Allegedly this feature has been asked of Ubisoft around their Assassin's Creed series for a while, but it wasn't until the series found its founding feet in Ancient Egypt that it seemed reasonable to pull off.

So overnight The Discovery Tour by Assassin's Creed: Ancient Egypt came to life and for any history nuts out there (like me), it's a truly glorious way to take a peek back in time, using modern day gaming.

In many ways, ACO is the perfect vehicle for this endeavour -- if only because the technology to recreate Ancient Egypt lends itself to now being able to take interactive, player-driven tours through said recreation. And all while learning about the city of Alexandria, the importance of Siwa -- Bayek's home, or to go as in-depth as you can here on the Pyramids.

Ubisoft’s Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt is a new educational and entertaining tool which lets anyone explore the entire interactive 3D recreation of Ancient Egypt in Assassin’s Creed Origins free of conflict, time pressure or gameplay constraints. The Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt releases from tomorrow on PS4, Xbox and PC at no cost for all owners of the Assassin’s Creed Origins game. It will also be available independently from the game on PC via the Uplay and Steam platforms.

From Alexandria to Memphis, the Nile Delta to the Sand Sea, the Giza plateau to the Faiyum Oasis, the Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt lets visitors either explore the rich world of Ancient Egypt at their will or follow the 75 themed tours devised by Ubisoft’s creative teams in collaboration with History experts and Egyptologists. “With the Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt, we give the chance to everyone interested in Ancient Egypt to enjoy the beauty of it and realize that video games can be a source of inspiring knowledge” explains Jean Guesdon, Creative Director of Assassin’s Creed Origins and the Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt.

Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt is a unique experience at the intersection of entertainment and learning. Interactivity, specific to the world of videogames, is at the heart of the experience, creating strong engagement with the content. This makes the Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt a completely new type of edutainment tool. “We’ve been in touch with teachers from the very first instalment of Assassin’s Creed games about ten years back. Many of them already used the games during their History classes but soon came to realize that what they needed was an easily accessible educative tool based in our historical reconstructions,” explains Maxime Durand, in-house Historian at Ubisoft Montreal. “With the Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt you can visualize and understand thousands of things from Egyptian history in their actual context. As both a game and a learning tool, it is quite a unique asset for teachers to integrate as part of their history classes.”

I spent roughly two hours in this thing last night and it's honestly the way forward for any game's of historical nature, or even games where technology, modernity or the like, feature heavily from the real-world.

And it's free. So, you know, get on it! (And check out the trailer embedded below.)

Wow that is an awesome idea.

It's something I can see schools investing in too. The beauty of it is there's no death or combat, so the violence and Assassin's Creed story are taken out of it -- you don't even need to do the tours as an avatar from the series, you can do it as Caesar if you want!

The only thing I wish they did here, was couple some behind the scenes stuff on the game's development alongside the in-depth history content.

In future, I think studios could use this concept as a means to do Blu-ray-like "extras" where they're baked into an open version of the game for your own discovery, rather than just part of a static list