Anno 117's Pax Romana's Top Secret Reveals Itself as a Breathtaking First-Person View.
Hold on — were you aware gamers have the option to enjoy Anno 117 Pax Romana from a first-person viewpoint? If that’s your reaction, your surprise matches as my own reaction when I discovered this hidden feature. Allow me to temporarily abandon overseeing my civilization, delegate it to a capable deputy, take a wagon, and go for a joyride through Ancient Rome.
Activating the First-Person Feature
Being a city-building title, Anno 117 Pax Romana is typically played from an overhead perspective. 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 — it becomes possible to roam the realm as a regular inhabitant. Since a similar easter egg was included in the earlier game Anno 1800, I felt excited to try it out in the latest installment, yet I had doubts it would work until I found myself submerged in a structural glitch (possibly an unexpected bug — this option can be prone to glitches now and then).
Roaming the Ancient Streets
After extracting myself, I walked the busy roads across my settlement and visited stalls, alehouses, blossom gardens, and cockle pickers — the experience was splendid to see all my hard work through a fresh lens. I detected numerous fine points I wouldn’t have spotted from above: Doorway embellishments, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, fowl roaming freely, citizens lounging on their terraces… Merely examining the shape of a window sill and the paint layers on a column is quite interesting for those not residing in classical times.
Further Than Mere Wandering
But there’s more to the first-person feature in Anno 117 beyond simply walking the paths. I felt particularly pleased the moment I learned that besides being able to look upon crop lands, but also enter them. And even though I thought interiors would be restricted, I was able to enter mud extraction sites, investigate a respected schoolhouse while lessons were in session, and invade personal courtyards. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the creators have the budget for that), but it’s entirely possible stroll around a barley farm, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and glance into any tiny hut provided the entrance is missing.
Appearance and Mood
Even though I expected to observe my settlement depicted with outdated visual quality, excluding a few unpolished motions and the occasional civilian resting inside seating as opposed to atop a bench, first-person mode looks much better than expected. The highly detailed textures (particularly rock faces) really have no business being this good within a game that's fundamentally a city-builder. You won't necessarily notice any individual strands of hair, but you will see engravings on walls, sparks flying from torches, discoloration of masonry, iris elements, and conifer needles. Evening, with glowing light sources and stars shining in the distance, is especially atmospheric, and also a lot less scary compared to Anno 1800, given that the populace appears unlike terrifying apparitions these days.
Discovery and Modification
Given the covert first-person feature doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I chose to test various actions, and quickly discovered the functions for jumping, dashing, and zoom in or out — the zoom function permitting me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and back. I then experimented with some number buttons and found I could alter my character’s appearance. Amber garment? Crimson attire? Sapphire and amethyst dress? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You may carry a sword and shield, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; if you activate the engage command, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. If you're interested, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I’ve tried, of course).
Comedy and Population Encounters
However, I had no desire to injure my people, as they're remarkably entertaining. Only seconds after I landed the first-person view, 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. A pleasant regional Celt then began complimenting my outstanding integration methods by describing it as “Ideal combination,” meanwhile a grumpy senior female chose to intimidate me: “Say that one more time, and they’ll never find your body.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
Just as I assumed I had found everything available in the title's first-person feature, I found the joys of joyriding across historical settings. Entirely by accident, I clicked on a wagon and was promptly seated on the box. Oxen, donkeys, even manually drawn vehicles; you can control each one as desired. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, is pretty fast, but don't anticipate any GTA-like shenanigans — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Combat Limitations
The only thing that disappointed me in Anno 117’s first-person mode was discovering my inability to participate in combat situations. Wearing my military outfit, I approached opposing forces amidst fighting and attempted to attack them, yet was completely overlooked. The close-up view was nonetheless magnificent, and observing foes flee, their appendages thrashing around, proved very satisfying, yet it would have been exciting to actually hit something using my fiery projectiles.
