Anno 117: Pax Romana's Top Secret Is a Impressive First-Person View.
Surprisingly — did you realize you can play the game Anno 117 from a first-person viewpoint? If that’s your reaction, your surprise matches as my own reaction when I discovered this hidden feature. Excuse me while briefly leave my empire’s management, entrust it to a capable deputy, borrow a cart, and enjoy a ride through Ancient Rome.
How to Access the First-Person Mode
Being a city-building title, Anno 117 Pax Romana is normally experienced from an overhead perspective. Yet, when you input a hidden code — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls alternatively “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” with a gamepad — you can explore the empire as an ordinary Roman. Given a comparable hidden feature was included in the earlier game Anno 1800, I looked forward to test it in Ubisoft's newest game, but I wasn’t sure it would function before I discovered myself stuck in a Celtic building (which probably wasn’t intended — this mode tends to be a little buggy at times).
Discovering the Streets of Rome
Once I crawled out, I walked the lively avenues across my settlement and explored stalls, alehouses, blossom gardens, and seafood collectors — it was glorious to see all my hard work using an entirely new viewpoint. I detected all kinds of details that would escape notice from above: Entryway ornaments, an ass transporting a floral pail, poultry scattering about, citizens lounging on their terraces… Even just observing the shape of a window sill and the paint layers on a column becomes engaging to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
Further Than Mere Wandering
Yet, the experience extends to the first-person feature in Anno 117 beyond simply walking the paths. I felt particularly pleased the moment I learned that besides being able to look upon agricultural plots, but also access them. And despite my expectation the building models would be off-limits, I was able to enter mud extraction sites, investigate a respected schoolhouse as teaching was underway, and invade personal courtyards. Don't bother with door access (not even the developers allocated resources for that), however, you can definitely wander through a grain field, see citizens working with tools and burdens, and look within any modest shelter as long as the door is absent.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Although I was fully prepared to see my metropolis represented with outdated visual quality, apart from certain rough movements and the occasional civilian resting within a bench rather than on a bench, the first-person view appears far superior to anticipations. The meticulously crafted materials (particularly rock faces) really have no business being this good in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You won't necessarily notice separate follicular elements, however, you can observe wall inscriptions, flames emitting from lights, fading on bricks, pupils, and conifer needles. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and distant stellar illumination, generates a uniquely immersive environment, and proves significantly less intimidating relative to the previous game, given that the populace appears unlike nightmarish entities these days.
Experimentation and Customization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I decided to experiment a bit, and promptly found the options to jump, sprint, and zoom in or out — with the latter allowing me to change from first-person to third-person mode and return. I then decided to hit some number buttons and learned I could modify my character’s appearance. Yellow toga? Crimson attire? Sapphire and amethyst dress? Or — maybe superior — complete battle gear? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; if you activate the engage command, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. Should you be curious, 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. Shortly after I activated the immersive perspective, I overheard a father telling his child that he “Can’t have a pet fox and if you feed it one more chicken, your gran will have your head.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. One lovely local Celt then started applauding my outstanding integration methods by describing it as “Ideal combination,” meanwhile a grumpy senior female opted to menace me: “Say that one more time, and they’ll never find your body.”
The Thrill of Transportation
At the moment I believed I’d discovered all there is to discover within the game's immersive perspective, I encountered the delight of riding in Ancient Rome. Completely unexpectedly, I clicked on a wagon and immediately found myself in the driver's position. Cattle, asses, even manually drawn vehicles; you can control each one as desired. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, travels rather rapidly, although you shouldn't expect open-world vehicular chaos — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Combat Limitations
The sole aspect that let me down within the immersive perspective was learning about my exclusion from in any fighting. Sporting my soldier fit, I charged toward adversaries in the midst of battle and tried to harm them, only to be ignored completely. The front-row seat remained quite impressive, and observing foes flee, their limbs waving wildly, felt highly gratifying, though it might have been amazing to successfully impact objects via my incendiary bolts.
