Chapter Text
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Rey’s POV
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Rey should have known that accepting a job offer to work on the Prequel Trilogy games was a mistake.
Aside from the fact that investors had decided to spin up a studio to create the sequel-–sorry, prequel-–to one of the most beloved game series of all time after waiting 16 years should have told her everything she needed to know about the project.
But she had been swept up in the hype. The press had exploded with praise at the studio’s announcement and recruiters had courted her; no need to apply Ms. Niima, Ms. Organa and Mr. Skywalker are already familiar with your work.
She had been heady with the praise, the attention, the starting base salary.
Never meet your heroes.
Just look at where that got her.
Sweat slicked her brow as she swung around the snowy landscape, trying to get a look at the arena and not accidentally roll dodge into a tree because the dodge distance bug from last week’s playtest still wasn’t fixed. She’d have to ask Finn about that afterwards.
The environment looked good. Puffs of snow spawned as her feet moved through the snow, her footsteps persisted behind her, and a heavy snowfall triggered as she moved through the thicket. The lighting tinted everything with a cold, blue hue as her character’s hair bobbed in the physics sim.
Rey smiled to herself, relishing briefly in the fact that she had snuck her signature hair style-–3 stacked buns and some wispy bangs-–into the character creator. She chose it every time she playtested.
She swung the camera to look up at the skybox and–-shit , accidentally roll dodged directly into a tree, knocking her character flat on her back in the snow.
A grumble sounded behind her, Finn, “Fuck, I thought we fixed that.”
Rey stayed mute, focused on the game as she heard Finn shuffle impatiently. She didn’t have to look at him to know that he had crept a hand up his cheek in nervous thought. Tense.
She squinted through the snowy landscape and swung the camera again, looking for movement-–there. A dark figure was leaning over in the snow, hand outstretched, body shaking with effort. If this were a normal playtest Rey would have turned and congratulated Finn on how good the animation looked.
But this was not a typical playtest.
The hunched character was clad in all black with tousled dark hair that obscured his face and stirred in the wind system. Rey was careful to stay far enough away from the character to avoid alerting him. She held down the controller’s right trigger to active the Force–-
A button prompt appeared in the middle her screen.
Gotcha.
She smashed X and the lightsaber hilt flew past her opponent, landing directly into her hand.
Rey fumbled with the controls slightly as a murmur zipped around the room, and activated the lightsaber. The sudden addition of bright blue light cast a nice key light on her character’s features and threw color across the snow particles that swirled around her.
Blue saber, nice, that was a rare drop. She felt relieved until the dark figure across from her deployed his lightsaber, spinning the red blade in a practiced circle and holding it at the ready.
Shit. That one was Exotic, way better stats.
Rey had the briefest moment to wonder if his ult was on cooldown before she was engaged in combat, the camera pulling in tight over her character’s shoulder. Her fingers flew across the controller’s face buttons, inputting combos she had been practicing for a week.
If only the playtest had been with mouse and keyboard-–she was so much better on PC–-
She swung wide and hit a tree, burning a slice in the bark where the lightsaber intersected. The tree fell, but she had no time to appreciate the environmental destruction system because her opponent was advancing relentlessly. He used attack animation combos she had only ever seen playblasted on Poe’s computer, never hooked up in-game before.
She was forced to give ground to keep from taking damage; parry, block, step back, parry, counter, shit, he blocked, he countered again. Spark VFX flew from where their weapons scraped the rocks around them and Rey recognized that he was going to back her into a corner of the map unless she made a move.
She waited for an opening, watching his animations and carefully timed a climbing QTE that propelled her to the top of the gorge. From the corner of her eye Rey saw that he had also nailed the prompt–-bastard–-and she desperately needed to put some distance between them.
She mashed the dodge roll and it catapulted her much farther ahead than what the designers had intended. It worked to her advantage, and she exploited the bug a few more times, blocking an attack and retreating again, carefully leading their fight towards the scripted event behind her.
She heard appreciative murmurs around the room her as the geometry in the arena split open, trees falling into a deep fissure in the ground that glowed red from within. From somewhere to her left, Rey could hear Holdo, their Engineering Director, talking in conversational tones about how the map would shrink as the match dragged on, driving remaining players closer and closer together to increase tension and create emergent gameplay.
Poe’s snarky tone echoing in the back of Rey's mind; Didn’t emergent gameplay . . . emerge? Naturally? If you have to specifically plan it, it isn’t emergent.
The momentary distraction was enough to cause Rey to fumble her combo, and her opponent caught her in a defensive maneuver, using his weight and momentum to push her back towards the fissure.
