments and done
I'm playing unity after having listened to the Revolutions podcast episodes on the French Revolution, and I'm really enjoying the revolutionary Paris landscape and easy access to database entries about different events, places, and people. They really do care about the history and it's refreshing just to get immersed into it when you've spent so long listening to the stuff the Girondins did, or the Jacobins, the trial of Louis XVI, the fall of the Bastille, it's out there and fun where it needs to be, but surprisingly accurate in much of its written content!
I watched the first episode and came here and just... the improvement. It’s so beautiful. Dan’s voice acting gotten so much better and the script has gotten more detailed and crisp!! I’m proud.
I have plenty of friends who teach history and have used assassin's creed games as a tool in their classes. Ezio's Galery in AC2 is perfect for History of Art, since Renaissance is one of the most important periods for art. But the lack of a Non-Combat mode has allays been a problem for them. With Discovery Mode, everything becames more practical and intuitive.
I wonder how accurate ac is they must have gotten something wrongs here and their sometime like what cinemasins does with everything wrong with x movie but for stuff that involves history
_Every_ reconstruction is a gamble. There are huge differences between how we envisioned e.g. Roman cities and art two hundred years ago, and how we do now. You have to live with the fact that every image, every film, and every game that tries to show the past is only an approximation. That said, when we visited Florence, students who had played AC2 would find their way around the historical centre quite comfortably. :D
The design choices criticized here rhyme with some fundamental principles of good exhibit design as well. For example, some people will only read the title and look at the pictures on your sign, some will read a bit, and some will read the whole thing. A good sign will communicate the core idea of the panel with just the title and pictures. Doing so gives even the perfunctory readers a chance to get the idea. Also, showing them the core idea improves the chances that they will read more. Interpretation is voluntary. Meaning that doing things like forcing the audience to be on rails pretty much guarantees most will choose to not participate. Basically, EC's comments are pretty spot-on.
I used to have books that were very much like this game (in book form). I loved them and devoured every one multiple times. Making that kind of experience interactive is, I think, exactly the kind of thing so many of us have been hoping games would eventually do. I absolutely look forward to seeing more of this. And if we could do it in VR that would make the experience even better.
In addition to what you said, climbing the structure on your own gives you a much more real appreciation for the architecture of the structure. I remember climbing the domes in AC 2 vividly even till this day
One of my favorite aspects of the AC series has always been that living history aspect. Walking in Ezio shoes taught me so much more about the Renaissance than I ever learned in school, which focused on the advancement and culture. Which is important but they didn’t even touch on the politics of the era, which AC II and Brotherhood focuses a great deal on.
I actually visited the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts who had an exhibition on this period and it was accompanied by this tour. It was honestly a great experience to see people enjoying it and learning more history.
I loved this video, guys! I had this EXACT conversation about how Origins takes you to awesome places, even mythological ones, like the Tomb of Alexander and The Library of Alexandria, and how that experience is just amazing. To be there, to see monuments long gone, to have a brief notion about how life in ancient cities were, hearing dialogs in greek, latin, ancient egypcian (even if the dialogs are simple phrases)... That is what I loved most about AC:Origins. I really would like to buy games which bring such experiences.
My favorite moment of learning history in a game was Hearts of Iron 4. While HoI4 isn't perfect, and there are other examples, I would like to focus on my first play through as the Soviet Union. I eventually initiated the Great Purge as a means to expand my National Focus tree. All was going well, until I realized that I actually needed to start purging in game officers. And from there, things only got worse. Famine, tyranny, untold atrocities, which I, assuming the role of Joseph Stalin, was conducting. And while I didn't learn about what the Soviet Union did exactly, (I don't remember the Soviets trying to conquer Australia) I did get an idea of the disconnect that the Soviet leadership felt for the people under their command. Unconcerned with their well being, and only looking out for themselves. It really felt sickening. And as the game drew to a close, and I looked at what I had done over the course of the game, as a history nerd, this felt like my Undertale Genocide Run moment.
That's a great comment. Similarly while playing Victoria 2 I found myself leading european countries to plunder Africa and Asia. Seeing millions of people reduced to workers for my country and their land used to out-prestige other europeans really showed the dehumanisation inherent in colonialism
Connor Walters Grand strategy games (paradox games in particular) are excellent ways to make you understand the disconnect of leaders & also why they may act the way they do. If the war will benefit you & it won't hurt, why not? Presa your advantages. Acceptable losses must be accepted.
That really is one great thing about such grand strategy games. The realization that you yourself are capable of this disconnect when managing things on the highest level, even without having to be an evil person. Hell, the things Crusader Kings players do for the good of their dynasty... Another is that things are often not as easy as they may look to some people from the bottom, even if you have the best of intentions. When in charge you find quickly that things like "just don't build any weapons" or "just turn off all nuclear/coal power plants" (if you ever tried Fate of the World) don't work so well. If anything it teaches you some empathy for the people having to make such decisions where criticism comes easy.
I completely agree with Dan's sentiment about being able to see a little bit of history as being alive. It's one of the main reasons I play games set in historical settings is to get the feel of what it was like back then even in the smallest sense. I certainly hope Ubisoft and other teams make more historical modes to their historical games and let us learn at our own pace! Thanks to the extra credits group for bringing me this information!
A very good way of implementing this is the way the audio logs in game such as bio-shock, placed at the top of notable buildings or at the top of the "ubisoft towers" overlooking other areas of interest that don't involve a big climbable building.
I've really missed the lil gags Extra Credits put into these videos. Like the hat here. And this what makes Extra Credits so much fun to watch than other Game Design channels.
This actually kind of reminds me of a very special museum I visited as a kid. It was this big open area segmented into three parts; a prehistoric part, a roman part and a medieval part. They were basically three villages recreated in the image of history, with actors walking around pretending to be living in those time periods. Some would even give workshops in swordfighting or making baskets. Instead of looking at an exhibition, it was like actually experiencing the past. I would love to see games try and do the same thing, and I hope this is a step in the right direction.
The hand holding, walkabout, you have no control part around 4:00 reminded me of the beginning of Prey, because until the thing happens and they blatantly show you the path you took last time was an illusion, you do not realize you are on a hand holding walkabout, because it just feels like the tutorial for any other game.
Call of Juarez Gunslinger seemed like a bit of history lesson. It has these collectibles called "Nuggets of Truth" which are basically historical descriptions of several important Wild West figures, incidents, locations and themes of the time-period. Gotta also praise how much they aknowledge the possbilities of how much of those legends are tuths or likely embelishments
College professor here, who's been working on ideas for using Digital Humanities in my literature classroom. Gotta say, this is very evocative. It's giving me plenty to think about.
Actually if you guys have the time, this has been done before. The original medal of honor games up to like 2006 had opt in settings where as you played, random WWII facts came up as you moved through say guadalacanal or iwo Jima, explaining the history of each battle, situation, location or general wwii facts or trivia or even the history of certain weapons. It was really cool!
My first educational computer game was Sid Meyers civilization. I spent a decent amount of time reading the text about each unit, technology and building. Not just what each did in-game but the educational paragraphs that were thrown in there. It made the game more tangible. More interesting. More memorable.
It was about time you talked about AC Origins' Discovery Tour. Great video, been waiting for Assassin's Creed addressed on the channel since I started watching you!
i think there was a similar thing that was done in battlefield 1, but in a different way. I really loved how at the beginning or end of each little campaign section it taught me a bit about each of the battles in world war 1.
Titanic: Adventure out of Time actually did this. The free roam mode of that game allows you to explore the ship at your leisure. The thing is, all the characters from the main story are still on board with you. All of them are placed at key points of the ship (the lifeboats, the bridge, the boiler room, the Grand Staircase, etc.) and they basically become a mini tour guide for that particular area. It's really neat, and it doesn't hold your hand. You want to talk to these characters because you know them from playing the main story, and it's fun to learn about something cool with a character you are familiar with.
A really interesting low budget game that us being developed is Titanic: Honor and Glory. It's actually doing things kinda backwards as their non-story exploration mode is the. main feature of the game. In their exploration mode you can wander around the entire RMS Titanic and get tidbits of information from who had booked each cabin to what happened on the night of the sinking. they even made a "titanic sinks in real time" video
Here’s an interesting one: If you’ve played Ratchet and Clank 2, there’s an area called the Insomniac Museum: a place where you can tour the things of the game’s development and scrapped ideas, including unused things from the first game. They even let you tinker and mess around with some of the game mechanics and visuals(for example, you can test how gravity works or change the speed of the projectiles), and even go into a test level that was used to test Ratchet’s moves when making the levels.
