Anno 117 Pax Romana's Top Secret Reveals Itself as a Breathtaking First-Person Perspective.
Surprisingly — did you realize you can play Anno 117 Pax Romana in first-person? Should that be your response, you’re just as shocked as I was the moment I learned this hidden feature. I must briefly leave my empire’s management, entrust it to a trusted assistant, borrow a cart, and enjoy a ride around the classical city.
Unlocking the First-Person Mode
Being a city-building title, the game Anno 117 usually operates using a top-down camera. However, if you press a covert button sequence — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard alternatively “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — you gain the ability to walk your domain as a common citizen. Since a similar easter egg appeared in the previous Anno title, I was eager to experience it in Ubisoft's newest game, yet I had doubts it would function before I discovered myself chin-deep in a Celtic floorboard (likely not meant to happen — this option is prone to glitches now and then).
Exploring the Roman Cityscape
Upon freeing myself, I walked the lively avenues across my settlement and explored markets, breweries, flower fields, and shellfish gatherers — it felt magnificent to see the fruits of my labor through a fresh lens. I observed numerous fine points I might have missed from above: Doorway embellishments, an ass transporting a floral pail, chickens running loose, folks chilling on their balconies… Even just observing the shape of a window sill and the coating on a pillar is quite interesting for those not residing in classical times.
Beyond Simple Strolling
However, there's additional content to Anno 117’s first-person mode than strolling along the road. I felt particularly pleased the moment I learned that besides being able to view crop lands, but also step into them. And although I’d assumed the building models would be off-limits, I managed to access clay pits, tour an esteemed educational structure while lessons were in session, and invade personal courtyards. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the studio have the budget for that), however, you can definitely meander across a cereal plantation, observe people digging and transporting bags, and look within any modest shelter as long as the door is absent.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Although I was fully prepared to observe my settlement depicted with outdated visual quality, besides some crude animations and periodic inhabitants sitting in a bench rather than on a bench, the first-person view appears considerably improved over predictions. The intricately designed surfaces (especially stone surfaces) are unexpectedly excellent in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You won't necessarily notice separate follicular elements, but you will see engravings on walls, fiery particles from lamps, discoloration of masonry, iris elements, and evergreen foliage. Evening, with glowing light sources and stars shining in the distance, is especially atmospheric, and proves significantly less intimidating relative to the previous game, now that the citizens don’t look like nightmarish entities now.
Testing and Personalization
Given the covert first-person feature doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I chose to test various actions, and quickly discovered the options to jump, sprint, and zoom in or out — the zoom function permitting me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and back. I then experimented with some number buttons and discovered that I could change my representative's visual design. Golden robe? Red toga? Sapphire and amethyst dress? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You can wield a blade and protection, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; if you hit the interaction button, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. In case you’re wondering, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I’ve tried, of course).
Humor and Citizen Interactions
However, I had no desire to injure my people, since they're incredibly amusing. Shortly after I activated first-person mode, I listened to a dad instructing his kid that “You cannot keep a fox as a pet and if you feed it one more chicken, your grandmother will be furious.” Understandable stance, father character. One lovely local Celt then started applauding my excellent cross-cultural strategies by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” whereas an irritable elderly woman decided to threaten me: “Repeat that statement, and your disappearance will be permanent.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
At the moment I believed I had found everything available in Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first-person mode, I found the joys of joyriding in Ancient Rome. Totally unintentionally, I interacted with a cart and immediately found myself in the driver's position. Bovines, equines, even human-pulled carts; you can drive them all at your leisure. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, is pretty fast, although you shouldn't expect open-world vehicular chaos — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Combat Limitations
The only thing that disappointed me within the immersive perspective was learning about my exclusion from in battle encounters. Sporting my soldier fit, I ran up to the enemy in the midst of battle and tried to harm them, but was entirely disregarded. The front-row seat was nonetheless magnificent, and watching the enemy run, their limbs waving wildly, felt highly gratifying, though it might have been amazing to effectively strike targets via my incendiary bolts.
