Research pt.3
Finally after trying to look for an interesting resource I stumbled upon this amazing gift. Most of us know by now Assassin’s Creed is game based on historical events with fictional story events blended in together creating an extremely interesting gaming experience. In this case the game has covered many different events such as the American Civil War, The Renaissance, The Great Crusade and even the French Revolution.
These have been significant periods of history which influenced all of the games in the franchise to increase the ever expanding story, but after some time, the overall gameplay changed to where the next game they would make would be based in Egypt where they took to time to study from historians to put a lot of effort into the game’s design
The amount of information that was retained managed to influence much of the architechture and create a fairly realistic environment during the Ptolemaic period of Eygpt and because of this lead to the team to create the Discovery Tours, where people can finally be given information on that time period, with extensive detail. In essence creating an interactive museum piece for players to explore with the same mechanics found in the actual Assassin’s Creed game. So how did they try to achieve this?
From start-up the player can select which subject they wish to explore with quite a big range being divided by geographical sections of the map, but displayed as a list. You pick one and initially transported to that area and in order to start you move the character to the circle to start the tour. From there you will be greeted with certain camera movement to display information that’s currently present in the environment relative to the topic with the option of switching back and forth from the current camera location to artwork as the original reference point and then once you’ve completed the first one, you will see a line that guides you to the next circle which is the next part of the tour. This will continue until you reach the last circle and complete the tour. From there you will have access to choose another topic, once selected, you can either go there in-game or just fast travel to that location.
This is where the gameplay loop is and in order to figure out which tours you have completed, the icon next to the tour will change from Blue to Gold. So what can we take from this?
There is line to direct the player journey where it can differ based on distance and the amount of cirlces in each tour can vary. Another thing is that once you enter a cicle, you are forced into the animation rather than having a choice however, once you’ve done any circle you can revisit it. The only problem is you have to do it in sequence in order as once you’ve done the circle, the line only goes to the next circle destination adn doesn’t go all the way giving you no choice but to follow the sequence.
Another thing is that it offers progression for the player by allowing the player to complete tours so you know you don’t have to revisit them and if you want to, you can reset your progress individually for each tour so you can keep going.
My take from this for the project is to create and understand an elaborate way to give the direct the user journey as well as making sure the player isn’t entirely forced into a particular interaction. Additionally progression should also be present in some shape or form.