Anno 117 Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Turns Out to Be a Impressive First-Person Mode.
Hold on — were you aware it's possible to experience the game Anno 117 using a first-person camera? If that’s your reaction, your surprise matches as my own reaction upon finding out this hidden feature. I must temporarily abandon managing my empire, entrust it to a capable deputy, take a wagon, and take a spin across the Roman world.
How to Access the First-Person Mode
As a city-building game, Anno 117 Pax Romana is normally experienced from an overhead perspective. However, if you press a covert button sequence — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls or else “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — you can explore the empire as an ordinary Roman. Given a comparable hidden feature was part of the earlier game Anno 1800, I was eager to try it out in Ubisoft's newest game, yet I had doubts it would work prior to being chin-deep in a Celtic floorboard (which probably wasn’t intended — this option is prone to glitches now and then).
Exploring the Roman Cityscape
Once I crawled out, I wandered the bustling streets across my settlement and explored stalls, alehouses, floral patches, and cockle pickers — the experience was splendid to see my diligent efforts from a brand-new perspective. I noticed numerous fine points that would escape notice from the top-down view: Doorway embellishments, an ass transporting a floral pail, poultry scattering about, citizens lounging on their terraces… Simply noticing the form of a ledge and the coating on a pillar becomes engaging to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
Beyond Simple Strolling
But there’s more to the game's immersive perspective aside from meandering through streets. I felt particularly pleased the moment I learned that besides being able to look upon farming fields, but also enter them. And despite my expectation interiors would be restricted, I was able to enter mud extraction sites, investigate a respected schoolhouse while lessons were in session, and even trespass into people’s gardens. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the studio planned for that functionality), but it’s entirely possible wander through a grain field, observe people digging and transporting bags, and look within any modest shelter when there's no doorway obstructing.
Appearance and Mood
While I was completely ready to witness my city rendered using primitive rendering, apart from certain rough movements and periodic inhabitants sitting within a bench instead of on a bench, the immersive perspective seems far superior to anticipations. The intricately designed surfaces (notably masonry elements) are unexpectedly excellent for a title that remains primarily overhead. You might not observe separate follicular elements, yet you will notice engravings on walls, flames emitting from lights, fading on bricks, pupils, and pine tree leaves. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and stars shining in the distance, is especially atmospheric, and proves significantly less intimidating compared to Anno 1800, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble terrifying apparitions these days.
Testing and Personalization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective has no guided tutorial, I decided to experiment a bit, and promptly found the options to jump, sprint, and changing perspective — with the latter allowing me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and return. I subsequently tried pressing various digit inputs and found I could alter my representative's visual design. Yellow toga? Red toga? Sapphire and amethyst dress? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; when you press the action key, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. In case you’re wondering, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I attempted, naturally).
Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues
But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, as they're remarkably entertaining. Moments after I entered first-person mode, I heard a parent advising their offspring that “You cannot keep a fox as a pet and if you feed it one more chicken, your gran will have your head.” Understandable stance, father character. One lovely local Celt then started applauding my outstanding integration methods by describing it as “Ideal combination,” while some cranky old lady opted to menace me: “Utter those words again, and your fate will be sealed.”
The Joy of Joyriding
At the moment I believed I uncovered all possible content within the game's immersive perspective, I experienced the pleasure of driving in Ancient Rome. Totally unintentionally, I interacted with a cart and quickly occupied the transport. Bovines, equines, even manually drawn vehicles; you can control each one as desired. The donkey-powered transport, notably, is pretty fast, though you shouldn’t imagine open-world vehicular chaos — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Fighting Restrictions
The single feature that frustrated me regarding the first-person view was discovering my inability to participate in combat situations. Equipped in warrior attire, I charged toward adversaries in the midst of battle and endeavored to damage them, but was entirely disregarded. The proximate observation remained quite impressive, and seeing opponents retreat, their limbs waving wildly, proved very satisfying, but it would’ve been cool to successfully impact objects with my burning arrows.
