Wait — you can play Anno 117: Pax Romana in first-person? If that’s what you’re thinking, you’re just as surprised as I was when I first found out. Excuse me while I just leave my empire’s management in Ben-Baalion’s capable hands, nick someone’s cart, and go for a joyride through Ancient Rome.
As a city-building game, Anno 117: Pax Romana is played from a bird’s-eye view, but if you push a top-secret button combination — “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on keyboard or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — you can walk the empire as an ordinary Roman instead. Since a similar easter egg was included in Anno 1800, Anno 117’s predecessor, I was eager to try it out in Ubisoft’s latest, but I wasn’t sure it would work until I found myself chin-deep in a Celtic floorboard (which probably wasn’t supposed to happen — this feature is a little buggy at times).
Once I crawled out, I walked the bustling streets of my city and visited markets, breweries, flower fields, and cockle pickers — it was glorious to witness all my hard work from a brand-new perspective. I noticed all kinds of details I wouldn’t have spotted from above: Front door decorations, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, chickens running loose, folks chilling on their balconies… Even just observing the shape of a window sill and the paint layers on a column is quite interesting to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
But there’s more to Anno 117’s first-person mode than strolling along the road. I was especially delighted when I found out that not only could I look upon farming fields, but also enter them. And although I’d assumed the building models would be off-limits, I could walk onto clay pits, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building while lessons were in session, and even trespass into people’s gardens. Don’t try to open any doors (not even Ubisoft has the budget for that), but it’s entirely possible to stroll around a barley farm, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and take a peek inside any small shack as long as the door is absent.
Although I was fully prepared to witness my city rendered in PlayStation 1 graphics, besides some crude animations and the occasional civilian resting in a bench rather than on a bench, first-person mode looks much better than expected. The highly detailed textures (especially stone surfaces) really have no business being this good in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You may not see any individual strands of hair, but you will see wall inscriptions, sparks flying from torches, brick decoloration, pupils, and pine tree leaves. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and stars shining in the distance, is especially atmospheric, and also a lot less scary compared to Anno 1800, now that the citizens don’t look like sleep paralysis demons anymore.
Since Anno 117’s super-secret first-person mode doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I decided to experiment a bit, and promptly found the options to jump, sprint, and zoom in or out — with the latter allowing me to change from first-person to third-person mode and back. I then decided to hit some number buttons and discovered that I could change my character’s appearance. Yellow toga? Red toga? Blue and purple toga? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You may carry a sword and shield, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; if you hit the interaction button, you’ll fire burning arrows into the sky. In case you’re wondering, it’s not possible to kill civilians (not that I’ve tried, of course).
But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, because they’re way too funny. Only seconds after I landed in first-person mode, I overheard a father telling his child that he “Can’t have a pet fox and if you feed it one more chicken, your gran will have your head.” Rightly so, Roman dad. 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 decided to threaten me: “Say that one more time, and they’ll never find your body.”
Just when I thought I’d discovered all there is to discover in Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first-person mode, I found the joys of joyriding in Ancient Rome. Entirely by accident, I clicked on a wagon and was promptly seated on the box. Oxen, donkeys, even human-pulled carts; you can drive them all at your leisure. The donkey cart, in particular, is pretty fast, though you shouldn’t imagine any GTA-like shenanigans — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (again, not saying I’ve tried).
The only thing that disappointed me in Anno 117’s first-person mode was finding out I couldn’t partake in any fighting. Sporting my soldier fit, I ran up to the enemy in the midst of battle and tried to harm them, only to be ignored completely. The front-row seat was still rather spectacular, and watching the enemy run, their arms flailing about, felt highly gratifying, but it would’ve been cool to actually hit something with my burning arrows.
That said, there may yet be more to discover in Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first-person mode. At the risk of neglecting my poor people’s food and happiness stats, I’ve no choice but to infiltrate their gardens and disturb their workstations again soon. Rome and the Celtic marshes aren’t observed in a day, you know.
