Anno 117's Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Turns Out to Be a Breathtaking First-Person View.
Wait — did you know it's possible to experience Anno 117: Pax Romana in first-person? If that’s your reaction, you feel equally astonished as I was when I discovered this concealed mode. Allow me to step away from my empire’s management, delegate it to a reliable subordinate, commandere a carriage, and take a spin around the classical city.
Activating the First-Person Mode
As a city-building game, Anno 117: Pax Romana is normally experienced from a bird's-eye view. Yet, when you input a hidden code — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on keyboard or else “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” with a gamepad — you can explore the empire as an ordinary Roman. Since a similar easter egg appeared in the previous Anno title, I looked forward to try it out in Ubisoft's newest game, though I was uncertain it would operate before I discovered myself stuck in a Celtic building (possibly an unexpected bug — this mode can be prone to glitches now and then).
Roaming the Streets of Rome
After extracting myself, I walked the bustling streets through my metropolis and visited stalls, alehouses, floral patches, and shellfish gatherers — it was glorious to witness the fruits of my labor from a brand-new perspective. I observed a variety of intricacies I wouldn’t have spotted from above: Entryway ornaments, an ass transporting a floral pail, chickens running loose, citizens lounging on their terraces… Even just observing the form of a ledge and the coating on a pillar is quite interesting to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
Further Than Mere Wandering
However, there's additional content to the first-person feature in Anno 117 beyond simply walking the paths. I became extraordinarily excited upon discovering that not only could I observe crop lands, but also step into them. And even though I thought the building models would be off-limits, I was able to enter clay pits, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building as teaching was underway, and invade personal courtyards. Don't bother with door access (not even the developers allocated resources for that), however, you can definitely stroll around a barley farm, observe people digging and transporting bags, and glance into any tiny hut as long as the door is absent.
Appearance and Mood
Although I was fully prepared to see my metropolis represented in PlayStation 1 graphics, excluding a few unpolished motions and periodic inhabitants sitting within a bench rather than on a bench, the immersive perspective seems far superior to anticipations. The intricately designed surfaces (especially stone surfaces) are unexpectedly excellent in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You won't necessarily notice separate follicular elements, but you will see wall inscriptions, sparks flying from torches, discoloration of masonry, eye details, and evergreen foliage. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and celestial bodies twinkling afar, is especially atmospheric, and proves significantly less intimidating compared to Anno 1800, now that the citizens don’t look like nightmarish entities these days.
Testing and Personalization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I opted to try different commands, and immediately located the abilities to leap, run, and zoom in or out — the last option enabling me to change from first-person to third-person mode and return. I then decided to hit various digit inputs and discovered that I could change my representative's visual design. Amber garment? Crimson attire? 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 hit the interaction button, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. Should you be curious, it’s not possible to kill civilians (though I didn't test this, obviously).
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 listened to a dad instructing his kid that “Owning a fox is prohibited and if you feed it one more chicken, your gran will have your head.” Rightly so, Roman dad. One lovely local Celt then proceeded to praise my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by describing it as “Ideal combination,” 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 as I assumed I uncovered all possible content within the game's immersive perspective, I experienced the pleasure of driving in Ancient Rome. Entirely by accident, I selected a carriage and immediately found myself in the driver's position. Bovines, equines, even human-pulled carts; you may operate any of them freely. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, travels rather rapidly, though you shouldn’t imagine open-world vehicular chaos — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Battle Constraints
The sole aspect that let me down regarding the first-person view was discovering my inability to participate in any fighting. Equipped in warrior attire, I charged toward adversaries during active combat and tried to harm them, yet was completely overlooked. The proximate observation was still rather spectacular, and seeing opponents retreat, their arms flailing about, seemed enormously rewarding, though it might have been amazing to effectively strike targets using my fiery projectiles.
