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 as I was the moment I learned this concealed mode. I must step away from managing my empire, delegate it to a trusted assistant, commandere a carriage, and take a spin across the Roman world.
Unlocking the First-Person Feature
Being a city-building title, Anno 117: Pax Romana is normally experienced using a top-down camera. However, if you press a covert button sequence — such as “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls alternatively “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on console — you gain the ability to walk the empire as an ordinary Roman. Given a comparable hidden feature appeared in the earlier game Anno 1800, I felt excited to test it in the new release, but I wasn’t sure it would function until I found myself submerged in a structural glitch (likely not meant to happen — this mode is somewhat unstable occasionally).
Discovering the Ancient Streets
Upon freeing myself, I walked the bustling streets through my metropolis and visited shops, taverns, blossom gardens, and shellfish gatherers — it was glorious to see the fruits of my labor using an entirely new viewpoint. I detected all kinds of details I might have missed from the top-down view: Entryway ornaments, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, poultry scattering about, people relaxing on their verandas… Even just observing the form of a ledge and the coloration on a post proves fascinating to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
Further Than Mere Wandering
Yet, the experience extends to the game's immersive perspective aside from meandering through streets. I became extraordinarily excited upon discovering that I could not just observe farming fields, but also enter them. And although I’d assumed structures would be inaccessible, I managed to access earthen quarries, investigate a respected schoolhouse during active classes, and invade personal courtyards. Don't bother with door access (not even the studio allocated resources 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
Even though I expected to witness my city rendered using primitive rendering, apart from certain rough movements and periodic inhabitants sitting in a bench as opposed to atop a bench, the first-person view appears considerably improved over predictions. The meticulously crafted materials (particularly rock faces) really have no business being this good in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You won't necessarily notice specific hair details, however, you can observe writings on surfaces, sparks flying from torches, discoloration of masonry, pupils, and conifer needles. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and celestial bodies twinkling afar, creates a particularly moody setting, and proves significantly less intimidating versus the earlier title, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble nightmarish entities 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 options to jump, sprint, and adjusting the view — the zoom function permitting me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and back. I then decided to hit various digit inputs and found I could alter my character’s appearance. Yellow toga? 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 activate the engage command, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. Should you be curious, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I attempted, naturally).
Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues
But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, as they're remarkably entertaining. 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 gran will have your head.” Understandable stance, father character. A pleasant regional Celt then started applauding my outstanding integration methods by labeling it “Perfect fusion,” whereas an irritable elderly woman decided to threaten 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 found the joys of joyriding across historical settings. Completely unexpectedly, 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 ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, is pretty fast, although you shouldn't expect open-world vehicular chaos — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (again, not saying I’ve tried).
Combat Limitations
The only thing that disappointed me within the immersive perspective was learning about my exclusion from in battle encounters. Sporting my soldier fit, I ran up to the enemy amidst fighting and tried to harm them, yet was completely overlooked. The close-up view was still rather spectacular, and seeing opponents retreat, their appendages thrashing around, felt highly gratifying, yet it would have been exciting to effectively strike targets via my incendiary bolts.
