Anno 117 Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Reveals Itself as a Breathtaking First-Person Mode.
Hold on — were you aware you can play the game Anno 117 in first-person? If you're thinking that, your surprise matches compared to my initial response upon finding out this hidden feature. Excuse me while briefly leave my empire’s management, leave it in a reliable subordinate, take a wagon, and take a spin through Ancient Rome.
Activating the First-Person Mode
Being a city-building title, Anno 117: Pax Romana is normally experienced from an overhead perspective. However, if you enter a secret combination — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls alternatively “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” with a gamepad — you gain the ability to walk your domain as a common citizen. Because an analogous secret was part of the previous Anno title, I felt excited to try it out in Ubisoft's newest game, yet I had doubts it would operate before I discovered myself submerged in a structural glitch (likely not meant to happen — this mode can be a little buggy at times).
Discovering the Ancient Streets
After extracting myself, I wandered the busy roads across my settlement and explored stalls, alehouses, blossom gardens, and cockle pickers — it was glorious to see my diligent efforts through a fresh lens. I observed all kinds of details I wouldn’t have spotted from above: Entryway ornaments, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, fowl roaming freely, citizens lounging on their terraces… Simply noticing the shape of a window sill and the coating on a pillar is quite interesting to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
More Than Just Walking
Yet, the experience extends to the first-person feature in Anno 117 aside from meandering through streets. I was especially delighted the moment I learned that besides being able to observe farming fields, but also access them. And despite my expectation interiors would be restricted, I could walk onto clay pits, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building as teaching was underway, and intrude into private gardens. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the studio planned for that functionality), however, you can definitely wander through a grain field, observe people digging and transporting bags, and glance into any tiny hut provided the entrance is missing.
Graphics and Ambiance
Even though I expected to observe my settlement depicted with outdated visual quality, besides some crude animations and periodic inhabitants sitting in a bench as opposed to atop a bench, first-person mode looks considerably improved over predictions. The highly detailed textures (particularly rock faces) really have no business being this good within a game that's fundamentally a city-builder. You may not see separate follicular elements, yet you will notice engravings on walls, fiery particles from lamps, brick decoloration, iris elements, and conifer needles. Evening, with glowing light sources and distant stellar illumination, creates a particularly moody setting, and proves significantly less intimidating relative to the previous game, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble nightmarish entities anymore.
Testing and Personalization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective lacks official documentation, I chose to test various actions, and immediately located the options to jump, sprint, and changing perspective — the last option enabling me to change from first-person to third-person mode and return. I then decided to hit certain numeric keys and learned I could modify my character’s appearance. Amber garment? Ruby clothing? Sapphire and amethyst dress? Or — maybe superior — complete battle gear? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, preferably, wear an archer's uniform; when you press the action key, you’ll fire burning arrows into the sky. In case you’re wondering, it’s not possible to kill civilians (not that I’ve tried, of course).
Comedy and Population Encounters
However, I had no desire to injure my people, since they're incredibly amusing. Moments after I entered the immersive perspective, I listened to a dad instructing his kid that he “Can’t have a pet fox and should you provide another poultry, your grandmother will be furious.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. A friendly native Celtic person then proceeded to praise my excellent cross-cultural strategies by labeling it “Perfect fusion,” whereas an irritable elderly woman decided to threaten 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 in Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first-person mode, I encountered the delight of riding through classical settlements. Totally unintentionally, I clicked on a wagon and quickly occupied the transport. Oxen, donkeys, even manually drawn vehicles; you may operate any of them freely. The donkey-powered transport, notably, is pretty fast, but don't anticipate open-world vehicular chaos — impacting citizens or additional vehicles cannot occur (again, not saying I’ve tried).
Fighting Restrictions
The single feature that frustrated me in Anno 117’s first-person mode was finding out I couldn’t partake in combat situations. Sporting my soldier fit, I approached opposing forces during active combat and attempted to attack them, but was entirely disregarded. The proximate observation remained quite impressive, and observing foes flee, their arms flailing about, felt highly gratifying, but it would’ve been cool to effectively strike targets via my incendiary bolts.