Dude, I'd love a Discovery Mode in every lore-filled game like Dark Souls. Just going around, exploring and talking to NPCs without having to worry about a monster trying to kill you (and it wouldn't be easy mode because there would be no challenge other than discovery itself)
I want to mention OWW (occupy white walls), it's still in alpha but it's been really fun and educational so far. you basically create your own art gallery and fill it with pre-existing artwork, mostly pretty old clasical stuff right now but they'll add more. you can vist other people's galleries as well as find out information on the artwork your looking at. :)
One thing that keeps me coming back to the AC franchise is the ability to walk in past places. It never really struck me how cool it could be until I stood in a spot in front of the actual roman Colosseum where I had stood in the game or had a little giggle to myself how I snuck in through the hole in the roof of the pantheon and then was able to photograph it for myself several years later. Another thing I would point out is that AC:Syndicate allows you travel over buildings and along streets that you can actually walk on today (not on the buildings of course, they frown on climbing them). Those aspects of the game have stuck with me much longer than any story they were telling me at the time. I've not played through the mode in the newest AC game but the fact they were willing to take the risk and put themselves out there really can't be praised enough.
Tourist aimed free running/parkour games would be lit! Seeing New York and climb everything, while seeing where hotels and restaurants are. Getting people interested in traveling to these weird places such as where I live, a small town in Sweden.
Excellent video as always. While I deeply agreed with the ameliorations you suggest, I didn't feel the discovery mode to be really that much on rails. I begin to play AC Origins with the discovery mode, my father by my side because we were both curious about what it had to offer. We run to the Alexandria library, follow part of the tour, try to recognise witch god represent the statues, find we can switch character and spend 2 hours roaming around with Supercaesar, running from a landmark to the other, jumping and swimming everywhere, half-following some visits while my father compare the game with memories of his trip to Egypt. That was one of the best play session I ever had. Now that I continue the game, I switch to discovery mode each time something trigger my curiosity. GG Ubisoft for discovery mode
That... is probably the best kind of ancient civilization lesson I think there could ever be. Imagine if they put it in other settings like WWII? letting you explore and play though different regiments of a military unit in different battles?
This exploration mode is perfect for the AC series, I hope to see them continue putting it in future games. I'm not even a fan of AC and I'm tempted to get Origins specifically for this mode.
I think it’d be pretty cool if you guys did an Extra History or Extra Mythology series on Egypt; it’s such a fascinating culture with a deep and complex mythology that even has influences on our world today!
It would be really awesome if the collectibles were letters from ordinary people from that period, in that way you could educate someone about how life was in ancient egypt and not only the history of some monuments (although it already is really cool).
Can you imagine if they make a good discovery mode when they finally do an assassin's Creed focused on the Sengoku Jidai? That would be an assassin's Creed I'll buy.
frenchiveruti Feudal Japan already gets a ton of coverage in games though. Pre-feudal Japan(prior to ~1400 CE), now that's something we don't see much of.
Man, i'm not even a huge history nerd but i read all of the landmark things in AC Brotherhood. Giving you the option to learn about it in the context of a world, even if it's an abstracted game world, just makes it so much more interesting. Also, Ubisoft seems to be on a roll, let's hope they keep it up :)
Ubisoft: Hey... are we the bad guys? EA: Oh most definately. Ubisoft: R-really?? EA: Being the bad guy nets the most cash! Mwah-hahaha! Ubisoft: ... French Companies: Oooohhh a shiny! Uuuubiseft? Imma buy you! Ubisosft: ... I... I dont think I wanna be one of the bad guys anymore... Seriously though, thrir progress has been slow, but has anyone else noticed that Ubisoft has at least been trying to inprove themselves and their image? Its kinda nice.
Same. I see Ubisoft as one of those kids that hang around the bullies to look cool, but when you actually get to know that kid he's actually a pretty good person. Not saying that Ubisoft is a great gaming company yet and that they still have a lot of s*** to get together, but at least they're doing what EA and Activision aren't: Improving.
Another thing which is a problem for them are their servers / or were ; i haven't actually played a new Ubisoft game in ages but that is something that also gave them a bad image
This is a really interesting subject you guys are touching upon! It's really amazing to see how games have developed to the point where people are considering them in terms of more than just entertainment value, but also educational value as well. I think the Assassin's Creed team was more uniquely positioned to adjust their product for this niche though. It's easier to imagine the devs from games such as AC, Civilization or even Dynasty Warriors retool their games for such Discovery Tours than say, any game based in the Warhammer 40k universe. I wonder if the ability of games to lend themselves to role-playing could enhance the interactivity of the experience. Ubisoft could put the player in the shoes of an architect, for example, instead of an assassin. A day in the life of a pyramid architect going about his business would be interesting, and the additional context would relieve a little of the static nature of the experience. Heck, imagine this idea executed in VR! Would also be a great way for devs to reuse their assets with a little touching-up rather than rebuild new ones from scratch. I'd definitely like to return to visit the Hagia Sophia from AC2's expansions.
This kind of reminds me of the developer commentary mode in some of Valves older titles like Team Fortress 2 or Half Life, where as you play through the game you can find little floating speech bubbles that when interacted with give you a voice over from the devs about their experiences making the game.
I remember a number of years ago my sister and I got into a discussion about how we would design an educational video game. What we ended up with was a story about a character which was sent throughout time, and kept appearing at different famous battles in history where they became basically just a side soldier in the war. Forced to learn the tactics of the day so they could take part in the battle. The player could take time to learn as little or as much as they wanted to, but the catch was that any skills you learned in a previous era could be transported to the next era you appear in. So if you took the time to learn different skills of the day, you'd have more options of what you could do in future wars, while all the way experiencing these epic battles. Now of course the concept itself has a ton of mechanical flaws which would make it a nightmare to program... but I like the core component of "The player chooses to learn or not, but the more the learn the stronger they'll be/the more rewarded they'll be. There becomes a tangible PURPOSE to learning the history if you will
I’m a history major, and I will say that we need to not only create more modes like this in historical games, but we need to them well. History isn’t taught well here in the U.S and a lot of that has to do with a focus on facts/dates instead of the broader context. So if we have these type of modes in games, I think we need to focus on the broader context of material in addition to exploration. For example, if you were doing a game on 1917 Russia, maybe you would have the player explore a populated Saint Petersburg and have things that explained the wider context of why the February/October Revolutions occurred. Regardless, loved the ideas you presented!
Have you played Senuas Sacrifice? Apart from having a really bone-chilling main story, I think that game has some of the "discovery" elements you just described as well. Playing the game, one frequently finds weird glowing rocks scattered throughout the world and if one goes near them an "focuses" on them, one is told a bit about the environment or a story out of north mythology. The developers split most of these stories into episodes and I ended up looking for these rocks a lot because I wanted to hear the next part. I would absolutely love it if more games did something like that. Not only is it a fun opportunity to learn about stuff you most likely wouldn't take the time to learn about otherwise but working the information provided into the games story the way they did with Senuas Sacrifice also helps the games world feel much more realistic. It can even feel like a nice breather between puzzles or fights to just sit down and listen to a story for a minute or two.
Medieval 2 is what got me into history in the first place. Getting more people into history might one day achieve the impossible; getting a leader who doesn't repeat the mistakes of the past.
Just a fun fact, the recently released Kingdom Come: Deliverence was included as a learning tool at the Charles University in Prague as their research of the Hussite period is astounding and is well acknowledged even by the proffesional historians.
The first thing I thought of upon hearing about this new exploration mode was Half Life 2: Lost Coast and the dev commentary that went along with it. I think that would be an amazing way to do a game like this, where the full game exists unmodified but you can layer an optional set of interaction points where voice-over or visual explanations could take place, educating the player on the real world importance and significance of the experience. I always did want more of those dev logs too, I wish that was something more games had done.
I know of a Professor who uses the total war series to show how battles went. I was fun when he scroll down the map and his units had run away and then tried to destroy a landmark which was not destroyed.
in your last point about allowing people to live history through custom interactions, i have actually seen multiple examples of museums or national parks using actors to re create scenes and people. generally this does take the form of one-man plays, my mom even produced a biographical mucial about john muir in Martinez where his house is (extra history about the founding of the national parks would be really important right now). But I actually got to tour a 1860s style adobe farm house, homestead, and trading post on the Philmont Scout Ranch in NM, and all of the Rangers there had a dual job of general park staff and re-enacter. i've shot muskets with fur trappers, played "moonlight sonata" on a piano that hasn't been tuned since 1860 (company promised free tuning, their stock warehouse burned down 5 years later and they went out of business), made candles in the rain with homesteaders, and while they didn't act it out, i got to look at some indigenous people artifacts in an authentic teepee, then got into a
3:38 Well, I don't know you guys, but personally I read half of this 'history reports' only to get to the tiny bits of comedy provided by Shaun Hastings. Especially in AC3, the fact that he was an English talking about the American Revolution made it hilarious!
Awesome video. Not just praising a great choice for videogames but also providing some critical thought on how it can be improved to make an awesome experience.
Btw you CAN run and jump in tour mode. And the achievements on the game for the tours are a very short part of it. The rest of the tours are of your own will.
