While playing Assassin’s Creed Origins, I was very curious about the fantastical plot and amazed by the beautiful graphics of the backgrounds, but I quickly realized that this game is not meant to be used in a classroom in my opinion. The wild and expansive plot was too hard to separate from the experience, which causes you to you lose out on the ability to analyze the historical events and places that the game is set in. The main game itself is not a useful educational tool, but the additional mode of the Discovery Tour transforms this game into a great resource that allows your students a first-hand experience of Ancient Egypt and its culture.
The game was fun to play after I figured out the mechanics and became better at wielding my weapon. I found myself becoming absorbed in the rich plotline and then confused as it shifted to a future perspective with researchers being able to live through the memories of their ancestors. I then realized if someone with little interest in games and a big desire to learn about history like myself was having trouble finding historically relevant elements besides the background being accurate, then my students would have even more trouble seeing the educational value in this game. When you create lessons, especially with highly engaging materials like video games, you have to give specific instructions and make sure there is limited room for distractions. If I were to incorporate this game simply as is in the main version, my students would become lost and then disinterested in the historical analysis because they would care more about the plot that drives forward the game rather than the historical background that is quite loosely interpreted at times for entertainment purposes.
Fortunately, this issue of the storyline overpowering the educational value of this game was realized by the game developers themselves. After requests and interest from educators who enjoyed the game but felt something was missing for it to be a resource for students, Ubisoft, created the Discovery Tour mode. This educational mode was designed specifically to not include the storyline and provide a place where students can explore Ancient Egypt in the simulation. The game mode was developed and curated with the help of historians and Egyptologists who wanted to make the experience historically accurate as much as possible. (Ubisoft https://store.ubi.com/us/game/?lang=en_US&pid=5a7d728d0c8ee45b54018f23&dwvar_5a7d728d0c8ee45b54018f23_Platform=pcdl&edition=Ancient%20Egypt&source=detail) The Discovery mode provides guided tours that share facts and information about the places and people they encounter in their gameplay. This structured format is much more suitable to the classroom environment as middle and high schoolers require structure to stay on task. I could easily incorporate this educational mode into my classroom and use specific tour and their themes to encourage group discussions about Ancient Egypt and its architecture, culture, environment, and plenty more. These set tours also help with the fact that students would be interacting with the same places in their gameplay and can discuss their thoughts together easily. A jigsaw lesson could be another way to incorporate Discovery Tour mode into the classroom by having students each play a different guided tour and then come together to share what they learned in the tour through informal mini-presentations that would also provide information from other class resources and how their tour relates to and provided examples of what they learned beforehand in class. During my initial playthrough, I was not aware of the Discovery Tour mode, but when I learned about it, it excited me and made me want to have this in my future classroom if I get the chance because it's engaging and fun, yet still informative and educational.
Assassin’s Creed origins in its simplest form I still believe is not appropriate for classroom use to the violence and language along with the inaccurate storyline that would confuse my students as they would fixate on the plot. The addition of the educational mode, Discovery Tour, changes my perception of the game completely as this mode provides ample opportunity for enriching gameplay experiences that would give my students a chance to experience Ancient Egypt firsthand through the historically accurate simulation and guided tours. I commend the game developers, even if it was simply about monetary gain, for creating a version that allows educators to make better use of the beautiful historical background that is behind the original game mode.