I've played a few starting with the original, and particularly enjoyed AC3 (American Revolution setting). As a non-American, I remembered finding it a very engaging way of learning more about the setting, context and so on. I always think about using it as a way to introduce my children to a topic or environment.

I recently introduced my young son to the trashy film Gods of Egypt, explaining it was not a good film. He asked why then was I showing it to him, and I explained that I just wanted something that gave him a feel for the world, though it is obviously juiced up to ridiculous levels of pomp.

It led to a long time looking at satellite maps of the Nile, how important it was to the region, the farms on floodplains, looking for burial sites on the western side of the river, talking about how the shape of farm plots might hint at the age of the farm, sizes of tombs for wealthy vs common people, etc. We then found a Nat Geo doco on archaeologists working in Egypt on various projects, to see the real world view of desert, funerary objects that tied in with themes from the trashy film, etc.

This week the school run car conversations (kids are 9 and 6) have been speculating about polytheistic religion there, animals and various other topics. It's always rewarding when any silence breaks with a relevant question that sparks another angle of chitchat.

Sounds like I need to get AC: Origins...

The Discovery Tour mode in Origins is fantastic, I think I have more hours in it than the actual game.

Great to know - thanks!

Does it cover the full environment? As in, can you safely roam the towns/houses/countryside exploring and then the guide kicks in for specific features (pyramids, etc)? I watched some videos but it was hard to tell how hand-holdy it was versus broad exploration.

Found the game second hand and wondered about getting it for my son to explore, but he's 9yo and the full game sounds a bit inappropriate (language, brothel, violence probably a bit gratuitous - we play Halo where the violence is a bit less realistic).

More info here:

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/assassins-creed/discovery...

https://assassinscreed.fandom.com/wiki/Discovery_Tour:_Ancie...

You can explore all of it I think, haven't played it in a while. There are also tours of specific areas as well, like the Pyramids.

FYI if you don't want your son to play the base game due to violence, you can buy the discovery tour versions of Egpyt, Greece, Vikings separately as stnadalone, which only contain the tours and not the stabbing and killing gameplay.

Very useful. I'll investigate. Thanks!

Discovery Mode would be one of the killer apps of cloud gaming. Give a license to schools to allow students to stream any of the games on their cheap laptops. Yes, schools would still have to surmount the network load, or students couldn't stream from home, etc etc. Just imagine you're walking through a semi-historical 2020's America with anachronistic good internet.

Discovery mode should have multiplayer with in-world chat, a roleplaying environment. In fact i wonder why they did not release it as such.

You're wondering why they didn't put hundreds of hours of engineering work into a mode that makes them no money?

I'm personally grateful they made this mode at all.

why no money?

I could see modern historical reenactments (such as Civil War battles) moving online, with younger, more MMO-steeped players willing to roleplay as Private #12 who dies during the initial volley.

ARMA thrives in this area, and a recent expansion to ARMA 3: S.O.G. Prairie Fire is a great entry point for those who don’t play milsim games typically. There’s a beautifully crafted campaign that is designed as coop first, and was made with input from former US Special Forces MACV-SOG members.

Outside of this example, the community has scenarios like Antistasi, which is a dynamic gamemode that consists of two factions fighting to control a region, and your third insurgent force taking over. No scripted events, just AI making tactical decisions in response to your actions. The most predictable things are QRFs and increasing attacks on your positions as your war levels increase.

I have never had a session of Antistasi turn out similarly, other than people attaching to the roles they love (pilot,engineer,medic,etc.) Mods increase this to a next-level experience with TFAR for radio simulation, ACE for improved ballistics and medical systems, etc. There is a LOT to find, from WW2 to present day.

There are other more roleplay style servers, and I had a blast creating execution videos of in-game politicians and carbombing city squares on a roleplay server in 2014 or so as the Islamic State.

Great fun, great skills you can learn here (I learned a LOT about logistics and communications from ARMA, Foxhole, and Squad.) Game actually runs decently now too.

Check out “War of Rights”, it’s much like this.

Be warned that the community is incredibly toxic - but even so, it’s an interesting peek into the mindset of a typical soldier in that type of warfare. There is extremely little information available to you; you very rarely know if the round you just fired (that you spent thirty seconds loading) hit anything.

I would prefer the schools to teach kids difference between fiction and reality. And to teach them to be careful about taking fiction as source of historical reality.

> taking fiction as source of historical reality

As opposed to all those reliable primary sources our concept of history is based on?

There are many good historical prmarty sources - yes.

I don't know who told you all primary sources are reliable. Historians don't say so. And yes, fairly reliable primary sources exist, then again I would not gave them to kids to read.

But, 2000 fiction whose primary goal is entertainment is in fact not reliable source of history.

They won't care about anything you say if you don't grab their attention first.

Ancient Greece in a little cartoon in a history textbook is boring, running around ancient Greece being spoonfed a little classics is fun and visually appealing.

Ancient Greece history is boring, because it is so absurdly superficial and unreal. And pointless. Most of what people imagine as ancient history is closer to myth making then history anyway.

And creating in them completely wrong idea about how it functioned may he fun, but I would preferred to skip whole topic if you have to do that. Boring but at least sorta true is better then cool but mostly elaborate diorama.

A lot of the history they are being taught is in any case fiction.

TFA quoting Christopher P. Magra, a scholar of American Revolution–era maritime history:

“If a video game or movie or novel is going to base sales on historical content, then there exists an ethical obligation to deliver more than entertainment.”

I admire Christopher's hubris regarding the film & video game entertainment industries, and I can truly empathise with this desire, but I think that ship sailed an awfully long time ago.

Very good series there on History Respawned channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C9h3p5Efa4&list=PL6MyHOj463...

Ugh.. more like experiencing magazine typography on a desktop monitor because fuck your eyeballs. I thought we've solved web typography but it seems like you need to differentiate/disrupt and screw with people's eyesight.

It's a perfectly acceptable serif typeface (Adobe Castlon Pro), laid out with reasonable spacing and leading and a generous column width. What are you complaining about? Does your computer have terrible text rendering?

I think it looks nice on my desktop monitor, and absolutely wonderful on my retina laptop screen.

terrible text rendering both on my mbp and my windows desktop. I guess I'm too poor for for these websites or I don't 'get' how well Castlon works for screen reading.

> the pervasive modern misconception that history is equivalent to the reality of the past

TL;DR

Assassin's Creed games were good and historically accurate untill they got the original creators out (and Desmond dies) From there onwards is pure shit intended to sell games to button-smasher type of players....