To the utter surprise of no-one, getting approval from government departments can take a while. And when you’re a business who traditionally develops video games, going to a government and asking to build an underwater statue understandably takes a little while longer.
All images courtesy of Riot Games
Riot’s announced earlier this week that while approvals are not yet completely final, they’ve progressed to the point where they feel comfortable beginning construction of their Nautilus Reef statue. It’s been a while, but then again just designing something that’s nearly two metres tall while resting on an artificial reef isn’t the easiest thing in the world either.
In a blog post, the company said hundreds of steel plates are being made and engraved with all the players who earned three points during Ocean Week last year. (The full list of all the Summoner names being engraved, if you want to check, is here.)
“These will be affixed onto the two bases of the artificial reef. Once these are finished, and assuming the approval process goes ahead, the parts will be trucked up to Queensland where they’ll be assembled together ready for deployment,” Riot added.
The developer also posted a series of concept art and modelling screenshots, as well as a few in-progress pictures. You can check all of them on the OCE League of Legends page, but here’s a teaser.
Riot finished off by saying that once approvals were 100% complete, everything else would “happen quite quickly”. “We’ll make sure to provide updates and photos of all of these stages as we go,” they pledged.
Comments
14 responses to “Riot’s Underwater Statue Is Finally Being Built”
I’m not sure how I feel about video games companies dumping giant statues into our reefs.
Where are they actually dropping it? They state it is on an artificial reef, so not too worried if it isn’t going onto a living reef.
Ideally it would be around an area that has learner diving to give them something interesting to see
Shit man, if the government is going to approve a major coal shipping distribution point there, and allow dredge waste to be dumped at its fringes… why is this any different?
At least this will hopefully be grown over by coral, like those boats that get sunk.
It’s going into an artifical reef, which if designed properly will become part of said reef things will live around it.
I took that they were creating the reef from that, mainly the part about the giant steel plates that are going to be fixed to the base of the artificial reef
A complex and beautiful statue acknowledging one of the great, timeless games of the past decade. And what better char than the iconic Big Daddy.
I almost feel sorry for any other game devs that try to use a 19th century diving suit based char, because when people see it, they think of Bioshock, and nothing more.
[And a pre-emptive “no shit sherlock” to the person way down there below the joke who feels the need to fulfil their smartypants quota for the day by pointing out Riot don’t make Bioshock.]
Pretty sure most the Chinese, Korean and Japanese tourists see Nautalis. As well as the millions of league players out there. Your xenocentric view doesn’t apply to the majority of the world’s nationalities, nor the majority of the world’s gamers.
Any that’s me fulfilling no smartly pants quouta of the day.
Nope, that’s’s just your “playing the race card with a strawman argument” quota for the day. Last time I checked, Queensland was in Australia, while those millions of Korean, Chinese and Japanese were, infact, not.
*eye-twitches*
Great now it’s going to turn the sea toxic
Now that’s a missed opportunity for Bioshock marketing.
I misread the title and thought it said underwear statue.