Assassin’s Creed Has New Teaching Mission
History has long served as a backdrop in the Assassin’s Creed video games, whose story lines center on pivotal times — from the Third Crusade to Imperial China and beyond. But when players of this Ubisoft series rush from mission to mission, as agents of events both great and small, their purpose is rarely to take the time to appreciate history itself. Duty always calls. Until now. Following last year’s release of Assassin’s Creed Origins, set in Ptolemaic Egypt, the team behind it decided that allowing players to learn more about life in ancient Egypt might make for a pretty cool teaching aid. So they traded in the quests and violence for antiquities and history lessons, and created a mode with a series of Discovery Tours. By putting history front and center, the game may give teachers a new way to connect with some students.
A game franchise debuts an educational mode.
Edyeli Marku, a middle- school teacher in New York, said there could be “tremendous value in it,” for both students and educators — particularly for students who might test as primarily visual, auditory or kinesthetic learners. For those students, she added, “exposing them to a different learning vehicle is always beneficial.”
Ms. Marku said she understands the importance of games to her students and has even used Oregon Trail as a teaching tool.
“They go on the phone like it’s nothing,” she said. “They go on an iPad, and they can spend hours in front of it.”
Maxime Durand, who has been the lead researcher and history consultant for the Assassin’s Creed franchise since 2010, and Jean Guesdon, the creative director on Origins, said they had often heard from educators who saw the potential of using the games. Some had even used small portions in their lessons. But much of Assassin’s Creed, given its violence and fictional narrative, is problematic in a school setting.
Even Ms. Marku said the violent content could hamper the franchise’s acceptance for education purposes, especially for parents reacting to the name of the series or those familiar with its subject matter.
In this version of the game, though, players guide their chosen avatar. It can be the sheriff- like character Bayek, the original protagonist of Assassin’s Creed Origins, or one of 25 possible others, including Bayek’s wife, Aya; their son, Khemu; Cleopatra; Julius Caesar; Roman legionnaires; and even ordinary Egyptian, Greek and Roman people.
A voice- over details the objects on view, including artifacts like pottery, scrolls, farm tools and baking ovens. The 75 available tours cover daily life, monuments, agriculture, the lives of Greek and Roman settlers, and other topics. At some locations, nonplayable characters are seen performing tasks like baking bread, tilling a field or inscribing scrolls. Here players can elect to have their chosen avatar perform the activity. Maybe Cleopatra and Caesar never knelt before a bread oven to remove a hot loaf from the coals, but here players can have that experience.
The Library of Alexandria is another stop. In recreating it, Mr. Durand said, his team looked to the remnants of the Library of Celsus, which is still standing amid the ancient ruins in Ephesus, Turkey.
Of course, a lot of history’s secrets are lost to time. That’s where a Behind the Scenes feature comes in. The makers use it to explain how and why they chose to represent certain objects. Mr. Durand said he hoped this would also prompt students to think critically about how games are created and the way stories are told.