This is amazing and I know a lot about history from the assassins creed games yes I know their not all 100% accurate but you can find the discrepancy’s out fairly easily.
As an edutainment developer building physical geography "virtual environments", this kind of interactivity is very challenging to create. The approach I've been taking is to layer the experience. Layer 1) Get it done fast. This layer is for student "players" who are trying to get through their assigned lab activity quickly. Exploration truncated, with the student being take directly points of interest or activity. In function its little more than 3D version of a typical printed lab exercise. Distilling the information and ask as much as possible. Layer 2) Guided exploration. This layer is not-dissimilar to AC:Os guide tour mode, although I don't lock players into a set path. More like the glowing Icon in the sky. Students are directed to the next "activity" defined in Layer 1, but can arrive there at their own pace. With opportunities to practice skills they've learned in prior activities, and "explore" the *geography* of the learning/play area. Layer 3) Free roam. This layer drops any guidance, hands the student all the tools the lab contains, and just lets them explore the geography and contained data. This layer is actually intended for the children of adult college students, and is inspired by various Minecraft real world digitization projects. Project 1845 of the Forbidden City. Denmark in Minecraft. Britain's Ordnance Survey in Minecraft. Students can switch between the layers just by choosing *how* they interact. If they've just been free-roaming and want to finally knuckle down to the lesson they can jump back on the pre-defined scripted path. However I had to develop that system, which isn't actually far off from scripting "quests" in something like Skyrim, lots of "flags" and logic tracking. To which I'll admit is still more than a bit buggy. I would suspect the AC:O doesn't have a good quest scripting tool set, which would be why the low-cost method was just to "walk" the players through a museum. -> Good tools for "quest" scripting will be critical for these kinds of Video Games for Education. Especially ones that handle players going up and down the "quest" chain, and skipping all around it out of sequence. Like a RUclips video or Adobe Presenter presentation. Another issue is asset streaming. Quick "teleports" to key locations often break the asset and terrain streams, requiring some kind of loading screen. It is safer to make a player walk along a prescribed path, and have a known sequence of optimized asset loading. However, there are opportunities with "loading screens", now that the Namco Bandai loading screen mini-game patent has expired. Be it interactive lessons and materials on a screen with a loading bar, or the way God of War does it by having the player wait in a 3D game space (world tree branch).
Its hard to design voiced information that can be played at the same time as the player moves. It can lead to clashes with other dialog's or distract form a certain motives if placed in an inconvenient spot. But when its done right Its the best way to take in information. Like playing something mindless while listening to a podcast. Hope to see more of this. I would love to have a "oracle" type voice that I can ask about structures, people and other things.
I didnt even know they did this so that's really awesome! As always I am late to the party. Here's what I would like too see or think may work and it builds off your idea for having the information at places players choose to visit. Have the places suggest this other place if they want to learn more about a particular subject, people may be more likely to get all the information that way and its still a choice. They could also save the audio files and put them in a sort of timeline so when you "collect" them you can visually see that pieces are missing so players know they don't have the whole story and they could listen to the files whenever they choose. Maybe at the end have an unnecessary but useful item to encourage players to get the bits of information and complete it. It's still the players choice, but its put in the context of the game as you suggested and players are allowed to do as they wish while still gaining bits of history with extra encouragement to get the whole picture at their leisure.
honestly, if it did have the open-ended options, it'd work so much better. imagine using it in a classroom setting, and the teacher is watching and just says "alright everyone, i want you to find the obalisk in the north end of the map". everyone has to figure out how to get there on their own, and kids can start showing each other ways to get there. maybe have something like they need to write down/take notes on what the info blurb there says. alternatively, make it like one of those race minigames, where you run and parkour along a set track hitting goalposts along the way in a set timer. there, travel between points is interesting again.
I think there are other ways to enforce and direct the experience that wasn't addressed here. For example, if a specific blurb popped up a little screen that said "market and trade 1/7" when u saw that market scene u described. Players will seek the other 6 screens to complete it. Basically skinner box techniques for either achievements or variant equipment which isnt better that available equipment but just looks different.
There was a world war 1 game. “Valiant Hearts” I think it was where there were all these spibbits about the war and the conflicts. Even the basic (basic so no one could re create it) ingredients for mustard gas and exactly how it effects the lungs. The game itself was cartoony but the information was solid.
I think what I would recommend for a game like that is to have a normal mode where those info spots are there but the game still plays the same, and something that you might call "sandbox mode" or "education mode" where the info things are a bit easier to spot, the gameplay objectives are mostly disabled and the player can't die (and possibly also where the parkour is a bit easier), so that the players can still enjoy things like the movement modes but not have the regular game distracting them and not have lack of skill get in the way of learning. Of course if all the information is in the regular game, I could see it definitely making some kinds of players more interested in history. I know that when I play a game like Skyrim I tend to be a bit of a lore hound, so I could definitely imagine that for anyone like me in that regard playing a game like that would make them a bit more interested in real-world history. Especially if you also throw in a couple of achievements to get the completionists interested in reading every last bit of history including the ones in hard-to-get-to places.
the bit about wandering a market and being educated about the economic state at the time reminded me of the anime Spice and Wolf; I feel like I know way more about economics from watching that show than anyone who's never taken a class on the subject should know.
The learning tour described in this video is exactly what Assassin's Creed needs! I hope the next games will include this mode. Keep the open world, but trade the combat for commentaries about the world. I am dissapointed to hear how linear the Discovery Mode actually is. I was looking forward to it, but what is described here is what I was hoping the Discovery Mode was going to be.
A simple solution is to just have a check mark box at the beginning asking if you'd like to have extra historical content available during the game. That way, people who just want a game and people who want to find cool facts while exploring can both have a good experience.
The Island Flyover mode in Wii Sports Resort feels like a good example of this done right. Though I did get distracted by trying to beat the time limit per flight and get as much as I could. Take away the time limit and I think that’ll be great!
Have you guys looked into the way Dynasty Warriors 9 implements their open world? I took time out of protecting the emperor because I saw a historic site icon on my map that i hadn’t seen yet, and it turned out to be the Great Wall of China. I was able to climb it, walk it, and even fire arrows at the bandits on the other side of the wall.
The idea of having glowing markers that highlight spots of interest, or at least as markers of where players can get more informative tidbits, reminds me a lot of how Valve games often have a Developer Commentary mode. In it, the gameplay is more or less identical to how it is in the normal game, though sometimes with some hazards removed, but there are now also little speech bubble icons floating around that the player can touch to hear a bit of commentary about how something nearby in the game functions on a gameplay level. This sort of thing would need to be adjusted were it made for Assassin's Creed; in the Valve games as soon as you can see one of those bubbles you can interact with it no matter how far away it is, which would defeat the point of the open world in AC. But I hunted down every last one of those bubbles when I went through both of the Portal games, Half-Life 2 and E1 and E2, and even Left 4 Dead! Now granted, I'm a game design nerd and that stuff appealed to me anyway, but I see no reason a similar system wouldn't work for a historically-bent game like Assassin's Creed.
I do hope that they incorporate this into their next Assassin's Creed title. A wonderful blend of exploration, learning the history of a location, and the "hack and slash" that this game is known for. I could see an extra incentive for finding those out of the way locations that you only find with exploration. Something cosmetic in-game which might trigger different dialog if you wore such item around certain NPCs.
Places with interesting info in games reminds me of Niantic’s Ingress, the predecessor to Pokémon Go. All the gyms and stops originate from that game as portals. Most of the points were chosen bc of artistic or historic value (I say most bc junk portals sometimes got through and also some independent businesses have portals before they were restricted from portal submission). I remember one Ingress play session in downtown Louisville where I found a building where Martin Luther King Jr visited bc of student protests being led there during the civil rights era, as well as a couple different plaques - one indicating where a slave auction was once held and another memorializing the Underground Railroad abt one block away. It was basically a real life version of what you’re suggesting here! Only, it can only show what’s there now, not what was hundreds or thousands of years in the past. It would be great to have this concept in history classes tbh.
I'm at 3:16 and wanted to comment this now because I won't feel like it at the end of the video: You should checkout (if you haven't already) the dead drops thing in infamous games. They're things you find and pickup (with guidance) throughout the game. When you pick them up, an audio file is played of a recording of a character saying something important to the story/history of the game. It was always my favorite part of the franchise.
I'm Ethan Ritchie's cousin and I found it amazing when he showed me this. He told me he made about 30 seconds of the video a day, just to not overwelm himself.
This seems like an ideal fit for MGS V's codec system, where you focus on something with your binoculars and press a button to get info on it. Binocs might be harder to come by in ancient Egypt though, so I dunno, maybe use the eagle or something.
Reminds me of how I would spend hours just looking through all the mythology snippets for the units in Age of Mythology. My basis in Greek myth is completely from that one game.
I really love you guys exactly for videos like this one. It's smart, funny, with cool looking animations and you're also defending US, the players and our gaming experience from things like AC Origins Discovery Tour. Keep up the great work.
