Anno 117's Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Turns Out to Be a Impressive First-Person View.
Hold on — were you aware you can play the game Anno 117 using a first-person camera? If that’s your reaction, your surprise matches as my own reaction when I discovered this secret option. Allow me to step away from managing my empire, delegate it to a reliable subordinate, borrow a cart, and enjoy a ride through Ancient Rome.
How to Access the First-Person View
In its role as a city-builder, Anno 117 Pax Romana usually operates using a top-down camera. However, if you enter a secret combination — such as “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” with a gamepad — you can explore your domain as a common citizen. Since a similar easter egg was included in the earlier game Anno 1800, I felt excited to test it in Ubisoft's newest game, though I was uncertain it would function prior to being submerged in a structural glitch (possibly an unexpected bug — this mode can be prone to glitches now and then).
Discovering the Roman Cityscape
Once I crawled out, I wandered the lively avenues of my city and toured shops, taverns, floral patches, and cockle pickers — it felt magnificent to see all my hard work using an entirely new viewpoint. I noticed a variety of intricacies that would escape notice when viewing from overhead: Front door decorations, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, fowl roaming freely, people relaxing on their verandas… Even just observing the design of a windowsill and the coating on a pillar is quite interesting for those not residing in classical times.
Further Than Mere Wandering
However, there's additional content to Anno 117’s first-person mode aside from meandering through streets. I was especially delighted upon discovering that not only could I observe crop lands, but also access them. And although I’d assumed the building models would be off-limits, I could walk onto earthen quarries, tour an esteemed educational structure while lessons were in session, and intrude into private gardens. Don't bother with door access (not even the creators allocated resources for that), however, you can definitely meander across a cereal plantation, see citizens working with tools and burdens, and take a peek inside any small shack when there's no doorway obstructing.
Appearance and Mood
Even though I expected to see my metropolis represented using primitive rendering, excluding a few unpolished motions and periodic inhabitants sitting in a bench instead of on a bench, first-person mode looks much better than expected. The highly detailed textures (especially stone surfaces) are unexpectedly excellent for a title that remains primarily overhead. You won't necessarily notice specific hair details, yet you will notice writings on surfaces, sparks flying from torches, discoloration of masonry, pupils, and evergreen foliage. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and celestial bodies twinkling afar, is especially atmospheric, and also a lot less scary compared to Anno 1800, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble nightmarish entities these days.
Testing and Personalization
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 zoom in or out — with the latter allowing me to change from first-person to third-person mode and return. I subsequently tried pressing certain numeric keys and learned I could modify my avatar's look. Amber garment? Ruby clothing? Azure and violet outfit? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You may carry a sword and shield, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; if you hit the interaction button, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. In case you’re wondering, eliminating citizens cannot be done (though I didn't test this, obviously).
Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues
But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, as they're remarkably entertaining. Moments after I entered the immersive perspective, I overheard a father telling his child that “You cannot keep a fox as a pet and if you feed it one more chicken, your elder will punish you.” Rightly so, Roman dad. One lovely local Celt then proceeded to praise my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by describing it as “Ideal combination,” whereas an irritable elderly woman 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 had found everything available within the game's immersive perspective, I experienced the pleasure of driving through classical settlements. Totally unintentionally, I clicked on a wagon and quickly occupied the transport. Cattle, asses, even human-pulled carts; you can control each one as desired. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, is pretty fast, but don't anticipate open-world vehicular chaos — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Fighting Restrictions
The sole aspect that let me down regarding the first-person view was discovering my inability to participate in battle encounters. Sporting my soldier fit, I charged toward adversaries in the midst of battle and attempted to attack them, yet was completely overlooked. The front-row seat remained quite impressive, and watching the enemy run, their limbs waving wildly, seemed enormously rewarding, yet it would have been exciting to actually hit something using my fiery projectiles.
