As the inventor of the Ultima series, Richard Garriott is also one of the pioneers of today’s open-world role-playing games. And that the declared Lord British likes to go on a tour of discovery, he has now proven once again.
The former developer recently set out to explore the deepest point on earth. On Monday, March 1, 2021, Garriott boarded an undersea capsule with which he dived into the Mariana Trench. A canyon in the Pacific Ocean, the deepest point of which is about 11,000 meters below sea level. According to Garriott, this was “a descent into darkness, in the truest sense”. (via The Mirror)
A treasure at the lowest point on earth
Garriott was accompanied on his journey into the deep sea by the experienced navigator Victor Vescovo, who shared a video of their tour on Twitter:
Link to Twitter content
Garriott himself took pictures and made a video. He could also take a few samples with him to the surfaces. At the same time, it goes without saying that an RPG fan like Garriott takes the opportunity to leave a little treasure for stragglers.
Like him across from the magazine Space.com revealed, Garriott placed a geocache at the lowest point on earth. In other words, a hidden object that can be found using a GPS.
“We cut a six-inch titanium plate that not only contains the geocache number, which we still keep secret, but also a secret word. And we have a synthetic piece of foam on a Kevlar cord on which the word geocache is also written and the number is there.
On the other side of the foam, which looks like an arrow pointing down, is the secret word. That way, anyone who finds that in the future can also learn the secret word and discover the geocache. ”
Garriott has already hidden a very similar “collectible” in space. The tour through the Mariana Trench is not the first extraordinary expedition for the legendary developer.
A man of extremes
With this recent trip, Garriott is one of only 14 people who have ever made it this far. But at the same time he will be the first person ever to have been both in space and at the lowest point on earth and to have visited the North and South Poles.
His trip to the ISS cost space tourists about $ 30 million in 2008. At the station he also left a geocache and a plate with a small “travel bug” on it.
For video gamers, Lord British remains the inventor of the Ultima series and thus a pioneer in open world and role-playing games. In an interview in 2017, Garriott explained to us in more detail how Ultima 7 expanded the limits of the medium.