If they had been doing this since the original games, that'd have been amazing. I loved roaming around colonial Boston, the Caribbean, and especially Victorian London more than...well...doing what the games actually needed me to do.
I love the idea of a augmented reality museum! Imagine walking down the halls of the building and seeing Dinosaurs,Samurai warriors and works of art all come to life. I would love to see our technology get us there.
Games that teach you about things by making the learning PART of the fun are amazing. Take Cellcraft for example. A flash game where you control a single cell, and have to survive harsh conditions and a couple different types of viruses. It's like an RTS game, but you learn about things along the way. Defend your nucleus at all costs, and learn WHY the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. It's really cool, and I'd recommend it, even as just something to play for fun.
We can and must keep doing better at creating games that entertain while also providing modes to focus on education, but the discovery tour in Assassin's Creed Origins is a bold first step.
Ever heard of age of empires?
It at least inspired me
Extra Credits “education games” have been getting better. Games like prodigy (a game that my sons’ school actually encourages play at) come to mind.
I really have wished I could play an engrossing game that would teach me another language, or could teach people actual skills that would be useful in a real life. For instance, gathering small clues and learning to value and evaluate the reliability of the source of the clue is not only what intelligence analysis is like but generally useful for any “analyst” field.
If, for instance, you hide a bunch of clues on a battle field that the soldier would later recount in the debriefing that player would then have to weigh and evaluate as either fitting with an established hypothesis or against. And then the player would then have to determine if that new information is viable, could result in additional helpful NPC and supplies in the next level were you “really need it” vs where you don’t.
If the clues are randomly generated then the player would be forced to figure it out and think critically vs following the beats of a strategy guide.
Now take this to the this video’s example... Assassins Creed. Imagine if the player was presented conflicting historical facts and had to determine what was Templar propaganda and what was the “truth” by reading actual historical accounts hidden in the game. And what if those accounts where in a language you’ve been learning throughout the game? Maybe the “truth” is simply a matter of a translation error?
This all stuff that would teach people but at the same time be a “puzzle” to solve, provided the game play was fun enough, and just debriefings were welcomed rest-bits of a chaotic and stressful battlefield.
Extra Credits o
they should have do it like Valiant Hearts showing the history as events showed up
Yeah, this is an amazing idea, and it's already got me thinking about different things you could do with it.
Like imagine a Time Traveller game, where you're a scholar for a Historical society that has a time machine that can send you back to replace a single person in any period of time. You've been sent back to (insert time period/Event here) to see what day to day life was like for (insert person/demographic here.) Normally, you can just bug out back to your own time whenever you want, but the device that let's you do that is malfunctioning/broken, so now you need to go to the Emergency Exit point, which just your luck, is way out of the way, so now you have to get to it, while still maintaining your disguise, lest you change the future.
You could use this frame work for just about anything, Roman Soldier, French Peasant during the Revolution, WWI officer in the trenches.
Or the idea that started this off for me. You are a Scholar for a Historical Society, and you were supposed to be sent back to take the place of a Jewish Survivor in one of the Concentration Camps on Monday, June 5, 1944, the day before D-Day until the Concentration Camp is liberated, for the Historical Society (because this is in the future, and all the survivors have died from old age at this point,) for first hand experience.
But something malfunctions, and you wake up as a low-level Nazi Soldier around the beginning of World War II, and the only Emergency Time Pick Up you know about is after D-Day, roughly 5 years away. In the Handbook, it states that you can do whatever is necessary to survive, as long as it doesn't Drastically change the future. So now you have a choice, do you follow your computer's recollection of this Nazi Officer's part in WW2 for the highest possible chance to not change the future, or do you subtly try to save as many people as you can, because you are not, in fact, a Nazi?
Following the Computer's "Least Damaging" Path will run you through the Rank of the Nazi Regime, giving in-depth descriptions of the Heirarchy of the Regime, as well as historical facts about what was happening in Germany, Poland, and other Nazi controlled areas for Officer and Citizen alike, the propaganda, the bribery and threatening that lead people to turning in neighbors, friends, and even sometimes family.
While taking the "Schindler's" path (because I can't think of a better name right now,) you would play-through what it was like trying to save people, finding places to hide, figuring out who you could trust to help, bribing/threatening people into looking the other way when they found out, or were beginning to figure out what was happening, as well as sending your own family into hiding, in case everything goes south, using your knowledge of past event's to try and out smart people.
I really like this idea of making times in history into games that aren't FPS's, just going around learning what it was like.
Given my professional background in museums, I feel like we could learn a LOT from this critique too! TBH, that's actually why I started watching this channel; games and museums both centre around engagement. I've oft felt that museums can learn a lot about engagement from games, and that some of the techniques for engaging the public, while not the same, are certainly analogous.
A pleasure to watch, as always!
I am a big museum studies nerd (well, insofar as I have time for hobbies) so it makes me so happy to know that there are others also passionate about the intersection of games and museums! --Belinda
Something I have envisioned before are VR experiences in museums and other sorts of historical places. While I am still a little skeptical with VR in gaming, I do think that it has a big future in entertainment, and museums are part of that.
Imagine if museums had these little VR kiosks you could go to for a sort of tour through the subject of the room you are in. Let's say it's dinosaurs. You go in the room, you see the bones and other exhibits, but then you put on the VR headset and see what it was really like. A narrator tells you about the various dinosaurs, what environment they lived in, what they ate, how they were adapted to their environment. Not only do you get to learn about them, but you get to see them too.
This could apply to pretty much everything too. Virtual battle reenactments, what a city looked like though the years, even just a bird's eye view of where you are. And this could be both on rails and free roam for different situations, or even a mix of both. There is so much potential.
streak1 Some museums around the world are indeed already starting implement VR tours in ways similar to what you describe. There are areas of the world that are currently too fragile for too many people to see, think cave paintings and certain ancient structures, but with VR, museums can provide a space for anyone to (virtually) see these places up close, allowing us to learn from them while also keeping them safe. (I've been working on a museum studies degree for over 5 years)
It's kinda funny. I'm currently taking something called "classical studies", basically a 6 year university course where you learn ancient Greek, but also learn about Greek and pre-Christian roman culture, history and so on. But another aspect is we also have to learn about archaeology. Two or so weeks ago, we had a small lecture, where someone was showing off how they had meticulously recorded an old roman burial site, and basically turned it into a VR program, They even had a HTC vive a long where students and teachers could try it out. Moving around the burial site, able to study inscriptions and details closely. They were able to reconstruct the ruined doorways and roofs, peel away later constructions to see how the burial site had looked at different Roman periods, there was even an option to simulate flooding.
While it's not exactly the Animus. I do feel that VR tech will do a lot to help preserve, if not the physical remains of ancient sites, then at least the details of those sites for future historians, archaeologists, students, and... well, everyone.
II truly believe, especially with how the world seems to be going these days, that "backing up" important historical sites digitally, is of utmost importance to preserve our past. We've already had several places irreparably damaged, either by intent ( such as Palmyre and Nimrud) Or places destroyed by our rapidly changing climate, accidents, wear, or simply by neglect. Heck... we should be "backing up" modern sites of importance as well.
Wandering Ursa they dont have that in the US?. Are you Irish by any chance
This needs more likes.
finn the frog One day writers of whatever fictional medium there will be at the time will look to ancient works of liturature and wonder what this "white house" from the alien invasion movie would be like to really expirience. Or the city of New York where all these detective fictions happen. Someday we Americans will be the ancient Egyptians, the Romans, and the cowboys.
finn the frog I'm Danish. Classical studies is a bit more common here as part of our "old style" of classical higher education. Basically the step you have to take after your basic education, but before you can start on something like a university degree, it will often include the student learning either latin, or studying classical civilization, such as the greeks or romans.
On a related note: The University I studied at - the University of Reading - has created this digital, scale model recreation of Rome. See here: research.reading.ac.uk/virtualrome/
It's astounding in its sheer depth and content, but not the most easily accessible thing in the world, whether in presentation or the fact you've got to sign on for a university course. Not even sure how well the project is actually integrated with VR, though I know they had been looking at it.
The reason I bring it up, and in relation to your comment in particular, is that companies like Ubisoft, and franchises like Assassin's Creed, have that which such projects are otherwise often desperate for: Resources. Both in developing the content but also distributing it to people, if game devs were willing to put themselves out there for this, they could honestly make VR into a key aspect of how the past is studied, both casually and professionally.
If there was a genuine intent to get this into school curriculums, that is why the rail mode tour would be used instead of free roam. Rail mode guarantees a consistent and ordered experience you can plan teaching around, whereas free roam doesn't guarantee you'll find all info required or find it out of order.
