We've learned a lot about Assassin's Creed Valhalla over the past few weeks, and many of us wanted to put away the optional objectives in Assassin's Creed Origins and Odyssey.

But let's say you've never played either game and want to step into a long-lived series without shelling out any money. Ubisoft is offering the PC versions of Assassin's Creed Origins and Assassin's Creed Odyssey in "Discovery Tour" mode for free. But if you don't get it by the end of next week, you'll have to pay for it, as usual.

Ubisoft announced the promotion on Twitter, and it's as straightforward as it looks: Discovery Tour by Assassin's Creed: Ancient Egypt and Discovery Tour by Assassin's Creed: Ancient Greece are both free until May 21. To play, you must sign up for a Uplay account and download the Uplay client, and the system requirements are quite strict, including at least an Intel Core i5 processor, the latest discrete GPU, and 8GB RAM. However, if you sign up now, you can play for free.

Perhaps "Assassin's Creed" is an open-world action/stealth series in which you play as a stealth killer hunting down members of an ancient secret society. The Discovery Tour mode, however, is more recent and has nothing to do with the main story. Instead, Discovery Tour features meticulously recreated cities and landscapes of the ancient world and allows you to quietly explore them while listening to narration. Essentially, it is a guided virtual museum tour.

An important note here is that playing the two Discovery Tours does not actually prepare you for Assassin's Creed Valhalla, as they have nothing to do with the ongoing meta-story of the series. But if you want to see what the game is like, how the exploration and platform gameplay works (no combat), these are good entry points, and the price is right.

However, tastes may differ as to the Discovery Mode itself. Most fans and critics seem to like Discovery Mode very much, and educators use it as an immersive form of learning. But the "gameplay" itself is almost non-existent, and if you play through the regular story campaigns of Origins or Odyssey, you will see much of the same scenery.

Still, it's hard to argue with the price of Discovery Tour for the next week or so. Games normally cost $20 apiece, and you can access Discovery Tour from the main menus of Origins and Odyssey as well. There is no additional charge, but the games themselves cost $60 each, even when not on sale.

Given that you don't get any of the combat, stealth, or story that has defined the series for over a decade, I'm not sure if the Discovery Tour is a good indication of what Assassin's Creed is all about. On the other hand, it is definitely something that is potentially interesting to play.