Creators of the latest Assassin’s Creed went to extreme lengths to recreate ancient Egypt’s historical settings

THE Discovery Mode in the latest Assassin’s Creed game is something special, thanks to a raft of historians and Egyptologists.

THE Assassin’s Creed games from Ubisoft have made their name as the world’s pre-eminent historical stabbing simulator video games.

The overall plot involves an age old struggle between freedom and oppression, reliving the past through genetic memories and science, and assassinating people because of reasons.

If you take a break from all the parkour and targeted murder, however, there’s a considerable amount of detail that goes into the worldbuilding to truly recreate the setting — whether it’s Renaissance Italy, Victorian London or even Ancient Egypt.

Just wandering around the recreated worlds has been quite a big part of the Assassin’s Creed experience, but the release of Assassin’s Creed: Origins — set in Ancient Egypt — has taken it to an entirely new level, to the point where there’s even a Discovery Mode that leaves you free to explore Ancient Egypt without fights, missions, or other distractions.

Franchise historian Maxime Durand heads up the team responsible for ensuring the historical aspects of Assassin’s Creed games and said every game in the series had presented its own challenges.

“Every game is a different challenge, you always have to play with people’s conception of the time period,” he said.

Mr Durand said while most people had a fairly clear idea of what Pharaonic Egypt looked like, Origins was set during the Ptolemaic era and reign of Cleopatra, which provided a melting pot of cultures clashing.

Part of the challenge of researching the era was that much of the information on Cleopatra was written by her enemies such as Julius Caesar.

“The country is filled with native Egyptians, there are Greek rulers imposing themselves on the population with more or less success ... and the Romans are trying to take over Egypt also,” he said.

“There’s a very rich political game happening.”

Part of the challenge of researching the era was that much of the information on Cleopatra was written by her enemies such as Julius Caesar, Mr Durand said.

“We have to see through the lines and make the best out of that information, which is a very fine challenge,” he said.

The team of researchers and history professors led by Mr Durand were forced to make concessions in favour of gameplay over absolute historical accuracy in some cases, but he said they did their utmost to stay as true to reality as possible while ensuring players could enjoy the game.

“We always know the game has to be fun, and people will enjoy history if they have fun enjoying ancient Egypt,” he said.

The game’s creators feel the Discovery Mode could potentially be used as an educational tool for teaching students about life in Ancient Egypt.

He said it was a difficult line to walk, and used the pyramids and the Sphinx as examples.

“We tried to portray them as faithfully as possible ... It’s very, very close to the reality of what we think we know,” he said.

“If you look at the Great Pyramid, it’s the right proportion and the right size, but we had to play with the matrix for the player to be able climb it.”

The pyramid is rendered at one to one scale but sits on an elevated position so the player can see it from afar, Mr Durand explained, adding the front pylons of the Temple of Memphis had also been made larger to make them easier to see.

“Geolocation is really important within the game, people have to understand where they are,” he said.

“We play with people’s perceptions based on what we know of ancient Egypt.”

The question many armchair Egyptologists will be asking is “Can I go inside the Great Pyramid of Cheops?” and the answer is yes, Mr Durand said — but it required some creative licence to make it possible.

“The state of decay of the pyramids was a very complex question; we know they were plundered. So, what ways did they (looters) take to enter the pyramid?,” he said.

“At Khufu (Cheops) there are two entrances. One had been blown by dynamite in the 19th century, the other is the Robbers Entrance supposedly opened by the Arabs, which is way after (the game’s setting).

“But if you look at some texts, they say maybe the Caliph didn’t actually open it, he just enlarged the way — because ancient writers said the pyramid had already been plundered (by then).

The game actually allows players to explore, discover and learn more about life in ancient Egypt.

“We had to choose to say, you can enter the pyramid although it wasn’t possible at that time.”

There are plenty of other areas where Mr Durand and his research team have been able to stay completely historically accurate, including rendering city names in hieroglyphics.

In fact, there is so much work put into bringing the entire country of ancient Egypt to life the designers have included a “discovery mode” in the game, allowing players to explore, discover and learn more about life in ancient Egypt without having to hack and slash their way across the country in the process.

Mr Durand said the amount of research and detail in Discovery Mode meant it could potentially be used as an educational tool for teaching students about life in Ancient Egypt.

“Either a teacher using 3D environment to teach about Ancient Egypt ... or a class assignment where you have to go into the Great Library of Alexandria and learn about the building, about its importance, the architecture of the building, the great minds of the library and the science,” he said.

Franchise historian Maxime Durand.

The most rewarding part of his role was bringing everything from a time period to life in-game and the resulting immersion, Mr Durand said, and it was something the team had done extremely well for the latest game.

“We mostly worked with the Egyptologists via distance and they don’t see the game progress for a while, so when they came in recently back in June to see the game — which was a quite final version — they were impressed,” he said.

“That feeling is very rewarding; they felt like the information they gave us inspired us to recreate this world they’d never seen themselves — when they saw it and could walk in it, they felt like they were in the ancient Egypt they had in their mind.”

Assassin’s Creed: Origins is out now for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.