Vincent Del Vecchio totally agree but I think they should have done both for task flexibility, like in class the teacher would put rails but for hw they would assign to search and find information on any 5 noticeable land marks, for example
True, true, but a free-roam mode would be great as an interactive form of reviewing the material for the class. I can easily see it being a team activity, where each team has to use a list of clues to identify, locate, and take an in-game selfie/screencap of certain landmarks, places, etc.within a set period of time~
I think that could be easily modified in free roaming mode where the teacher can tell each student to find one cool location. Then the student has to do research on the location they found and give a presentation about it. Then maybe they have go and try to find different locations not previously found by other students.
"Options" -> "Toggle Free Roam On"
We are very, very good at directing people where to go in games without forcing their hand, and the experience feels all the more rewarding for it. Even if that fails, imagine a section of a city where, once you find the pieces of information, they're fit into a timeline or the like as you finish, granting context to everything you've just experienced.
Now I want a games you might not have tried: history games edition.
Obito101man please dear God yes this please God please
Great idea!!
The Total War series would beon there if it weren't for the fact they are well known.
Pharaoh, the old city building game, might be a good one.
Don't forget the other Impressions historical city building games like the Caesar (Caesar III is so good) series and Zeus: Master of Olympus, as well as Emperor: The Middle Kingdom and Children of the Nile (I think they were both Tilted Mill?). Then you've got more recent games like Quadriga for chariot racing and i there've been several gladiator management games as well. (Plus other city buildings like Grand Ages Rome and strategy games like Great Battles of Rome) So many really good ones. Most just make a good starting point ot do some actual learning wit hthe setting mostly being window dressing with a theme, but some of them (Like the Impressions and Tilted Mill games) put in a lot of effort to include historically accurate information for you to read (Which reminds me- Age of Empires 1 and 2 and Age of Mythology!)
But would it fit under Extra Credits, or Extra History?
I agree. I'd love to see floating historical commentary icons (similar to Valve's developer commentary) during the main game play.
So, i feel i must mention The World Ends With You. See, the entire game happens in Shibuya, and the city is pretty much a character in the game. there is one chapter that you can freely roam around that has some very cool dialogue, which is your current partner, who obviously love the city(and man is that important to the gameplay), talking about the monument or street that you're in. You learn the history of those places, and it doesn't feel invasive at all. It's one the reasons that game is awesome.
True! When I eventually visited Japan and ended up in Shibuya with no plan on what to do, I thought of the game and was like 'oh, I gotta' check out the dog statue...! And the scramble! And I wonder if this place was real, can I find this or that if I walk around...'. It's such a good game.
YUUSSS! I loved that game, and that was one of the reasons. It really felt like you were in a real place, anime art style or no, and it really felt alive with other people and a whole culture. Part of that was because that was part of the game's theme and style, but a lot of the same ideas could be used in others. Also, it means that i now have to check out Shibuya myself if i ever go to Japan.
Roger Ogue
Because having an anime art style normally means you can't depict things realistically..?
@fireaza Because it isn't a photo realistic one, so things do look a bit different.
Roger Ogue
I dunno bro, have you seen the backgrounds in anime? They look pretty realistic, especially compared to the backgrounds in American animated shows. Hell, that's not even mentioning the likes of One Punch Man, Lucky Star and many others that use real locations as the basis for their backgrounds. I guess what I'm saying is, dude, what was up with that "anime art style or no" back-handed compliment? You're making it sound like anything that uses an anime art style will always be unrealistic, when I think the main issue is TWEWY is a game and it uses a heavily-stylized art style. Not sure if that's what you intended, but that's how it came across.
Something doesn't need to be photo-realistic to accurately depict the subject. After all, we've all seen paintings of historical figures and places that would would have no problems recognizing if we saw them in-person after all. It certainly wasn't an issue for me when I first went to Shibuya.
Thank you for talking about this! It is a really cool addition to the games for education tool set. Just one correction: you mention that you can't observe the NPCs in their routines and daily lives in this mode but that isn't actually the case. In fact there is one tour that focuses on exactly that - explaining the daily lives of common people at the time. How they baked bread, how they spent their days and so forth!
In fact htat was my favourite part of the tour. Because I think it's were this kind of things have more potential to teach people. It's not the same to for example learn about the daily lives of people tahn to actually saw them. For big events there were always will be movies, plays, videogame main quests, but those little details about day to day life in the past are not only interesting, but better experienced through small interactions tahn dry scolarship reading (of course the dry scolarship is necessary to accurate represent that life, but to teach it...no)
Imagine you find a monument you then are transported during an event relevant to it. You get to participate to the battle of Waterloo, try to catch Lincoln's assassin, as an assistant to a medic during the Great war, sailing with Darwin or Magellan, riding proud side by side with Gengis Khan but after trying to protect your family from the Mongol's massacre, being a russian soldier trying to escape the first gas attack from the Germans and then a German civilian escaping his home with an unconscious infant when the Entente also used gas attacks near villages on the west front.
It would be a fantastic way to make the history feel live and also protraying more point of view.
I remember Unity and AC3 had something like that. Would be cool if Ubi expands that for your idea
That does interesting
Very well-deserved praise for AC: Origins. The game itself is stellar, but the addition of the Discovery Tour is such an unprecedented gem. Apart from the historical notes, I especially loved the BTS bits and the creative decisions the dev team made while crafting the game. I also love that the dev team's putting so much focus into putting in more content for AC:O rather than rushing to the next game in the franchise.
Nice. Reminds me a little of what Valve did for their in-game commentary when the released The Orange Box. Granted it was about game development and not history, but it was all in game, and I found it very interesting.
Trey Bushart Amnesia also had that. Those comments were truly insighful!
Imagine if there was a game where you can parkour through different periods of history, and a narrator tells you about all the monuments and maybe even events. I would love to be walking around 1920s Weimar Republic Germany and wander into the Beer Hall Putsch. The game could have tons of periods and locations, and obscure ones as well! Imagine seeing Kamehameha taking over Maui or something, or seeing Yi Sun-sin and his turtle ships at the battle of Busan. I would enjoy just walking around in an Incan city and exploring.
At everyone saying hi: Hi!
Ethan Ritchie hey
Well, hello there! How are you doing on this fine day, my kind sir?
Yo
Hi!
Hi there !
What if the game was about putting together broken memories from a corrupted gene strand in the Animus ? The "detective" has to put together the "crime scene" before living through it and there would be story consequences befitting how correct you were, wouldn't that also be engaging ?
lammer17729 Narrative wise, the Animus gives writers access to an entire world that can be completely controlled, which can also distract the characters while things go on in the real world. Arguably, you could even play with their minds and sense of time. Its an incredible design and story vein that lies untapped.
Scratch the Animus and I think you just described the Carmen Sandiego game series, there even were some involving time travel. Unfortunately Brøderbund is not around any more and their successor in the franchise isn't that successful.
seriously in AC there is always a whole lot of background info about buildings places and people that i never read cuz im playing a videogame and then dont want to sit down and read but if instead of that there is a golden thing i can pickup that is an audio log id totaly do that maybe replace the animous fregments and done
I'm playing unity after having listened to the Revolutions podcast episodes on the French Revolution, and I'm really enjoying the revolutionary Paris landscape and easy access to database entries about different events, places, and people. They really do care about the history and it's refreshing just to get immersed into it when you've spent so long listening to the stuff the Girondins did, or the Jacobins, the trial of Louis XVI, the fall of the Bastille, it's out there and fun where it needs to be, but surprisingly accurate in much of its written content!
I watched the first episode and came here and just... the improvement. It’s so beautiful. Dan’s voice acting gotten so much better and the script has gotten more detailed and crisp!! I’m proud.
I have plenty of friends who teach history and have used assassin's creed games as a tool in their classes. Ezio's Galery in AC2 is perfect for History of Art, since Renaissance is one of the most important periods for art. But the lack of a Non-Combat mode has allays been a problem for them.
With Discovery Mode, everything becames more practical and intuitive.
I wonder how accurate ac is they must have gotten something wrongs here and their sometime like what cinemasins does with everything wrong with x movie but for stuff that involves history
_Every_ reconstruction is a gamble. There are huge differences between how we envisioned e.g. Roman cities and art two hundred years ago, and how we do now. You have to live with the fact that every image, every film, and every game that tries to show the past is only an approximation.
That said, when we visited Florence, students who had played AC2 would find their way around the historical centre quite comfortably. :D
Now I'm itching to see a Carmen Sandiego game with this level of interactivity. That' be flippin' awesome!!
The design choices criticized here rhyme with some fundamental principles of good exhibit design as well.
For example, some people will only read the title and look at the pictures on your sign, some will read a bit, and some will read the whole thing. A good sign will communicate the core idea of the panel with just the title and pictures. Doing so gives even the perfunctory readers a chance to get the idea. Also, showing them the core idea improves the chances that they will read more.
Interpretation is voluntary. Meaning that doing things like forcing the audience to be on rails pretty much guarantees most will choose to not participate.
Basically, EC's comments are pretty spot-on.
