Anno 117: Pax Romana's Top Secret Reveals Itself as a Breathtaking First-Person Perspective.
Surprisingly — did you realize you can play the game Anno 117 using a first-person camera? If that’s your reaction, you feel equally astonished as I was the moment I learned this secret option. Allow me to briefly leave my empire’s management, delegate it to a trusted assistant, commandere a carriage, and take a spin around the classical city.
Unlocking the First-Person Mode
As a city-building game, the game Anno 117 is typically played from an overhead perspective. But, should you press a covert button sequence — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — you can explore the realm as a regular inhabitant. Given a comparable hidden feature was included in the earlier game Anno 1800, I was eager to try it out in the latest installment, but I wasn’t sure it would function until I found myself stuck in a Celtic building (likely not meant to happen — this mode is somewhat unstable occasionally).
Roaming the Ancient Streets
After extracting myself, I strolled the lively avenues through my metropolis and visited stalls, alehouses, blossom gardens, and shellfish gatherers — the experience was splendid to observe all my hard work using an entirely new viewpoint. I detected a variety of intricacies I wouldn’t have spotted from the top-down view: Entryway ornaments, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, poultry scattering about, folks chilling on their balconies… Merely examining the design of a windowsill and the paint layers on a column is quite interesting to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
Further Than Mere Wandering
But there’s more to the game's immersive perspective aside from meandering through streets. I felt particularly pleased upon discovering that I could not just observe farming fields, but also enter them. And although I’d assumed the building models would be off-limits, I managed to access earthen quarries, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building during active classes, and intrude into private gardens. Don't bother with door access (not even the studio have the budget for that), yet it's completely feasible meander across a cereal plantation, see citizens working with tools and burdens, and look within any modest shelter when there's no doorway obstructing.
Graphics and Ambiance
Although I was fully prepared to observe my settlement depicted with outdated visual quality, excluding a few unpolished motions and sometimes citizens positioned inside seating rather than on a bench, the first-person view appears much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 won't necessarily notice separate follicular elements, however, you can observe writings on surfaces, fiery particles from lamps, fading on bricks, eye details, and pine tree leaves. The night, featuring dancing flames and stars shining in the distance, generates a uniquely immersive environment, and also a lot less scary relative to the previous game, now that the citizens don’t look like nightmarish entities now.
Testing and Personalization
Since Anno 117’s super-secret first-person mode has no guided tutorial, I decided to experiment a bit, and promptly found the options to jump, sprint, and adjusting the view — the last option enabling me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and back. I then decided to hit some number buttons and discovered that I could change my representative's visual design. Yellow toga? Crimson attire? Blue and purple toga? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You may carry a sword and shield, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; if you hit the interaction button, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. In case you’re wondering, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I’ve tried, of course).
Humor and Citizen Interactions
But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, as they're remarkably entertaining. Shortly after I activated the immersive perspective, I heard a parent advising their offspring that “Owning a fox is prohibited and if you offer additional fowl, your elder will punish you.” Understandable stance, father character. One lovely local 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: “Repeat that statement, and your disappearance will be permanent.”
The Thrill of Transportation
At the moment I believed I’d discovered all there is to discover within the game's immersive perspective, I experienced the pleasure of driving across historical settings. Totally unintentionally, I clicked on a wagon and immediately found myself in the driver's position. Oxen, donkeys, even people-powered transports; you can drive them all at your leisure. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, travels rather rapidly, but don't anticipate open-world vehicular chaos — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (again, not saying I’ve tried).
Fighting Restrictions
The only thing that disappointed me regarding the first-person view was learning about my exclusion from in combat situations. Wearing my military outfit, I ran up to the enemy in the midst of battle and tried to harm them, but was entirely disregarded. The proximate observation was still rather spectacular, and watching the enemy run, their arms flailing about, proved very satisfying, though it might have been amazing to actually hit something with my burning arrows.