Anno 117: Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Reveals Itself as a Breathtaking First-Person View.
Wait — did you know you can play the game Anno 117 from a first-person viewpoint? If you're thinking that, you feel equally astonished compared to my initial response upon finding out this concealed mode. Excuse me while temporarily abandon managing my empire, entrust it to a reliable subordinate, borrow a cart, and go for a joyride across the Roman world.
Activating the First-Person View
Being a city-building title, Anno 117: Pax Romana usually operates from an overhead perspective. But, should you enter a secret combination — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls or else “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on console — you gain the ability to walk the realm as a regular inhabitant. Since a similar easter egg appeared in the earlier game Anno 1800, I felt excited to experience it in the latest installment, though I was uncertain it would function until I found myself stuck in a Celtic building (possibly an unexpected bug — this option can be prone to glitches now and then).
Exploring the Streets of Rome
Upon freeing myself, I wandered the bustling streets through my metropolis and visited stalls, alehouses, flower fields, and shellfish gatherers — it felt magnificent to see the fruits of my labor from a brand-new perspective. I observed a variety of intricacies I wouldn’t have spotted when viewing from overhead: Entryway ornaments, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, fowl roaming freely, people relaxing on their verandas… Merely examining the design of a windowsill and the paint layers on a column is quite interesting to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
More Than Just Walking
However, there's additional content to Anno 117’s first-person mode beyond simply walking the paths. I felt particularly pleased when I found out that I could not just view farming fields, but also enter them. And despite my expectation structures would be inaccessible, I was able to enter clay pits, tour an esteemed educational structure as teaching was underway, and even trespass into people’s gardens. Don’t try to open any doors (not even the studio planned for that functionality), yet it's completely feasible wander through a grain field, see citizens working with tools and burdens, and glance into any tiny hut as long as the door is absent.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
While I was completely ready to see my metropolis represented in PlayStation 1 graphics, excluding a few unpolished motions and sometimes citizens positioned within a bench instead of on a bench, the first-person view appears much better than expected. The intricately designed surfaces (especially stone surfaces) really have no business being this good for a title that remains primarily overhead. You may not see separate follicular elements, but you will see engravings on walls, flames emitting from lights, fading on bricks, iris elements, and pine tree leaves. Evening, with glowing light sources and stars shining in the distance, generates a uniquely immersive environment, and also a lot less scary relative to the previous game, given that the populace appears unlike terrifying apparitions these days.
Testing and Personalization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I chose to test various actions, and immediately located the options to jump, sprint, and adjusting the view — the last option enabling me to change from first-person to third-person mode and back. I then decided to hit certain numeric keys and learned I could modify my representative's visual design. Golden robe? Red toga? Azure and violet outfit? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; if you hit the interaction button, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. In case you’re wondering, harming inhabitants is impossible (though I didn't test this, obviously).
Humor and Citizen Interactions
However, I had no desire to injure my people, since they're incredibly amusing. Moments after I entered the immersive perspective, I listened to a dad instructing his kid that “Owning a fox is prohibited and if you offer additional fowl, your grandmother will be furious.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. A pleasant regional Celt then started applauding my excellent cross-cultural strategies by labeling it “Perfect fusion,” while some cranky old lady opted to menace me: “Repeat that statement, and your disappearance will be permanent.”
The Joy of Joyriding
Just as I assumed I had found everything available within the game's immersive perspective, I found the joys of joyriding in Ancient Rome. Totally unintentionally, I interacted with a cart and was promptly seated on the box. Oxen, donkeys, even manually drawn vehicles; you can control each one as desired. The donkey cart, in particular, is pretty fast, but don't anticipate any GTA-like shenanigans — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Battle Constraints
The single feature that frustrated me regarding the first-person view was finding out I couldn’t partake in battle encounters. Wearing my military outfit, I charged toward adversaries in the midst of battle and endeavored to damage them, but was entirely disregarded. The close-up view was nonetheless magnificent, and watching the enemy run, their arms flailing about, seemed enormously rewarding, but it would’ve been cool to effectively strike targets using my fiery projectiles.