I used to have books that were very much like this game (in book form). I loved them and devoured every one multiple times. Making that kind of experience interactive is, I think, exactly the kind of thing so many of us have been hoping games would eventually do.
I absolutely look forward to seeing more of this. And if we could do it in VR that would make the experience even better.
In addition to what you said, climbing the structure on your own gives you a much more real appreciation for the architecture of the structure. I remember climbing the domes in AC 2 vividly even till this day
One of my favorite aspects of the AC series has always been that living history aspect. Walking in Ezio shoes taught me so much more about the Renaissance than I ever learned in school, which focused on the advancement and culture. Which is important but they didn’t even touch on the politics of the era, which AC II and Brotherhood focuses a great deal on.
I actually visited the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts who had an exhibition on this period and it was accompanied by this tour. It was honestly a great experience to see people enjoying it and learning more history.
I loved this video, guys! I had this EXACT conversation about how Origins takes you to awesome places, even mythological ones, like the Tomb of Alexander and The Library of Alexandria, and how that experience is just amazing. To be there, to see monuments long gone, to have a brief notion about how life in ancient cities were, hearing dialogs in greek, latin, ancient egypcian (even if the dialogs are simple phrases)... That is what I loved most about AC:Origins. I really would like to buy games which bring such experiences.
My favorite moment of learning history in a game was Hearts of Iron 4. While HoI4 isn't perfect, and there are other examples, I would like to focus on my first play through as the Soviet Union. I eventually initiated the Great Purge as a means to expand my National Focus tree. All was going well, until I realized that I actually needed to start purging in game officers. And from there, things only got worse. Famine, tyranny, untold atrocities, which I, assuming the role of Joseph Stalin, was conducting. And while I didn't learn about what the Soviet Union did exactly, (I don't remember the Soviets trying to conquer Australia) I did get an idea of the disconnect that the Soviet leadership felt for the people under their command. Unconcerned with their well being, and only looking out for themselves. It really felt sickening. And as the game drew to a close, and I looked at what I had done over the course of the game, as a history nerd, this felt like my Undertale Genocide Run moment.
That's a great comment. Similarly while playing Victoria 2 I found myself leading european countries to plunder Africa and Asia. Seeing millions of people reduced to workers for my country and their land used to out-prestige other europeans really showed the dehumanisation inherent in colonialism
Connor Walters Grand strategy games (paradox games in particular) are excellent ways to make you understand the disconnect of leaders & also why they may act the way they do. If the war will benefit you & it won't hurt, why not? Presa your advantages. Acceptable losses must be accepted.
That really is one great thing about such grand strategy games. The realization that you yourself are capable of this disconnect when managing things on the highest level, even without having to be an evil person. Hell, the things Crusader Kings players do for the good of their dynasty...
Another is that things are often not as easy as they may look to some people from the bottom, even if you have the best of intentions. When in charge you find quickly that things like "just don't build any weapons" or "just turn off all nuclear/coal power plants" (if you ever tried Fate of the World) don't work so well.
If anything it teaches you some empathy for the people having to make such decisions where criticism comes easy.
Random aside: I kinda want to see Dan with that green top hat more often.
I completely agree with Dan's sentiment about being able to see a little bit of history as being alive. It's one of the main reasons I play games set in historical settings is to get the feel of what it was like back then even in the smallest sense. I certainly hope Ubisoft and other teams make more historical modes to their historical games and let us learn at our own pace! Thanks to the extra credits group for bringing me this information!
A very good way of implementing this is the way the audio logs in game such as bio-shock, placed at the top of notable buildings or at the top of the "ubisoft towers" overlooking other areas of interest that don't involve a big climbable building.
I've really missed the lil gags Extra Credits put into these videos.
Like the hat here.
And this what makes Extra Credits so much fun to watch than other Game Design channels.
This museum has a Dan tour guide ? Fancy, I like it.
This actually kind of reminds me of a very special museum I visited as a kid. It was this big open area segmented into three parts; a prehistoric part, a roman part and a medieval part. They were basically three villages recreated in the image of history, with actors walking around pretending to be living in those time periods. Some would even give workshops in swordfighting or making baskets. Instead of looking at an exhibition, it was like actually experiencing the past. I would love to see games try and do the same thing, and I hope this is a step in the right direction.
The hand holding, walkabout, you have no control part around 4:00 reminded me of the beginning of Prey, because until the thing happens and they blatantly show you the path you took last time was an illusion, you do not realize you are on a hand holding walkabout, because it just feels like the tutorial for any other game.
Call of Juarez Gunslinger seemed like a bit of history lesson. It has these collectibles called "Nuggets of Truth" which are basically historical descriptions of several important Wild West figures, incidents, locations and themes of the time-period. Gotta also praise how much they aknowledge the possbilities of how much of those legends are tuths or likely embelishments
College professor here, who's been working on ideas for using Digital Humanities in my literature classroom. Gotta say, this is very evocative. It's giving me plenty to think about.
Your comment made me remember how much I loved my Digital Humanities classes in college!
--Belinda
Actually if you guys have the time, this has been done before. The original medal of honor games up to like 2006 had opt in settings where as you played, random WWII facts came up as you moved through say guadalacanal or iwo Jima, explaining the history of each battle, situation, location or general wwii facts or trivia or even the history of certain weapons. It was really cool!
My first educational computer game was Sid Meyers civilization. I spent a decent amount of time reading the text about each unit, technology and building. Not just what each did in-game but the educational paragraphs that were thrown in there. It made the game more tangible. More interesting. More memorable.
It was about time you talked about AC Origins' Discovery Tour. Great video, been waiting for Assassin's Creed addressed on the channel since I started watching you!
i think there was a similar thing that was done in battlefield 1, but in a different way. I really loved how at the beginning or end of each little campaign section it taught me a bit about each of the battles in world war 1.
Titanic: Adventure out of Time actually did this. The free roam mode of that game allows you to explore the ship at your leisure. The thing is, all the characters from the main story are still on board with you. All of them are placed at key points of the ship (the lifeboats, the bridge, the boiler room, the Grand Staircase, etc.) and they basically become a mini tour guide for that particular area. It's really neat, and it doesn't hold your hand. You want to talk to these characters because you know them from playing the main story, and it's fun to learn about something cool with a character you are familiar with.
A really interesting low budget game that us being developed is Titanic: Honor and Glory.
It's actually doing things kinda backwards as their non-story exploration mode is the. main feature of the game.
In their exploration mode you can wander around the entire RMS Titanic and get tidbits of information from who had booked each cabin to what happened on the night of the sinking.
they even made a "titanic sinks in real time" video
Here’s an interesting one:
If you’ve played Ratchet and Clank 2, there’s an area called the Insomniac Museum: a place where you can tour the things of the game’s development and scrapped ideas, including unused things from the first game. They even let you tinker and mess around with some of the game mechanics and visuals(for example, you can test how gravity works or change the speed of the projectiles), and even go into a test level that was used to test Ratchet’s moves when making the levels.
Dude, I'd love a Discovery Mode in every lore-filled game like Dark Souls. Just going around, exploring and talking to NPCs without having to worry about a monster trying to kill you (and it wouldn't be easy mode because there would be no challenge other than discovery itself)
I want to mention OWW (occupy white walls), it's still in alpha but it's been really fun and educational so far. you basically create your own art gallery and fill it with pre-existing artwork, mostly pretty old clasical stuff right now but they'll add more. you can vist other people's galleries as well as find out information on the artwork your looking at. :)
One thing that keeps me coming back to the AC franchise is the ability to walk in past places. It never really struck me how cool it could be until I stood in a spot in front of the actual roman Colosseum where I had stood in the game or had a little giggle to myself how I snuck in through the hole in the roof of the pantheon and then was able to photograph it for myself several years later. Another thing I would point out is that AC:Syndicate allows you travel over buildings and along streets that you can actually walk on today (not on the buildings of course, they frown on climbing them). Those aspects of the game have stuck with me much longer than any story they were telling me at the time. I've not played through the mode in the newest AC game but the fact they were willing to take the risk and put themselves out there really can't be praised enough.
Tourist aimed free running/parkour games would be lit! Seeing New York and climb everything, while seeing where hotels and restaurants are. Getting people interested in traveling to these weird places such as where I live, a small town in Sweden.
Excellent video as always. While I deeply agreed with the ameliorations you suggest, I didn't feel the discovery mode to be really that much on rails.
I begin to play AC Origins with the discovery mode, my father by my side because we were both curious about what it had to offer. We run to the Alexandria library, follow part of the tour, try to recognise witch god represent the statues, find we can switch character and spend 2 hours roaming around with Supercaesar, running from a landmark to the other, jumping and swimming everywhere, half-following some visits while my father compare the game with memories of his trip to Egypt.
That was one of the best play session I ever had.
