Anno 117's Pax Romana's Top Secret Turns Out to Be a Breathtaking First-Person View.
Surprisingly — did you realize you can play Anno 117: Pax Romana using a first-person camera? Should that be your response, your surprise matches as my own reaction the moment I learned this concealed mode. I must step away from overseeing my civilization, entrust it to a capable deputy, commandere a carriage, and go for a joyride through Ancient Rome.
Unlocking the First-Person Mode
As a city-building game, Anno 117: Pax Romana is typically played from an overhead perspective. However, if you press a covert button sequence — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard or else “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — it becomes possible to roam your domain as a common citizen. Since a similar easter egg was included in the earlier game Anno 1800, I looked forward to experience it in Ubisoft's newest game, yet I had doubts it would operate before I discovered myself stuck in a Celtic building (likely not meant to happen — this option tends to be a little buggy at times).
Discovering the Streets of Rome
Once I crawled out, I wandered the bustling streets through my metropolis and toured markets, breweries, floral patches, and shellfish gatherers — it felt magnificent to observe all my hard work through a fresh lens. I noticed a variety of intricacies I wouldn’t have spotted from the top-down view: Doorway embellishments, an ass transporting a floral pail, fowl roaming freely, folks chilling on their balconies… Merely examining the design of a windowsill and the coloration on a post proves fascinating for those not residing in classical times.
Beyond Simple Strolling
However, there's additional content to Anno 117’s first-person mode beyond simply walking the paths. I was especially delighted when I found out that I could not just look upon crop lands, but also enter them. And despite my expectation the building models would be off-limits, I could walk onto earthen quarries, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building while lessons were in session, and even trespass into people’s gardens. Don't bother with door access (not even the developers allocated resources for that), but it’s entirely possible stroll around a barley farm, see citizens working with tools and burdens, and take a peek inside any small shack as long as the door is absent.
Appearance and Mood
While I was completely ready to see my metropolis represented using primitive rendering, excluding a few unpolished motions and the occasional civilian resting within a bench as opposed to atop a bench, the first-person view appears considerably improved over predictions. The highly detailed textures (especially stone surfaces) really have no business being this good in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You won't necessarily notice separate follicular elements, but you will see engravings on walls, flames emitting from lights, fading on bricks, iris elements, and conifer needles. The night, featuring dancing flames and stars shining in the distance, generates a uniquely immersive environment, and also a lot less scary relative to the previous game, now that the citizens don’t look like sleep paralysis demons these days.
Discovery and Modification
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I decided to experiment a bit, 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 back. I then experimented with certain numeric keys and learned I could modify my representative's visual design. Golden robe? Crimson attire? Sapphire and amethyst dress? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; if you activate the engage command, you’ll fire burning arrows into the sky. If you're interested, harming inhabitants is impossible (not that I’ve tried, of course).
Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues
Yet, I didn't want to damage my population, because they’re way too funny. Moments after I entered first-person mode, I overheard a father telling his child that he “Can’t have a pet fox and should you provide another poultry, your grandmother will be furious.” Understandable stance, father character. A pleasant regional Celt then started applauding my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” while some cranky old lady decided to threaten me: “Repeat that statement, and your disappearance will be permanent.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
Just when I thought I had found everything available in the title's first-person feature, I found the joys of joyriding across historical settings. Completely unexpectedly, I clicked on a wagon and was promptly seated on the box. Cattle, asses, even manually drawn vehicles; you may operate any of them freely. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, travels rather rapidly, although you shouldn't expect any GTA-like shenanigans — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Fighting Restrictions
The sole aspect that let me down within the immersive perspective was finding out I couldn’t partake in combat situations. Equipped in warrior attire, I charged toward adversaries amidst fighting and tried to harm them, yet was completely overlooked. The close-up view was still rather spectacular, and watching the enemy run, their arms flailing about, seemed enormously rewarding, though it might have been amazing to successfully impact objects using my fiery projectiles.
