Anno 117's Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Turns Out to Be a Impressive First-Person Mode.
Hold on — were you aware you can play the game Anno 117 from a first-person viewpoint? If that’s your reaction, you’re just as shocked as I was upon finding out this hidden feature. Excuse me while briefly leave managing my empire, delegate it to a capable deputy, borrow a cart, and enjoy a ride around the classical city.
How to Access the First-Person Mode
Being a city-building title, Anno 117: Pax Romana is typically played from an overhead perspective. 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 gain the ability to walk the realm as a regular inhabitant. Since a similar easter egg appeared in the previous Anno title, I felt excited to test it in Ubisoft's newest game, but I wasn’t sure it would operate until I found myself submerged in a structural glitch (which probably wasn’t intended — this mode can be prone to glitches now and then).
Exploring the Roman Cityscape
After extracting myself, I walked the bustling streets across my settlement and explored markets, breweries, blossom gardens, and seafood collectors — it was glorious to observe the fruits of my labor through a fresh lens. I detected numerous fine points I might have missed from above: Doorway embellishments, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, fowl roaming freely, citizens lounging on their terraces… Simply noticing the design of a windowsill and the coating on a pillar is quite interesting for those not residing in classical times.
More Than Just Walking
However, there's additional content to the game's immersive perspective than strolling along the road. I became extraordinarily excited when I found out that I could not just view crop lands, but also enter them. And although I’d assumed the building models would be off-limits, I was able to enter mud extraction sites, investigate a respected schoolhouse while lessons were in session, and even trespass into people’s gardens. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the studio planned for that functionality), however, you can definitely wander through a grain field, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, 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While I was completely ready to see my metropolis represented with outdated visual quality, excluding a few unpolished motions and periodic inhabitants sitting in a bench as opposed to atop a bench, the immersive perspective seems considerably improved over predictions. The intricately designed surfaces (notably masonry elements) are unexpectedly excellent within a game that's fundamentally a city-builder. You may not see any individual strands of hair, however, you can observe writings on surfaces, sparks flying from torches, fading on bricks, pupils, and conifer needles. Evening, with glowing light sources and stars shining in the distance, generates a uniquely immersive environment, and feels much less frightening compared to Anno 1800, now that the citizens don’t look like nightmarish entities these days.
Testing and Personalization
Since Anno 117’s super-secret first-person mode has no guided tutorial, I opted to try different commands, and promptly found the abilities to leap, run, and adjusting the view — the last option enabling me to switch between first and third-person views and back. I then decided to hit some number buttons and discovered that I could change my avatar's look. Golden robe? Ruby clothing? Blue and purple toga? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, preferably, wear an archer's uniform; if you activate the engage command, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. If you're interested, it’s not possible to kill civilians (not that I attempted, naturally).
Comedy and Population Encounters
However, I had no desire to injure my people, since they're incredibly amusing. Moments after I entered the immersive perspective, I overheard a father telling his child that “You cannot keep a fox as a pet and should you provide another poultry, your gran will have your head.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. A friendly native Celtic person then began complimenting my excellent cross-cultural strategies by labeling it “Perfect fusion,” meanwhile a grumpy senior female chose to intimidate me: “Utter those words again, and your fate will be sealed.”
The Thrill of Transportation
At the moment I believed I uncovered all possible content in Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first-person mode, I experienced the pleasure of driving across historical settings. Totally unintentionally, I clicked on a wagon and quickly occupied the transport. Bovines, equines, even human-pulled carts; you may operate any of them freely. The donkey cart, in particular, travels rather rapidly, but don't anticipate Grand Theft Auto-style mischief — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Fighting Restrictions
The only thing that disappointed me within the immersive perspective was learning about my exclusion from in battle encounters. Wearing my military outfit, I charged toward adversaries during active combat and tried to harm them, yet was completely overlooked. The front-row seat was nonetheless magnificent, and watching the enemy run, their arms flailing about, seemed enormously rewarding, but it would’ve been cool to actually hit something via my incendiary bolts.
