Assassin's Creed without the monotonous grind of Assassin's Creed? A high-res, virtual, educational tour of ancient Egypt? Discovery Tour was everything I hoped it would be... or was it?
I wanted to like this game so badly and, for the most part, I did. I felt highly motivated to complete all the tours and I did just that. 14+ hours of educational material for $10 CAD on sale is not a bad deal, so then why can I not recommend this game?
Discovery Tour is an afterthought. The world was created for an Assassin's Creed game, not for educational purposes. There are 75 tours in 5 categories: Egypt (20), Alexandria (14), Pyramids (16), Romans (5), and Daily Life (20). I really enjoyed the Egypt tours, the other three were fun, but the Daily Life tours made the flaws of this game impossible to forgive.
The experience of Discovery Tour is an incessant juxtaposition between the tours saying, "Hey, look at this!" and the game developers responding, "We don't want you looking too closely at our work." The amazing environmental visuals are juxtaposed against the PS2 graphics of the npc models with their embarrassingly bad animations. And, the descriptions of Egypt provided in the tours often don't match the corresponding depictions in the game. This was most noticeable in the Daily Life tours. One tour talks about the fashion of Egyptians while the player is surrounded by npcs that look nothing like how they're supposed to.
The more you pay attention, the more you see that this game cuts every corner. Assets are copy-and-pasted like you wouldn't believe. Every mudbrick hut, temple, and city centre feels the same. The tours often provide city layout designs used as inspiration from the amazing artist Jean-Claude Glovin, but none of the urban centres actually adhere to his designs. They all just feel like Assassin's Creed slop. Moreover, the art and artifacts presented at each tour station are used and reused over and over again. Why am I being punished for paying attention? Would it really be so hard to find unique images for each station? Discovery Tour suffers from an extreme quantity-over-quality issue that seems to plague all of Ubisoft's products. How is it better to have a vast, yet empty, open world, than it is to have a scale-accurate Alexandria?
As for the quality of the information/research. It's pretty good. With 75 tours, there was clearly a lot of research put into this project. Unfortunately, it's all surface level. Everything is communicated in 1-3 short paragraphs at a time that prevent the game from going into a depth of detail on any given topic. There are a few times when an argument or position is formed, but it's never fully developed or substantiated before the player moves on to the next tour station. However, I will praise the tours for being very transparent with the information. They always acknowledge the creative liberties taken by the developers, and they always note when something in the game purposefully deviates from the historical records. Some negative reviews complain about historical inaccuracies, but I actually think the research done for the game is one of its few strengths. Had that one review complaining about "woke" girls being educated in Alexandria played for more than 40 minutes, he might have noticed how all soldiers, priests, miners, and engineers are portrayed by men, and how all weavers are portayed by women. The "politics" of this game are totally superficial and completely forgotten 1 hour in. In my opinion, the most offensive inaccuracy is that scorpions are referred to as insects rather than arachnids--twice!
In short, the visuals are consistently impressive and the tours are well researched and engaging. What has potential to be a great experience is ultimately ruined by the developers' widespread lack of attention to detail. The game wants to show off its reconstruction of ancient Egypt, but the more you try to appreciate it, the more you notice how sloppily it has all been thrown together. I had a lot of fun with Discovery Tour, but it was an overall let-down.
