Anno 117: Pax Romana's Hidden Gem Turns Out to Be a Breathtaking First-Person View.
Wait — did you know you can play Anno 117: Pax Romana using a first-person camera? If that’s your reaction, your surprise matches as my own reaction upon finding out this hidden feature. I must temporarily abandon managing my empire, leave it in a reliable subordinate, borrow a cart, and go for a joyride through Ancient Rome.
How to Access the First-Person Feature
Being a city-building title, Anno 117: Pax Romana usually operates from a bird's-eye view. 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 — you gain the ability to walk your domain as a common citizen. Since a similar easter egg was part of Anno 1800, I looked forward to test it in the latest installment, but I wasn’t sure it would operate before I discovered myself chin-deep in a Celtic floorboard (which probably wasn’t intended — this mode can be somewhat unstable occasionally).
Exploring the Roman Cityscape
After extracting myself, I wandered the busy roads through my metropolis and explored markets, breweries, blossom gardens, and shellfish gatherers — it was glorious to observe the fruits of my labor using an entirely new viewpoint. I noticed all kinds of details I wouldn’t have spotted from above: Front door decorations, an ass transporting a floral pail, fowl roaming freely, folks chilling on their balconies… Even just observing the shape of a window sill and the coating on a pillar becomes engaging to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
More Than Just Walking
But there’s more to Anno 117’s first-person mode than strolling along the road. I felt particularly pleased when I found out that I could not just observe farming fields, but also enter them. And even though I thought interiors would be restricted, I could walk onto mud extraction sites, tour an esteemed educational structure as teaching was underway, and intrude into private gardens. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the developers have the budget for that), however, you can definitely wander through a grain field, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and take a peek inside any small shack provided the entrance is missing.
Appearance and Mood
Even though I expected to observe my settlement depicted using primitive rendering, apart from certain rough movements and sometimes citizens positioned in a bench instead of on a bench, first-person mode looks considerably improved over predictions. The highly detailed textures (especially stone surfaces) are unexpectedly excellent for a title that remains primarily overhead. You won't necessarily notice separate follicular elements, yet you will notice writings on surfaces, fiery particles from lamps, brick decoloration, iris elements, and pine tree leaves. Evening, with glowing light sources and distant stellar illumination, creates a particularly moody setting, and also a lot less scary versus the earlier title, given that the populace appears unlike sleep paralysis demons these days.
Testing and Personalization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective has no guided tutorial, I chose to test various actions, and quickly discovered the functions for jumping, dashing, and adjusting the view — the last option enabling me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and back. I subsequently tried pressing various digit inputs and learned I could modify my avatar's look. Amber garment? Red toga? Sapphire and amethyst dress? Or — maybe superior — complete battle gear? You may carry a sword and shield, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; if you hit the interaction button, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. Should you be curious, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I’ve tried, of course).
Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues
However, I had no desire to injure my people, because they’re way too funny. Shortly after I activated first-person mode, I overheard a father telling his child that he “Can’t have a pet fox and if you feed it one more chicken, your elder will punish you.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. A pleasant regional Celt then began complimenting my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” meanwhile a grumpy senior female decided to threaten me: “Utter those words again, and your fate will be sealed.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
Just when I thought I uncovered all possible content within the game's immersive perspective, I encountered the delight of riding in Ancient Rome. Entirely by accident, I clicked on a wagon and was promptly seated on the box. Cattle, asses, even human-pulled carts; you can drive them all at your leisure. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, is pretty fast, though you shouldn’t imagine open-world vehicular chaos — impacting citizens or additional vehicles cannot occur (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Combat Limitations
The only thing that disappointed me in Anno 117’s first-person mode was discovering my inability to participate in battle encounters. Wearing my military outfit, I approached opposing forces during active combat and endeavored to damage them, but was entirely disregarded. The proximate observation was still rather spectacular, and watching the enemy run, their appendages thrashing around, seemed enormously rewarding, but it would’ve been cool to successfully impact objects with my burning arrows.
