Anno 117 Pax Romana's Top Secret Reveals Itself as a Breathtaking First-Person Mode.
Surprisingly — did you realize gamers have the option to enjoy Anno 117 Pax Romana in first-person? If that’s your reaction, your surprise matches as I was upon finding out this concealed mode. Excuse me while temporarily abandon my empire’s management, leave it in a trusted assistant, commandere a carriage, and take a spin through Ancient Rome.
Unlocking the First-Person Mode
In its role as a city-builder, the game Anno 117 usually operates using a top-down camera. However, if you enter a secret combination — such as “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on keyboard or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on console — it becomes possible to roam your domain as a common citizen. Since a similar easter egg appeared in the earlier game Anno 1800, I felt excited to experience it in Ubisoft's newest game, but I wasn’t sure it would operate until I found myself chin-deep in a Celtic floorboard (which probably wasn’t intended — this option can be a little buggy at times).
Roaming the Streets of Rome
Upon freeing myself, I wandered the lively avenues through my metropolis and toured shops, taverns, flower fields, and seafood collectors — the experience was splendid to observe my diligent efforts through a fresh lens. I noticed numerous fine points I wouldn’t have spotted from the top-down view: Doorway embellishments, an ass transporting a floral pail, chickens running loose, people relaxing on their verandas… Merely examining the design of a windowsill and the paint layers on a column proves fascinating to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
More Than Just Walking
However, there's additional content to Anno 117’s first-person mode aside from meandering through streets. I felt particularly pleased when I found out that not only could I view crop lands, but also access them. And despite my expectation the building models would be off-limits, I could walk onto earthen quarries, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building during active classes, and even trespass into people’s gardens. Don't bother with door access (not even the creators have the budget for that), however, you can definitely wander through a grain field, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and take a peek inside any small shack when there's no doorway obstructing.
Appearance and Mood
Although I was fully prepared to witness my city rendered using primitive rendering, excluding a few unpolished motions and sometimes citizens positioned inside seating rather than on a bench, first-person mode looks far superior to anticipations. The meticulously crafted materials (especially stone surfaces) are unexpectedly excellent in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You won't necessarily notice any individual strands of hair, yet you will notice writings on surfaces, flames emitting from lights, fading on bricks, iris elements, and pine tree leaves. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and celestial bodies twinkling afar, creates a particularly moody setting, and proves significantly less intimidating compared to Anno 1800, now that the citizens don’t look like nightmarish entities anymore.
Experimentation and Customization
Since Anno 117’s super-secret first-person mode lacks official documentation, I chose to test various actions, and promptly found the options to jump, sprint, and adjusting the view — the zoom function permitting me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and return. I then experimented with certain numeric keys and learned I could modify my representative's visual design. Amber garment? Red toga? Azure and violet outfit? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You may carry a sword and shield, or, preferably, wear an archer's uniform; if you hit the interaction button, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. If you're interested, eliminating citizens cannot be done (though I didn't test this, obviously).
Comedy and Population Encounters
However, I had no desire to injure my people, since they're incredibly amusing. Only seconds after I landed the first-person view, I heard a parent advising their offspring that “Owning a fox is prohibited and should you provide another poultry, your elder will punish you.” Understandable stance, father character. A friendly native Celtic person then began complimenting my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” whereas an irritable elderly woman chose to intimidate me: “Utter those words again, and your fate will be sealed.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
At the moment I believed I had found everything available in the title's first-person feature, I found the joys of joyriding through classical settlements. Completely unexpectedly, I interacted with a cart and immediately found myself in the driver's position. Cattle, asses, even manually drawn vehicles; you can drive them all at your leisure. The donkey cart, in particular, is pretty fast, though you shouldn’t imagine open-world vehicular chaos — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Battle Constraints
The only thing that disappointed me within the immersive perspective was discovering my inability to participate in battle encounters. Equipped in warrior attire, I ran up to the enemy during active combat and tried to harm them, but was entirely disregarded. The proximate observation remained quite impressive, and seeing opponents retreat, their appendages thrashing around, seemed enormously rewarding, yet it would have been exciting to actually hit something with my burning arrows.
