Last week Darth Hater was included on a short list of organizations invited to Lucas Arts' studio in San Francisco to check out Star Wars: The Old Republic. Due to a slight miscommunication, we only had short notice to grab plane tickets and get a hotel room booked, more on that later, but before we knew it Sado and I were on our way to California. The following is a photo journey covering a little of what we got to see in our short stay in the City by the Bay.

 

Our wonderful producer Emlaeh was the driving force behind getting us out to San Francisco in the limited time we had. However, it seems she wanted to have some fun with us and decided to book us a room in The Good Hotel. This hotel, which could be considered many things other then "good", is an eco-friendly, 100% green hotel located in the Soma District deep in the heart of San Fran. When I say green, I mean it. Everything in the room that could be made from recyclables was, from the light fixtures to the pillows. Welcome to The Good Hotel.




The wonderful room came with its own set of earplugs, because it was right on a street that is busy all night long, and we weren't supposed to drink any of the water because it was all non-treated, recycled rain water. The latter fact we didn't learn until the following evening, much to Sado's dismay. However, the most unusual addition was the toilet/sink combo in the bathroom, but we'll get to that shortly.

The next morning we woke up early and hit the town for a few hours before heading off to Lucas Arts. We were eager to see the studio, and everything Lucas and BioWare had in store for us, so we got there a little earlier then we needed to. Two hours earlier then we needed to. We knew we were in the right spot when we saw the beautiful Yoda fountain standing outside of the lobby of Building B.


We were told we were there far too early, but were free to look around the lobby and take pictures. So, like the epic Star Wars fans that we are, we cataloged nearly every square inch of the small shrine to a galaxy far, far away.






After taking these, and about 50 other pictures, we decided to take a walk around the Lucas Art's campus and the surrounding area. We quickly realized that this would be a great place to work when we saw the surrounding area. With the pond out back, pleasant winding path, and view of the Palace of Fine Art and Golden Gate Bridge, we became even more envious of Lucas employees.




Before we knew it, the event was about to begin. We made our way back to Building B and got ready to learn everything we could about Star Wars: The Old Republic. We got to watch the Deceived trailer on LucasFilms' private big screen, which was vastly superior to any version I had previously seen on-line. We were also treated to the world premier live demo of the Imperial Agent, something we were told was not shown during the European version of the event they had done the previous week. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to record the presentation in any form, but we would have loved to let you guys see what we saw.


After the presentation was finished we got to talk to many of the developers, one such conversation with Jake Neri, producer at Lucas, was on our recent podcast. We had a great time with all of the people at Lucas Arts and even got them to take a picture with us.


After we took this photo we let all the guys watch the following video I took, at 3 in the morning, of the brilliant toilet at the Good Hotel.


They guys were just as stunned as I'm sure you all are now, so we figured we should take another group shot specifically for our producer Emlaeh, to let her know how we all felt about her choice in hotels.


Strange toilets not withstanding, we had a great time out in San Francisco. Even missing our flights back didn't drag us down, it actually gave us time to get the interview transcript up for everyone here on Darth Hater. We even got a re-tweet from Leland Chee, the Holocron Keeper himself, at midnight while we were waiting for our flight out. Thank you to Lucas Arts and BioWare for the invitation out and the great show, and thank you to all of our readers, because without you guys we probably wouldn't have been asked to take part in the event.