Anno 117: Pax Romana's Top Secret Turns Out to Be a Breathtaking First-Person Perspective.
Surprisingly — did you realize it's possible to experience Anno 117: Pax Romana using a first-person camera? If that’s your reaction, your surprise matches as I was the moment I learned this concealed mode. Allow me to step away from overseeing my civilization, entrust it to a capable deputy, commandere a carriage, and enjoy a ride around the classical city.
Unlocking the First-Person Feature
As a city-building game, the game Anno 117 is normally experienced from a bird's-eye view. However, if you press a covert button sequence — such as “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on console — it becomes possible to roam the empire as an ordinary Roman. Given a comparable hidden feature was part of the earlier game Anno 1800, I felt excited to test it in Ubisoft's newest game, yet I had doubts it would function prior to being chin-deep in a Celtic floorboard (which probably wasn’t intended — this feature is somewhat unstable occasionally).
Discovering the Streets of Rome
Once I crawled out, I strolled the lively avenues of my city and toured markets, breweries, floral patches, and seafood collectors — it was glorious to observe the fruits of my labor from a brand-new perspective. I observed a variety of intricacies that would escape notice from the top-down view: Entryway ornaments, an ass transporting a floral pail, poultry scattering about, folks chilling on their balconies… Merely examining the form of a ledge and the paint layers on a column is quite interesting to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
More Than Just Walking
However, there's additional content to the first-person feature in Anno 117 aside from meandering through streets. I felt particularly pleased upon discovering that besides being able to view agricultural plots, but also step into them. And despite my expectation structures would be inaccessible, 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 have the budget for that), but it’s entirely possible stroll around a barley farm, observe people digging and transporting bags, and take a peek inside any small shack when there's no doorway obstructing.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
While I was completely ready to observe my settlement depicted in PlayStation 1 graphics, excluding a few unpolished motions and sometimes citizens positioned in a bench as opposed to atop a bench, first-person mode looks considerably improved over predictions. The meticulously crafted materials (especially stone surfaces) shouldn't logically be this impressive in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You might not observe specific hair details, but you will see wall inscriptions, fiery particles from lamps, fading on bricks, iris elements, and pine tree leaves. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and distant stellar illumination, creates a particularly moody setting, and feels much less frightening compared to Anno 1800, given that the populace appears unlike sleep paralysis demons now.
Experimentation and Customization
Since Anno 117’s super-secret first-person mode doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I opted to try different commands, and promptly found the abilities to leap, run, and zoom in or out — with the latter allowing me to change from first-person to third-person mode and revert. I then decided to hit some number buttons and discovered that I could change my avatar's look. Yellow toga? Red toga? Blue and purple toga? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You can wield a blade and protection, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; 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
But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, since they're incredibly amusing. Only seconds after I landed first-person mode, I heard a parent advising their offspring that “Owning a fox is prohibited and if you offer additional fowl, your grandmother will be furious.” Rightly so, Roman dad. One lovely local Celt then started applauding my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by describing it as “Ideal combination,” whereas an irritable elderly woman opted to menace me: “Repeat that statement, and your disappearance will be permanent.”
The Thrill of Transportation
At the moment I believed I’d discovered all there is to discover in the title's first-person feature, I encountered the delight of riding across historical settings. Completely unexpectedly, I interacted with a cart and was promptly seated on the box. 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 Grand Theft Auto-style mischief — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Battle Constraints
The only thing that disappointed me regarding the first-person view was discovering my inability to participate in battle encounters. Equipped in warrior attire, I charged toward adversaries in the midst of battle and endeavored to damage them, but was entirely disregarded. The close-up view remained quite impressive, and seeing opponents retreat, their appendages thrashing around, seemed enormously rewarding, but it would’ve been cool to effectively strike targets via my incendiary bolts.
