Anno 117's Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Turns Out to Be a Stunning First-Person View.
Wait — did you know it's possible to experience the game Anno 117 from a first-person viewpoint? If that’s your reaction, you feel equally astonished as I was the moment I learned this hidden feature. Allow me to step away from overseeing my civilization, entrust it to a capable deputy, borrow a cart, and take a spin through Ancient Rome.
How to Access the First-Person View
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” on keyboard or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on console — you gain the ability to walk the realm as a regular inhabitant. Since a similar easter egg was part of Anno 1800, I was eager to test it in Ubisoft's newest game, but I wasn’t sure it would work before I discovered myself submerged in a structural glitch (which probably wasn’t intended — this option can be prone to glitches now and then).
Roaming the Streets of Rome
Once I crawled out, I wandered the lively avenues through my metropolis and explored stalls, alehouses, flower fields, and cockle pickers — it was glorious to observe my diligent efforts from a brand-new perspective. I detected numerous fine points I wouldn’t have spotted from above: Entryway ornaments, an ass transporting a floral pail, poultry scattering about, folks chilling on their balconies… Simply noticing the form of a ledge and the coating on a pillar is quite interesting to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
Beyond Simple Strolling
But there’s more to the first-person feature in Anno 117 than strolling along the road. I felt particularly pleased upon discovering that not only could I observe farming fields, but also access them. And despite my expectation the building models would be off-limits, I managed to access earthen quarries, investigate a respected schoolhouse during active classes, and intrude into private gardens. Don’t try to open any doors (not even the creators have the budget for that), however, you can definitely stroll around a barley farm, see citizens working with tools and burdens, and glance into any tiny hut when there's no doorway obstructing.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
While I was completely ready to see my metropolis represented with outdated visual quality, excluding a few unpolished motions and sometimes citizens positioned in a bench as opposed to atop a bench, the immersive perspective seems considerably improved over predictions. The intricately designed surfaces (especially stone surfaces) shouldn't logically be this impressive within a game that's fundamentally a city-builder. You may not see specific hair details, but you will see engravings on walls, sparks flying from torches, fading on bricks, eye details, and pine tree leaves. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and stars shining in the distance, generates a uniquely immersive environment, and proves significantly less intimidating relative to the previous game, given that the populace appears unlike sleep paralysis demons now.
Experimentation and Customization
Given the covert first-person feature has no guided tutorial, I chose to test various actions, and immediately located the functions for jumping, dashing, and changing perspective — the zoom function permitting me to switch between first and third-person views and back. I then experimented with certain numeric keys and learned I could modify my avatar's look. Amber garment? Ruby clothing? Sapphire and amethyst dress? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You may carry a sword and shield, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; when you press the action key, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. If you're interested, harming inhabitants is impossible (though I didn't test this, obviously).
Comedy and Population Encounters
However, I had no desire to injure my people, because they’re way too funny. Shortly after I activated the first-person view, I overheard a father telling his child that “Owning a fox is prohibited and should you provide another poultry, your elder will punish you.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. A pleasant regional Celt then started applauding my outstanding integration methods by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” meanwhile a grumpy senior female opted to menace me: “Say that one more time, and they’ll never find your body.”
The Joy of Joyriding
At the moment I believed I uncovered all possible content in the title's first-person feature, I encountered the delight of riding in Ancient Rome. Totally unintentionally, I clicked on a wagon and was promptly seated on the box. Oxen, donkeys, even manually drawn vehicles; you can drive them all at your leisure. The donkey-powered transport, notably, travels rather rapidly, though you shouldn’t imagine any GTA-like shenanigans — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (again, not saying I’ve tried).
Combat Limitations
The single feature that frustrated me in Anno 117’s first-person mode was discovering my inability to participate in combat situations. Wearing my military outfit, I ran up to the enemy amidst fighting and tried to harm them, but was entirely disregarded. The close-up view was still rather spectacular, and watching the enemy run, their limbs waving wildly, seemed enormously rewarding, but it would’ve been cool to effectively strike targets with my burning arrows.
