Determined to Discover

My gameplay hasn't varied much since last week--I've made up my mind that I will do the entirety of the Discovery Tour in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.  It's one of those weird goals in a game where you feel compelled to complete all of it for no clear reason.  I do actually like learning about the history and have been particularly compelled by the sheer amount of research, concept art, and random design elements that go into a game as large as Odyssey.  There are so many intricate little details embedded in the fictional world and you just don't take the time to notice them in the base game; I mean, there are thousands of people to stab, so why would you?

In a weirdly related side note, I stumbled across an article about an ongoing scholarly debate about whether or not ancient Greek sculptures were painted.  If you've ever seen a sculpture (or, more likely, a photograph) you're used to the appearance of white marble that has been dazzlingly carved into amazingly lifelike figures.  When you play Odyssey, one of the first things you notice (if you pay attention--but stabbing, right?) is the fact that the game mentions that statues in ancient Greece were likely painted.  Cities in the fictional Greek world are filled with beautifully painted sculptures--I had no idea it was such a controversy in the art world!  According to this article ("The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture"), the misconception about statues being nothing but blank marble has been perpetuated for a very long time.  Many statues, when unearthed, show evidence of pigments related to different types of materials used as paint during antiquity.  Unfortunately, these pigments decay very quickly after a statue has been recovered, so any that might still be clinging to the statues after thousands of years have to be recorded very quickly before they are lost.  The positive part though is that some scientists and art historians have figured out how to use certain types of modern technology to help them figure out what pigments might have been present on a statue.  Then, they can make plaster copies of the statues and paint them in an approximation of what they might have looked like in antiquity.  The end product is extremely colorful and detailed--a far cry from the pale, plain statuary that we're used to seeing.  There's even evidence that some statues had details that would have seemed gaudy and over-the-top when compared to a bare, white sculpture--vibrantly colored gemstones used as eyes, metallic paints (bling-bling!  Even the ancient Greek liked shiny, sparkly things), and a wide array of paint colors and hues.  (If you're more of a video person and don't want to read a long article--here's a short video that also explains this phenomenon)

Personally, I find the colorful statues to be much more engaging to look at and I am glad that the game designers for Odyssey decided to opt for painted statues.  It's amazing what you can learn from a video game!