Discovery Tour in fact contains 75 discrete tours, covering everything from “Beer and Bread” as a facet of daily Egyptian life to a biography of Cleopatra (one that eschews the fictional ending that the game gave her). It turns the sprawling, gorgeously detailed Egypt of Assassin’s Creed Origins into a combat-free playground.
With the removal of combat and objectives, Discovery Tour becomes accessible to, well, everyone. The player maintains the ability to fast-travel, and to climb everything. But they can do it as one of 25 playable characters, including the aforementioned Cleopatra, Julius Caesar or an assortment of Egyptian civilians.
My favorite parts of Discovery Tour were the instances where it pulled back the curtain on game development.
The tours occasionally highlight changes that the designers made when history and entertainment were at odds with each other. There, the mode becomes something we don’t see very often: a behind-the-scenes documentation of the development process.