Assassin’s Creed Origins becomes an ‘open world museum’ with Discovery Tour mode

At some point in 2018, Assassin’s Creed Origins is being patched to include a mode called Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt. This was revealed by series creative director Jean Guesdon at an event earlier this week. 

According to Guesdon, this is the evolution of the historical database that was present in previous games in the series. The Discovery Tour mode keeps the entirety of the open world Egypt in Origins, but removes the combat and narrative, replacing them with dozens of guided tours that players can walk along and learn more about the history of Ancient Egypt, including topics like mummification and the day to day lives of regular Egyptians. 

Each of the tours will have a set number of stations, and an estimated time for completion. Guesdon described it as ‘an open world museum.’ He said, ‘We met with specialist historians; Egyptologists in this case, and we really tried to bring this time period as close to a level of immersion that’s never been seen.’

This mode was partially in response to testimony from teachers saying that they used the AC games as an entry point to spark students’ interest, but were presumably finding it difficult to get a stealth murder simulator on the AQA sources list for GCSEs.

Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt will be added to the game for free in 2018. Origins itself is out on PS4, PC and Xbox One on October 27.