A few weeks ago I had the chance to visit Rare at its headquarters in Twycross, England. I was not allowed to take any pictures - no one is allowed to take pictures anywhere near the building. In fact, normally no one is even allowed to visit, so I was fine with anything they asked me to do. But I hope this semi diary will give you an idea of just how awesome Rare's headquarters (and people) are.

I arrived in Twycross, England around 11:00am. As you may already know, Rare has moved to a new headquarters in the past year, so while on my way there I had to drive by the entrance of the now empty ex-headquarters. I noticed the entire town of Twycross seemed to have developed more since I was there the year before. The old HQ still had video cameras and signs saying "Beware of Dogs" (Trust me, they have no dogs). The road then curved around to the right, and about a mile from the old building, I finally saw their new headquarters for the first time. The first thing I noticed was that the new HQ was huge! It's a lot bigger than their old HQ, and it sits on top of a small hill in the middle of nowhere. Turning right up a narrow country road I soon arrived at the front gate. The front gate consisted of two brick walls (guard stations?) and a large iron fence. Three to four security cameras were mounted around the gate recording every angle of the entrance. Luckily the gate was open so I just drove in. But going from the front gate to the actual Rare HQ meant driving up a long winding road that is lined with 50 or more video cameras the whole way there. There was basically a video camera every 30 feet or so. Literally everything in the area looks brand new. The roads were all newly paved, and trees that were planted hadn't even had a chance to grow yet.

This view is from the left side of the building. The bottom floor of the main building that you can see is the cafeteria. The 'stable' on the left houses the Jet Force Gemini and Perfect Dark teams. You can see the glass walkways that lead to each stable here as well.

I eventually got to the parking lot (or car park as Leigh Loveday says), which was about 4 times as big as the one in the old headquarters. Towards the back of the parking lot where I entered, I saw a whole bunch of what I like to call "English cars". There about 45 million of these cars in England and they all get about 1000 miles to the gallon. Being the important editor that I am (hahaha) I decided to go up to the front of the parking lot, where all of the big guys at Rare parked. I pulled up directly in front of the door. But it was only after I had parked and gotten out of my car that I noticed that my car was parked among numerous Ferraris, Lotuses, Porsches and other very expensive sports cars. The Ferrari and the Lotus were by far the most impressive cars of the bunch, and I had trouble taking my eyes off them and entering Rare. The Lotus had a license plate that said R4RES, I guess 'Rare' was taken. One thing is for sure, there were certainly a lot more sports cars in the parking lot this year than the year before. I wiped the drool off my mouth and entered through a set of double glass doors. The first two doors are open to anyone but you have to buzz the front desk to get them to open the next set of doors for you. The doors were all glass so the girls at the front desk could see me before I even entered the first doors anyway. By the way, everyone at Rare is under 30 so I'm going to call them girls and guys, ok? The reception desk is off to the left and the couches are at the back and on the right. Straight ahead was a large sliding door that lead out to the lake. I made my way to the desk and told one of the receptionists that I was 'Dan from RareNet to see Simon Farmer'.