Anno 117 Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Is a Impressive First-Person Perspective.
Surprisingly — did you realize it's possible to experience the game Anno 117 in first-person? If that’s your reaction, you’re just as shocked compared to my initial response when I discovered this hidden feature. I must step away from my empire’s management, leave it in a reliable subordinate, take a wagon, and go for a joyride through Ancient Rome.
Activating the First-Person Feature
As a city-building game, Anno 117: Pax Romana usually operates from an overhead perspective. Yet, when you input a hidden code — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on keyboard or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” with a gamepad — it becomes possible to roam your domain as a common citizen. Since a similar easter egg was included in the previous Anno title, I felt excited to test it in the latest installment, yet I had doubts it would operate until I found myself submerged in a structural glitch (which probably wasn’t intended — this option is a little buggy at times).
Roaming the Ancient Streets
Once I crawled out, I wandered the lively avenues of my city and explored stalls, alehouses, flower fields, and shellfish gatherers — the experience was splendid to witness all my hard work through a fresh lens. I observed numerous fine points I might have missed from the top-down view: Front door decorations, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, fowl roaming freely, citizens lounging on their terraces… Merely examining the design of a windowsill and the paint layers on a column proves fascinating to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
Further Than Mere Wandering
However, there's additional content to the game's immersive perspective aside from meandering through streets. I was especially delighted upon discovering that besides being able to observe crop lands, but also access them. And despite my expectation the building models would be off-limits, I could walk onto earthen quarries, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building as teaching was underway, and even trespass into people’s gardens. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the studio allocated resources for that), however, you can definitely wander through a grain field, see citizens working with tools and burdens, and take a peek inside any small shack as long as the door is absent.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Although I was fully prepared to witness my city rendered with outdated visual quality, apart from certain rough movements and sometimes citizens positioned within a bench as opposed to atop a bench, the first-person view appears considerably improved over predictions. The intricately designed surfaces (notably masonry elements) shouldn't logically be this impressive for a title that remains primarily overhead. You won't necessarily notice any individual strands of hair, yet you will notice engravings on walls, sparks flying from torches, fading on bricks, iris elements, and conifer needles. The night, featuring dancing flames and distant stellar illumination, creates a particularly moody setting, and also a lot less scary compared to Anno 1800, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble sleep paralysis demons anymore.
Discovery and Modification
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective has no guided tutorial, I chose to test various actions, and promptly found 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 experimented with various digit inputs and discovered that I could change my character’s appearance. Amber garment? Red toga? Sapphire and amethyst dress? Or — maybe superior — complete battle gear? You may carry a sword and shield, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; if you activate the engage command, you’ll fire burning arrows into the sky. Should you be curious, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I attempted, naturally).
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 heard a parent advising their offspring that “You cannot keep a fox as a pet and if you feed it one more chicken, your grandmother will be furious.” Rightly so, Roman dad. One lovely local Celt then proceeded to praise my outstanding integration methods by describing it as “Ideal combination,” whereas an irritable elderly woman chose to intimidate 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 encountered the delight of riding through classical settlements. Entirely by accident, I interacted with a cart and was promptly seated on the box. Cattle, asses, even manually drawn vehicles; you may operate any of them freely. The donkey cart, in particular, moves quite quickly, though you shouldn’t imagine any GTA-like shenanigans — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (again, not saying I’ve tried).
Battle Constraints
The single feature that frustrated me within the immersive perspective was discovering my inability to participate in combat situations. Wearing my military outfit, I approached opposing forces amidst fighting and attempted to attack them, only to be ignored completely. The front-row seat remained quite impressive, and watching the enemy run, their appendages thrashing around, felt highly gratifying, yet it would have been exciting to successfully impact objects using my fiery projectiles.
