Anno 117's Pax Romana's Top Secret Is a Impressive First-Person View.
Surprisingly — did you realize gamers have the option to enjoy Anno 117: Pax Romana from a first-person viewpoint? If you're thinking that, your surprise matches as my own reaction the moment I learned this secret option. Allow me to temporarily abandon my empire’s management, entrust it to a trusted assistant, take a wagon, and enjoy a ride through Ancient Rome.
Unlocking the First-Person Feature
Being a city-building title, Anno 117: Pax Romana is typically played using a top-down camera. However, if you input a hidden code — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — you can explore your domain as a common citizen. Because an analogous secret appeared in the earlier game Anno 1800, I felt excited to test it in the latest installment, yet I had doubts it would operate prior to being stuck in a Celtic building (likely not meant to happen — this mode tends to be prone to glitches now and then).
Discovering the Streets of Rome
After extracting myself, I strolled the lively avenues across my settlement and visited markets, breweries, blossom gardens, and seafood collectors — the experience was splendid to see all my hard work from a brand-new perspective. I detected numerous fine points I might have missed from above: Entryway ornaments, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, poultry scattering about, folks chilling on their balconies… Even just observing the form of a ledge and the paint layers on a column becomes engaging to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
More Than Just Walking
Yet, the experience extends to the first-person feature in Anno 117 aside from meandering through streets. I felt particularly pleased upon discovering that I could not just look upon farming fields, but also access them. And despite my expectation the building models would be off-limits, I was able to enter clay pits, tour an esteemed educational structure while lessons were in session, and even trespass into people’s gardens. Don’t try to open any doors (not even the studio planned for that functionality), but it’s entirely possible meander across a cereal plantation, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and take a peek inside any small shack when there's no doorway obstructing.
Appearance and Mood
Although I was fully prepared to see my metropolis represented using primitive rendering, apart from certain rough movements and periodic inhabitants sitting within a bench rather than on a bench, the immersive perspective seems far superior to anticipations. The highly detailed textures (particularly rock faces) shouldn't logically be this impressive in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You won't necessarily notice any individual strands of hair, but you will see wall inscriptions, sparks flying from torches, discoloration of masonry, pupils, and pine tree leaves. Evening, with glowing light sources and distant stellar illumination, is especially atmospheric, and feels much less frightening relative to the previous game, now that the citizens don’t look like sleep paralysis demons these days.
Experimentation and Customization
Since Anno 117’s super-secret first-person mode doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I decided to experiment a bit, and immediately located the options to jump, sprint, and changing perspective — with the latter allowing me to switch between first and third-person views and back. I subsequently tried pressing various digit inputs and discovered that I could change my representative's visual design. Yellow toga? Red toga? Blue and purple toga? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; if you hit the interaction button, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. Should you be curious, harming inhabitants is impossible (though I didn't test this, obviously).
Comedy and Population Encounters
Yet, I didn't want to damage my population, since they're incredibly amusing. Moments after I entered the first-person view, I heard a parent advising their offspring that “You cannot keep a fox as a pet and if you offer additional fowl, your grandmother will be furious.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. A pleasant regional Celt then started applauding my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by describing it as “Ideal combination,” while some cranky old lady chose to intimidate me: “Repeat that statement, and your disappearance will be permanent.”
The Joy of Joyriding
Just as I assumed I had found everything available in the title's first-person feature, I encountered the delight of riding in Ancient Rome. Completely unexpectedly, I selected a carriage and quickly occupied the transport. Bovines, equines, even human-pulled carts; you can control each one as desired. The donkey-powered transport, notably, travels rather rapidly, though you shouldn’t imagine any GTA-like shenanigans — impacting citizens or additional vehicles cannot occur (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Combat Limitations
The only thing that disappointed me regarding the first-person view was discovering my inability to participate in combat situations. Equipped in warrior attire, I approached opposing forces during active combat and endeavored to damage them, but was entirely disregarded. The close-up view remained quite impressive, and observing foes flee, their appendages thrashing around, seemed enormously rewarding, yet it would have been exciting to successfully impact objects using my fiery projectiles.
