Anno 117's Pax Romana's Top Secret Is a Breathtaking First-Person View.
Hold on — were you aware you can play Anno 117: Pax Romana in first-person? If you're thinking that, you feel equally astonished as my own reaction the moment I learned this secret option. Excuse me while step away from overseeing my civilization, delegate it to a trusted assistant, commandere a carriage, and enjoy a ride through Ancient Rome.
How to Access the First-Person View
As a city-building game, Anno 117: Pax Romana is normally experienced from an overhead perspective. But, should you enter a secret combination — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls or else “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on console — you gain the ability to walk the realm as a regular inhabitant. Given a comparable hidden feature was included in the earlier game Anno 1800, I looked forward to try it out in Ubisoft's newest game, yet I had doubts it would operate before I discovered myself stuck in a Celtic building (which probably wasn’t intended — this feature tends to be somewhat unstable occasionally).
Roaming the Roman Cityscape
Once I crawled out, I wandered the busy roads through my metropolis and toured markets, breweries, blossom gardens, and seafood collectors — the experience was splendid to witness all my hard work through a fresh lens. I detected a variety of intricacies I wouldn’t have spotted from the top-down view: Entryway ornaments, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, fowl roaming freely, people relaxing on their verandas… Merely examining the design of a windowsill and the paint layers on a column proves fascinating to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
Further Than Mere Wandering
But there’s more to the game's immersive perspective beyond simply walking the paths. I felt particularly pleased upon discovering that besides being able to observe farming fields, but also enter them. And even though I thought the building models would be off-limits, I was able to enter clay pits, investigate a respected schoolhouse as teaching was underway, and invade personal courtyards. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the developers allocated resources for that), yet it's completely feasible stroll around a barley farm, observe people digging and transporting bags, and glance into any tiny hut provided the entrance is missing.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
While I was completely ready to observe my settlement depicted with outdated visual quality, besides some crude animations and periodic inhabitants sitting inside seating instead of on a bench, the immersive perspective seems far superior to anticipations. The intricately designed surfaces (particularly rock faces) really have no business being this good for a title that remains primarily overhead. You won't necessarily notice any individual strands of hair, yet you will notice writings on surfaces, fiery particles from lamps, fading on bricks, eye details, and pine tree leaves. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and distant stellar illumination, generates a uniquely immersive environment, and proves significantly less intimidating versus the earlier title, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble terrifying apparitions now.
Discovery and Modification
Since Anno 117’s super-secret first-person mode has no guided tutorial, I opted to try different commands, and quickly discovered the options to jump, sprint, and adjusting the view — the zoom function permitting me to change from first-person to third-person mode and back. I then experimented with certain numeric keys and learned I could modify my character’s appearance. Golden robe? Crimson attire? Blue and purple toga? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; if you activate the engage command, you’ll fire burning arrows into the sky. Should you be curious, it’s not possible to kill civilians (not that I attempted, naturally).
Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues
But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, since they're incredibly amusing. Only seconds after I landed the immersive perspective, I heard a parent advising their offspring that he “Can’t have a pet fox and if you offer additional fowl, your grandmother will be furious.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. A friendly native Celtic person then began complimenting my excellent cross-cultural strategies by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” while some cranky old lady chose to intimidate me: “Say that one more time, and they’ll never find your body.”
The Joy of Joyriding
Just as I assumed I uncovered all possible content within the game's immersive perspective, I experienced the pleasure of driving in Ancient Rome. Entirely by accident, I selected a carriage and quickly occupied the transport. Bovines, equines, even human-pulled carts; you can control each one as desired. The donkey cart, in particular, moves quite quickly, although you shouldn't expect any GTA-like shenanigans — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Fighting Restrictions
The sole aspect that let me down in Anno 117’s first-person mode was learning about my exclusion from in battle encounters. Wearing my military outfit, I ran up to the enemy during active combat and tried to harm them, but was entirely disregarded. The close-up view was nonetheless magnificent, and seeing opponents retreat, their limbs waving wildly, seemed enormously rewarding, though it might have been amazing to effectively strike targets using my fiery projectiles.