Now that I continue the game, I switch to discovery mode each time something trigger my curiosity. GG Ubisoft for discovery mode
oddly enough this reminds me of the old eyewitness DOS games
That... is probably the best kind of ancient civilization lesson I think there could ever be. Imagine if they put it in other settings like WWII? letting you explore and play though different regiments of a military unit in different battles?
This exploration mode is perfect for the AC series, I hope to see them continue putting it in future games. I'm not even a fan of AC and I'm tempted to get Origins specifically for this mode.
I think it’d be pretty cool if you guys did an Extra History or Extra Mythology series on Egypt; it’s such a fascinating culture with a deep and complex mythology that even has influences on our world today!
It would be really awesome if the collectibles were letters from ordinary people from that period, in that way you could educate someone about how life was in ancient egypt and not only the history of some monuments (although it already is really cool).
Can you imagine if they make a good discovery mode when they finally do an assassin's Creed focused on the Sengoku Jidai?
That would be an assassin's Creed I'll buy.
frenchiveruti Feudal Japan already gets a ton of coverage in games though. Pre-feudal Japan(prior to ~1400 CE), now that's something we don't see much of.
Man, i'm not even a huge history nerd but i read all of the landmark things in AC Brotherhood. Giving you the option to learn about it in the context of a world, even if it's an abstracted game world, just makes it so much more interesting.
Also, Ubisoft seems to be on a roll, let's hope they keep it up :)
Ubisoft: Hey... are we the bad guys?
EA: Oh most definately.
Ubisoft: R-really??
EA: Being the bad guy nets the most cash! Mwah-hahaha!
Ubisoft: ...
French Companies: Oooohhh a shiny! Uuuubiseft? Imma buy you!
Ubisosft: ... I... I dont think I wanna be one of the bad guys anymore...
Seriously though, thrir progress has been slow, but has anyone else noticed that Ubisoft has at least been trying to inprove themselves and their image? Its kinda nice.
Same. I see Ubisoft as one of those kids that hang around the bullies to look cool, but when you actually get to know that kid he's actually a pretty good person. Not saying that Ubisoft is a great gaming company yet and that they still have a lot of s*** to get together, but at least they're doing what EA and Activision aren't: Improving.
Jacob K its a great place to work too, got my first AAA credit on this game :D
They've been improving slowly over time. It's just that most people online seldom give them credit
Another thing which is a problem for them are their servers / or were ; i haven't actually played a new Ubisoft game in ages but that is something that also gave them a bad image
the historic tours i could get in AC is why i LOVED 2 and brotherhood so damn much
This is a really interesting subject you guys are touching upon!
It's really amazing to see how games have developed to the point where people are considering them in terms of more than just entertainment value, but also educational value as well.
I think the Assassin's Creed team was more uniquely positioned to adjust their product for this niche though. It's easier to imagine the devs from games such as AC, Civilization or even Dynasty Warriors retool their games for such Discovery Tours than say, any game based in the Warhammer 40k universe.
I wonder if the ability of games to lend themselves to role-playing could enhance the interactivity of the experience. Ubisoft could put the player in the shoes of an architect, for example, instead of an assassin. A day in the life of a pyramid architect going about his business would be interesting, and the additional context would relieve a little of the static nature of the experience. Heck, imagine this idea executed in VR!
Would also be a great way for devs to reuse their assets with a little touching-up rather than rebuild new ones from scratch. I'd definitely like to return to visit the Hagia Sophia from AC2's expansions.
You can actually parkour around the cities and even ride mounts to get to various locations to start the tour
This kind of reminds me of the developer commentary mode in some of Valves older titles like Team Fortress 2 or Half Life, where as you play through the game you can find little floating speech bubbles that when interacted with give you a voice over from the devs about their experiences making the game.
And I tip my hat to you EC, offically my favourite channel on RUclips.
I remember a number of years ago my sister and I got into a discussion about how we would design an educational video game. What we ended up with was a story about a character which was sent throughout time, and kept appearing at different famous battles in history where they became basically just a side soldier in the war. Forced to learn the tactics of the day so they could take part in the battle. The player could take time to learn as little or as much as they wanted to, but the catch was that any skills you learned in a previous era could be transported to the next era you appear in. So if you took the time to learn different skills of the day, you'd have more options of what you could do in future wars, while all the way experiencing these epic battles.
Now of course the concept itself has a ton of mechanical flaws which would make it a nightmare to program... but I like the core component of "The player chooses to learn or not, but the more the learn the stronger they'll be/the more rewarded they'll be. There becomes a tangible PURPOSE to learning the history if you will
YOU ARE HOLDING THE HAT INCORRECTLY!
If they were British they would just *cough* , "tut" and shake their head. (This isn't a monocle drop moment.)
I’m a history major, and I will say that we need to not only create more modes like this in historical games, but we need to them well. History isn’t taught well here in the U.S and a lot of that has to do with a focus on facts/dates instead of the broader context. So if we have these type of modes in games, I think we need to focus on the broader context of material in addition to exploration. For example, if you were doing a game on 1917 Russia, maybe you would have the player explore a populated Saint Petersburg and have things that explained the wider context of why the February/October Revolutions occurred. Regardless, loved the ideas you presented!
Have you played Senuas Sacrifice?
Apart from having a really bone-chilling main story, I think that game has some of the "discovery" elements you just described as well. Playing the game, one frequently finds weird glowing rocks scattered throughout the world and if one goes near them an "focuses" on them, one is told a bit about the environment or a story out of north mythology. The developers split most of these stories into episodes and I ended up looking for these rocks a lot because I wanted to hear the next part. I would absolutely love it if more games did something like that. Not only is it a fun opportunity to learn about stuff you most likely wouldn't take the time to learn about otherwise but working the information provided into the games story the way they did with Senuas Sacrifice also helps the games world feel much more realistic. It can even feel like a nice breather between puzzles or fights to just sit down and listen to a story for a minute or two.
Medieval 2 is what got me into history in the first place. Getting more people into history might one day achieve the impossible; getting a leader who doesn't repeat the mistakes of the past.
Just a fun fact, the recently released Kingdom Come: Deliverence was included as a learning tool at the Charles University in Prague as their research of the Hussite period is astounding and is well acknowledged even by the proffesional historians.
The first thing I thought of upon hearing about this new exploration mode was Half Life 2: Lost Coast and the dev commentary that went along with it. I think that would be an amazing way to do a game like this, where the full game exists unmodified but you can layer an optional set of interaction points where voice-over or visual explanations could take place, educating the player on the real world importance and significance of the experience.
I always did want more of those dev logs too, I wish that was something more games had done.
I know of a Professor who uses the total war series to show how battles went. I was fun when he scroll down the map and his units had run away and then tried to destroy a landmark which was not destroyed.
in your last point about allowing people to live history through custom interactions, i have actually seen multiple examples of museums or national parks using actors to re create scenes and people. generally this does take the form of one-man plays, my mom even produced a biographical mucial about john muir in Martinez where his house is (extra history about the founding of the national parks would be really important right now).
But I actually got to tour a 1860s style adobe farm house, homestead, and trading post on the Philmont Scout Ranch in NM, and all of the Rangers there had a dual job of general park staff and re-enacter. i've shot muskets with fur trappers, played "moonlight sonata" on a piano that hasn't been tuned since 1860 (company promised free tuning, their stock warehouse burned down 5 years later and they went out of business), made candles in the rain with homesteaders, and while they didn't act it out, i got to look at some indigenous people artifacts in an authentic teepee, then got into a
3:38
Well, I don't know you guys, but personally I read half of this 'history reports' only to get to the tiny bits of comedy provided by Shaun Hastings. Especially in AC3, the fact that he was an English talking about the American Revolution made it hilarious!
That end credit music was so dope!!! 🔥
Awesome video. Not just praising a great choice for videogames but also providing some critical thought on how it can be improved to make an awesome experience.
Btw you CAN run and jump in tour mode. And the achievements on the game for the tours are a very short part of it. The rest of the tours are of your own will.
This is amazing and I know a lot about history from the assassins creed games yes I know their not all 100% accurate but you can find the discrepancy’s out fairly easily.
Keep up the perfect work!Love this channel! :)
As an edutainment developer building physical geography "virtual environments", this kind of interactivity is very challenging to create. The approach I've been taking is to layer the experience.
Layer 1) Get it done fast. This layer is for student "players" who are trying to get through their assigned lab activity quickly. Exploration truncated, with the student being take directly points of interest or activity. In function its little more than 3D version of a typical printed lab exercise. Distilling the information and ask as much as possible.
Layer 2) Guided exploration. This layer is not-dissimilar to AC:Os guide tour mode, although I don't lock players into a set path. More like the glowing Icon in the sky. Students are directed to the next "activity" defined in Layer 1, but can arrive there at their own pace. With opportunities to practice skills they've learned in prior activities, and "explore" the *geography* of the learning/play area.
