Ancient Egypt shines in video game's new educational mode
A popular game franchise about assassins made waves this month for a new, violence-free educational feature.
Assassin's Creed Origins, the 10th instalment in the successful series, was updated last week with a "discovery tour" mode that takes players deep into Egypt in the time of Cleopatra, the last ruler of the Ptolemaic kingdom. It serves as a virtual interactive museum, with 75 audio-guided tours by actual Egyptologists.
Part of the game and the tour was worked on by Ubisoft Singapore, with Ubisoft's Montreal studio as the lead.
The 300-strong team here helped design the Faiyum region and its Krokodilopolis city, where Egyptian crocodile deity Sobek was worshipped.
The level of detail in the game and the tour is meticulous, and much of the development was dedicated to research.
"We researched the diets, houses and transportation that people had," said Ubisoft Singapore's producer, Mr Karl Luhe, 38.
"Humans were at the mercy of floods and droughts that determined one's survival and impacted their health or food-intake. Such things were considered when building our game."
The game is so realistic that when a secret chamber was discovered - in real life - in the Great Pyramid of Giza last November, there was no need for the game's designers to make any changes as they had already designed one.
Origins creative director Jean Guesdon from Ubisoft Montreal told TNP: "In the game, we created the two antechambers and the inner ramp based on the theories of French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin (who predicted it)."
Reviews of the new feature have been positive, with fans asking for more of the same in future instalments of the series.
Get The New Paper on your phone with the free TNP app. Download from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store now