Anno 117 Pax Romana's Top Secret Is a Breathtaking First-Person View.
Wait — did you know gamers have the option to enjoy Anno 117 Pax Romana using a first-person camera? If that’s your reaction, your surprise matches as my own reaction when I discovered this secret option. Excuse me while temporarily abandon overseeing my civilization, entrust it to a reliable subordinate, take a wagon, and enjoy a ride across the Roman world.
How to Access the First-Person Mode
In its role as a city-builder, Anno 117 Pax Romana is normally experienced using a top-down camera. Yet, when you press a covert button sequence — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls or else “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” with a gamepad — you gain the ability to walk your domain as a common citizen. Given a comparable hidden feature was part of Anno 1800, I felt excited to experience it in Ubisoft's newest game, but I wasn’t sure it would work prior to being stuck in a Celtic building (likely not meant to happen — this feature tends to be a little buggy at times).
Exploring the Ancient Streets
Once I crawled out, I walked the busy roads across my settlement and explored markets, breweries, floral patches, and seafood collectors — the experience was splendid to see my diligent efforts from a brand-new perspective. I observed numerous fine points that would escape notice from the top-down view: Front door decorations, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, fowl roaming freely, citizens lounging on their terraces… Even just observing the form of a ledge and the coating on a pillar is quite interesting to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
More Than Just Walking
Yet, the experience extends to Anno 117’s first-person mode beyond simply walking the paths. I became extraordinarily excited the moment I learned that I could not just look upon farming fields, but also step into them. And even though I thought the building models would be off-limits, I was able to enter mud extraction sites, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building during active classes, and invade personal courtyards. Don’t try to open any doors (not even the creators planned for that functionality), yet it's completely feasible stroll around a barley farm, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and look within any modest shelter provided the entrance is missing.
Graphics and Ambiance
Although I was fully prepared to see my metropolis represented with outdated visual quality, besides some crude animations and the occasional civilian resting within a bench rather than on a bench, the immersive perspective seems considerably improved over predictions. The highly detailed textures (particularly rock faces) really have no business being this good within a game that's fundamentally a city-builder. You might not observe specific hair details, yet you will notice wall inscriptions, flames emitting from lights, brick decoloration, iris elements, and conifer needles. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and distant stellar illumination, generates a uniquely immersive environment, and proves significantly less intimidating versus the earlier title, given that the populace appears unlike terrifying apparitions now.
Discovery and Modification
Given the covert first-person feature lacks official documentation, I opted to try different commands, and promptly found the options to jump, sprint, and zoom in or out — with the latter allowing me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and return. I then experimented with certain numeric keys and found I could alter my avatar's look. Golden robe? Red toga? Sapphire and amethyst dress? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You can wield a blade and protection, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; if you hit the interaction button, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. Should you be curious, it’s not possible to kill civilians (not that I attempted, naturally).
Humor and Citizen Interactions
However, I had no desire to injure my people, as they're remarkably entertaining. Shortly after I activated the first-person view, I heard a parent advising their offspring that he “Can’t have a pet fox and if you feed it one more chicken, your gran will have your head.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. A friendly native Celtic person then proceeded to praise my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by labeling it “Perfect fusion,” while some cranky old lady opted to menace me: “Repeat that statement, and your disappearance will be permanent.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
Just as I assumed I uncovered all possible content in the title's first-person feature, I experienced the pleasure of driving across historical settings. Totally unintentionally, I interacted with a cart and immediately found myself in the driver's position. Cattle, asses, even manually drawn vehicles; you can control each one as desired. The donkey cart, in particular, moves quite quickly, but don't anticipate open-world vehicular chaos — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Battle Constraints
The sole aspect that let me down within the immersive perspective was finding out I couldn’t partake in battle encounters. Wearing my military outfit, I approached opposing forces during active combat and attempted to attack them, but was entirely disregarded. The front-row seat remained quite impressive, and seeing opponents retreat, their appendages thrashing around, proved very satisfying, though it might have been amazing to effectively strike targets via my incendiary bolts.
