Anno 117's Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Turns Out to Be a Breathtaking First-Person View.

Wait — did you know you can play the game Anno 117 using a first-person camera? If that’s your reaction, your surprise matches compared to my initial response when I discovered this secret option. Allow me to briefly leave managing my empire, entrust it to a trusted assistant, borrow a cart, and enjoy a ride across the Roman world.

How to Access the First-Person Feature

As a city-building game, Anno 117: Pax Romana is typically played using a top-down camera. But, should you press a covert button sequence — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on keyboard or else “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on console — you can explore the empire as an ordinary Roman. Because an analogous secret was part of the earlier game Anno 1800, I was eager to test it in Ubisoft's newest game, though I was uncertain it would operate until I found myself stuck in a Celtic building (which probably wasn’t intended — this feature is somewhat unstable occasionally).

Exploring the Streets of Rome

Once I crawled out, I strolled the busy roads of my city and toured shops, taverns, blossom gardens, and seafood collectors — it felt magnificent to observe my diligent efforts using an entirely new viewpoint. I detected numerous fine points I might have missed when viewing from overhead: Doorway embellishments, an ass transporting a floral pail, poultry scattering about, folks chilling on their balconies… Merely examining the shape of a window sill and the coloration on a post becomes engaging to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.

Beyond Simple Strolling

However, there's additional content 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 farming fields, but also access them. And despite my expectation the building models would be off-limits, I could walk onto clay pits, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building while lessons were in session, and intrude into private gardens. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the studio have the budget for that), but it’s entirely possible stroll around a barley farm, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and look within any modest shelter provided the entrance is missing.

Appearance and Mood

While I was completely ready to see my metropolis represented using primitive rendering, besides some crude animations and the occasional civilian resting in a bench as opposed to atop a bench, the immersive perspective seems much better than expected. The highly detailed textures (particularly rock faces) shouldn't logically be this impressive for a title that remains primarily overhead. You may not see any individual strands of hair, yet you will notice writings on surfaces, sparks flying from torches, discoloration of masonry, iris elements, and conifer needles. The night, featuring dancing flames and celestial bodies twinkling afar, creates a particularly moody setting, and also a lot less scary compared to Anno 1800, now that the citizens don’t look like sleep paralysis demons now.

Testing and Personalization

Because the game's hidden immersive perspective lacks official documentation, I opted to try different commands, and quickly discovered the functions for jumping, dashing, and changing perspective — with the latter allowing me to switch between first and third-person views and revert. I then decided to hit various digit inputs and learned I could modify my avatar's look. Yellow toga? Red toga? Azure and violet outfit? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? 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. If you're interested, harming inhabitants is impossible (not that I attempted, naturally).

Humor and Citizen Interactions

However, I had no desire to injure my people, since they're incredibly amusing. Shortly after I activated first-person mode, I overheard a father telling his child that “Owning a fox is prohibited and if you offer additional fowl, your grandmother will be furious.” Understandable stance, father character. A pleasant regional Celt then proceeded to praise my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” while some cranky old lady opted to menace me: “Say that one more time, and they’ll never find your body.”

The Fun of Vehicle Use

At the moment I believed I uncovered all possible content within the game's immersive perspective, I found the joys of joyriding across historical settings. Entirely by accident, I interacted with a cart and immediately found myself in the driver's position. Bovines, equines, even people-powered transports; you can control each one as desired. The donkey-powered transport, notably, travels rather rapidly, though you shouldn’t imagine open-world vehicular chaos — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (reiterating, without confirming testing).

Fighting Restrictions

The sole aspect that let me down in Anno 117’s first-person mode was learning about my exclusion from in battle encounters. Wearing my military outfit, I approached opposing forces in the midst of battle and tried to harm them, yet was completely overlooked. The close-up view remained quite impressive, and watching the enemy run, their appendages thrashing around, seemed enormously rewarding, yet it would have been exciting to effectively strike targets using my fiery projectiles.

{Conclusion: More to Discover|Final Thoughts: Additional Exploration