She snuck a glance behind her to admire the falling rock particle effects, before a deep voice cut through the proximity mic and into her headphones,
“You need a teacher. I can show you those Force combos.”
The other character’s face was close to their interlocked sabers, and Rey watched the dual red and blue lighting splay across his intense, drawn features. Of course it looked exactly like he did in real life. It was an impressive character creator, Rey admitted, stopping herself before she got too swept up in the art,
“The Force . . .” She mumbled in thought. Force combos. The Force system had new keybindings and she had read that documentation recently. If she could just remember–-
She executed a guard break to gain some distance before advancing on him, using the few Force button combos she could remember. Wide, powerful two-handed swings drove him back and Rey pressed the thumbstick forward, catching and slicing her opponent’s leg, then arm.
The damage chunked at his HP bar and he staggered. She took advantage of an optional combat QTE to kick him back onto the snow but he countered and reached forward with his free hand as they grabbed each other’s wrists. They were locked face to face, hair and cloak whipping in the wind system.
His weapon–-
She waited for an opening as they struggled, her hands gripping the controller. The haptics were picking up dramatically–-was that a bug?--and the controller vibrated so hard she thought it was going to shake out of her lap. Rey managed to keep her grip, driving the Exotic red lightsaber down into the snow before swinging her Rare blue one around in a charged attack, downstriking against his weapon before whipping it up to hit his character in the face.
The cumulative damage finally dropped the man to the ground and he looked up at her, blood streaming down his character’s face.
“Woooo!” Behind her, Finn cheered, “Go ProcScar!”
“And that-–” Holdo said, speaking over Finn, “Is our procedural scarring system. Players who are wounded in battle will carry those scars with them through to future battles, as a way of personalizing their journey.”
Rey eyed the convincing wound for a moment before her character began sliding away from the downed and bleeding man. A crack had appeared between them, widening rapidly into another fissure and a UI warning appeared to inform her the map was shrinking again.
Her gut jolted for a moment before she realizing he’d lost too much HP to even drag himself across the kill circle towards her. She backed away from the fissure’s edge, moving deeper into the safe section of the map, only relaxing once a congratulatory pop-up appeared. Her screen cut to a pre-rendered cutscene of the Falcon landing in the snowy forest to take her to safety.
Rey Niima sighed in relief, the adrenaline finally beginning to dissipate from her system as she took off her headphones.
The first thing she saw was Kylo Ren’s dark eyes staring at her over back-to-back monitors. He glowered, eyes practically sparking, making no move to acknowledge the rest of the dev team that had gathered in the meeting room to watch their demo of the multiplayer combat system.
Their very very high stakes exhibition demo. For their visiting publisher. Who controlled all of their studio’s funding. Rey felt her adrenaline spike again.
She gulped heavily, even as Finn rested a congratulatory hand on her shoulder and gave it a friendly squeeze. Her eyes jumped through the gathered crowd to find a small group of three well-groomed First Order executives, standing slightly apart from the rest of the dev team as if they were in a little forcefield. A bubble of wealth and power in a sea of black hoodies.
The First Order was a venture capitalist fund, new to games publishing but backed by shockingly deep pockets. It was only through their generous funding that Skywalker Family Studios had been able to develop the Prequel Trilogy for the last three years. First Order had a keen interest in the old IP, and wanted their first game release to be an explosive hit. Skywalker Studios and Prequel Trilogy checked all the right boxes; it was the highly-anticipated follow-up to a beloved IP, the original leadership team was back together, and the only thing they needed was funding.
And funding they had found. While initially suspicious about the deal–-given that First Order had no track record of making videogames-–the money spoke for itself. Even the pre-release press hype that First Order had drummed up around Skywalker Studios had been impressive. Gaming news sites were already talking about how Prequel Trilogy was shaping up to be Game of The Year, when no one from the public had even played it. Yet.
Rey scanned the small crowd of publisher reps, as if she could read their body language to find out if they’d been impressed by the demo. She didn’t know who she should worry about more.
Scyre Phasma wore a crisp off-white pantsuit, towering above most of the men in her 5-inch Louboutin close-toed pumps. A black silk blouse was tucked into tailored trousers and her pale blonde hair was braided and pinned back within an inch of its life. Phasma was the First Order’s Chief Technical Officer and existed to make sure their business decisions and investments were sound from an engineering standpoint. What that meant for Skywalker Studios was that Phasma existed as a constant existential threat to the engineering department, her central team of First Order engineers auditing code and frequently clashing with Holdo and Poe.
Rey attempted to feel a modicum of admiration for Phasma’s ability to climb the corporate ladder as woman in a male-dominated industry, but the CTO was so cold and abrasive to work with that all Rey could muster was a resigned respect. Her eyes continued to scan the group that listened intently to Leia.