Layer 3) Free roam. This layer drops any guidance, hands the student all the tools the lab contains, and just lets them explore the geography and contained data. This layer is actually intended for the children of adult college students, and is inspired by various Minecraft real world digitization projects. Project 1845 of the Forbidden City. Denmark in Minecraft. Britain's Ordnance Survey in Minecraft.
Students can switch between the layers just by choosing *how* they interact. If they've just been free-roaming and want to finally knuckle down to the lesson they can jump back on the pre-defined scripted path. However I had to develop that system, which isn't actually far off from scripting "quests" in something like Skyrim, lots of "flags" and logic tracking. To which I'll admit is still more than a bit buggy. I would suspect the AC:O doesn't have a good quest scripting tool set, which would be why the low-cost method was just to "walk" the players through a museum.
-> Good tools for "quest" scripting will be critical for these kinds of Video Games for Education. Especially ones that handle players going up and down the "quest" chain, and skipping all around it out of sequence. Like a RUclips video or Adobe Presenter presentation.
Another issue is asset streaming. Quick "teleports" to key locations often break the asset and terrain streams, requiring some kind of loading screen. It is safer to make a player walk along a prescribed path, and have a known sequence of optimized asset loading. However, there are opportunities with "loading screens", now that the Namco Bandai loading screen mini-game patent has expired. Be it interactive lessons and materials on a screen with a loading bar, or the way God of War does it by having the player wait in a 3D game space (world tree branch).
Its hard to design voiced information that can be played at the same time as the player moves. It can lead to clashes with other dialog's or distract form a certain motives if placed in an inconvenient spot. But when its done right Its the best way to take in information. Like playing something mindless while listening to a podcast.
Hope to see more of this. I would love to have a "oracle" type voice that I can ask about structures, people and other things.
I didnt even know they did this so that's really awesome! As always I am late to the party. Here's what I would like too see or think may work and it builds off your idea for having the information at places players choose to visit. Have the places suggest this other place if they want to learn more about a particular subject, people may be more likely to get all the information that way and its still a choice. They could also save the audio files and put them in a sort of timeline so when you "collect" them you can visually see that pieces are missing so players know they don't have the whole story and they could listen to the files whenever they choose. Maybe at the end have an unnecessary but useful item to encourage players to get the bits of information and complete it. It's still the players choice, but its put in the context of the game as you suggested and players are allowed to do as they wish while still gaining bits of history with extra encouragement to get the whole picture at their leisure.
honestly, if it did have the open-ended options, it'd work so much better. imagine using it in a classroom setting, and the teacher is watching and just says "alright everyone, i want you to find the obalisk in the north end of the map". everyone has to figure out how to get there on their own, and kids can start showing each other ways to get there. maybe have something like they need to write down/take notes on what the info blurb there says.
alternatively, make it like one of those race minigames, where you run and parkour along a set track hitting goalposts along the way in a set timer. there, travel between points is interesting again.
I think there are other ways to enforce and direct the experience that wasn't addressed here. For example, if a specific blurb popped up a little screen that said "market and trade 1/7" when u saw that market scene u described. Players will seek the other 6 screens to complete it. Basically skinner box techniques for either achievements or variant equipment which isnt better that available equipment but just looks different.
There was a world war 1 game. “Valiant Hearts” I think it was where there were all these spibbits about the war and the conflicts. Even the basic (basic so no one could re create it) ingredients for mustard gas and exactly how it effects the lungs. The game itself was cartoony but the information was solid.
i really liked the art style in the beginning
I think what I would recommend for a game like that is to have a normal mode where those info spots are there but the game still plays the same, and something that you might call "sandbox mode" or "education mode" where the info things are a bit easier to spot, the gameplay objectives are mostly disabled and the player can't die (and possibly also where the parkour is a bit easier), so that the players can still enjoy things like the movement modes but not have the regular game distracting them and not have lack of skill get in the way of learning.
Of course if all the information is in the regular game, I could see it definitely making some kinds of players more interested in history. I know that when I play a game like Skyrim I tend to be a bit of a lore hound, so I could definitely imagine that for anyone like me in that regard playing a game like that would make them a bit more interested in real-world history. Especially if you also throw in a couple of achievements to get the completionists interested in reading every last bit of history including the ones in hard-to-get-to places.
the bit about wandering a market and being educated about the economic state at the time reminded me of the anime Spice and Wolf; I feel like I know way more about economics from watching that show than anyone who's never taken a class on the subject should know.
The learning tour described in this video is exactly what Assassin's Creed needs! I hope the next games will include this mode. Keep the open world, but trade the combat for commentaries about the world.
I am dissapointed to hear how linear the Discovery Mode actually is. I was looking forward to it, but what is described here is what I was hoping the Discovery Mode was going to be.
A simple solution is to just have a check mark box at the beginning asking if you'd like to have extra historical content available during the game. That way, people who just want a game and people who want to find cool facts while exploring can both have a good experience.
The Island Flyover mode in Wii Sports Resort feels like a good example of this done right.
Though I did get distracted by trying to beat the time limit per flight and get as much as I could.
Take away the time limit and I think that’ll be great!
Have you guys looked into the way Dynasty Warriors 9 implements their open world? I took time out of protecting the emperor because I saw a historic site icon on my map that i hadn’t seen yet, and it turned out to be the Great Wall of China. I was able to climb it, walk it, and even fire arrows at the bandits on the other side of the wall.
The idea of having glowing markers that highlight spots of interest, or at least as markers of where players can get more informative tidbits, reminds me a lot of how Valve games often have a Developer Commentary mode. In it, the gameplay is more or less identical to how it is in the normal game, though sometimes with some hazards removed, but there are now also little speech bubble icons floating around that the player can touch to hear a bit of commentary about how something nearby in the game functions on a gameplay level. This sort of thing would need to be adjusted were it made for Assassin's Creed; in the Valve games as soon as you can see one of those bubbles you can interact with it no matter how far away it is, which would defeat the point of the open world in AC. But I hunted down every last one of those bubbles when I went through both of the Portal games, Half-Life 2 and E1 and E2, and even Left 4 Dead! Now granted, I'm a game design nerd and that stuff appealed to me anyway, but I see no reason a similar system wouldn't work for a historically-bent game like Assassin's Creed.
I do hope that they incorporate this into their next Assassin's Creed title. A wonderful blend of exploration, learning the history of a location, and the "hack and slash" that this game is known for. I could see an extra incentive for finding those out of the way locations that you only find with exploration. Something cosmetic in-game which might trigger different dialog if you wore such item around certain NPCs.
Places with interesting info in games reminds me of Niantic’s Ingress, the predecessor to Pokémon Go. All the gyms and stops originate from that game as portals. Most of the points were chosen bc of artistic or historic value (I say most bc junk portals sometimes got through and also some independent businesses have portals before they were restricted from portal submission). I remember one Ingress play session in downtown Louisville where I found a building where Martin Luther King Jr visited bc of student protests being led there during the civil rights era, as well as a couple different plaques - one indicating where a slave auction was once held and another memorializing the Underground Railroad abt one block away. It was basically a real life version of what you’re suggesting here! Only, it can only show what’s there now, not what was hundreds or thousands of years in the past. It would be great to have this concept in history classes tbh.
Someone should make something like this for VR. It could even be an interesting fixture in a museum. Call it an immersion tour or something
I'm at 3:16 and wanted to comment this now because I won't feel like it at the end of the video:
You should checkout (if you haven't already) the dead drops thing in infamous games. They're things you find and pickup (with guidance) throughout the game. When you pick them up, an audio file is played of a recording of a character saying something important to the story/history of the game. It was always my favorite part of the franchise.
I'm Ethan Ritchie's cousin and I found it amazing when he showed me this. He told me he made about 30 seconds of the video a day, just to not overwelm himself.
This seems like an ideal fit for MGS V's codec system, where you focus on something with your binoculars and press a button to get info on it.
Binocs might be harder to come by in ancient Egypt though, so I dunno, maybe use the eagle or something.
Reminds me of how I would spend hours just looking through all the mythology snippets for the units in Age of Mythology. My basis in Greek myth is completely from that one game.
I really love you guys exactly for videos like this one. It's smart, funny, with cool looking animations and you're also defending US, the players and our gaming experience from things like AC Origins Discovery Tour.
Keep up the great work.
If they had been doing this since the original games, that'd have been amazing. I loved roaming around colonial Boston, the Caribbean, and especially Victorian London more than...well...doing what the games actually needed me to do.
I love the idea of a augmented reality museum! Imagine walking down the halls of the building and seeing Dinosaurs,Samurai warriors and works of art all come to life. I would love to see our technology get us there.
Games that teach you about things by making the learning PART of the fun are amazing. Take Cellcraft for example. A flash game where you control a single cell, and have to survive harsh conditions and a couple different types of viruses. It's like an RTS game, but you learn about things along the way. Defend your nucleus at all costs, and learn WHY the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. It's really cool, and I'd recommend it, even as just something to play for fun.