Armitage Hux was the most familiar face to Rey. His ginger hair was geometrically parted and slicked back in an affected way, which tonally clashed with the graphic t-shirt he wore under his slightly-too-big black blazer. His shirt today read STARKILLER VERSION CONTROL SYSTEMS in white font, a look that screamed he was a c-suite tech exec trying and failing to blend in with the dev team. As the publishing producer embedded with Skywalker Studios, he make sure the team was on schedule and in-budget. He reported directly to the man in charge–-
Snoke. Rey couldn’t remember his first name. Everyone, even his direct reports, always referred to him as Snoke. He was the CEO and founder of the First Order, dressed in a beige sport coat and mustard button up with a collar that hung loose around his neck, the top two buttons left undone in a purposely casual way. Rey didn’t know anything about his past other than he was either very good at convincing people to give him money or he came from generational wealth. He was a thin, bald man with sunken cheeks and bright eyes that flashed around the room before locking suddenly and inexplicably with Rey’s.
She had the distinct and implausible feeling that her mind was being read, and she glanced away quickly to aimlessly scan the lavish wood-paneled demo room. She had mixed feelings whenever she came in contact with reps from their publisher. Sure, First Order was the reason she even had this job in the first place, they paid her and her friends’ salaries, and they wanted to see the game she desperately cared about be successful but . . .
She couldn’t put a name to the uneasy feeling that burned in her gut as she watched the three reps chat with Leia, Luke, Han, and Holdo.
“--for our battle royale-style online multiplayer mode, which will ship alongside Prequel Trilogy’s single player narrative campaign.” Leia, Skywalker Studio’s intrepid Creative Director was telling the group animatedly, “We’ve been calling that mode you just saw The Force Awakens , which will allow players to put themselves into the story in a way they were never able to with the Original Trilogy or Prequel Trilogy’s campaign modes, thanks to our advanced character creator. We can talk more about our seasonal content plans for it over lunch.”
Snoke murmured something too low for Rey to hear, but she watched Hux nod over-enthusiastically as his head whipped to look between Snoke and Leia. Phasma grimaced like she was sucking on a lemon that had just slipped to the back of her throat.
“Now if you’ll follow us over to this station, Holdo and our Lead Engineer, Poe Dameron, will demo our latest vertical slice for Prequel’s campaign mode.” Leia deftly corralled the group over to another corner of the demo room, where a separate tv and dev kit was set up to display a carefully paused screen that showcased a dusty race track. Poe sat ramrod straight on a sleek low-backed couch, controller gripped tightly in his hands.
“This section of the game takes place during Episode 1, the first chapter of Prequel Trilogy. Anakin Skywalker is a young slave boy who is about to compete in a high stakes pod race on the desert planet Tatooine. If he wins the race, he will be freed of his servitude and set out across the galaxy with the Princess and two Jedis, one of which might be a familiar face for fans–-after this demo we’ll move into the conference room where Luke will walk you through the latest character concepts our art team has been working on.”
Not for the first time, Rey marveled at how natural Leia was at giving demos and talking to execs. As Poe unpaused the game and the Mos Espa level loaded, Rey felt a rush of pride at seeing her podracer hovering in the center of the screen.
Ah, hard surface design, her one true love. She had originally been hired by Luke because of her mech-heavy portfolio; vehicles, weapons, and mechanical props were her forte. Designing robotic hydraulics and greebles made her industrial design heart happy. Anakin’s podracer had been one of her first concept tasks after being hired at Skywalker Studios, before she was assigned to The Force Awakens multiplayer team. Luke had gushed at the podracer’s visual design during their art review, heaping praise on Rey that made her feel seen in a way she hadn’t been in years.
She watched Luke as he fidgeted during Poe’s demo, his eyes on the First Order execs instead of the TV. At least Rey wasn’t the only one–-
She was pulled abruptly from her thoughts by a short QA tester who bounced on the balls of their feet next to Rey’s elbow. They wore thick circular glasses and a bright orange denim jacket, with a series of fashionable plastic clips in their hair.
“Erm, hey Rey, do you have a chance to give me some playtest notes from your demo? Artoo wants me to file tickets ASAP before C3 closes the sprint.” They asked, hopping from one foot to the other.
“I do, Bebe, lets debrief.” Rey reluctantly turned away from the crowd that had now gathered around Poe’s campaign demo. The rest of the room had thinned out, its sleek white furniture, glass walls, and rich wood paneling belying the depth of funding that First Order had poured into Skywalker Studios. They had just finished construction of their new offices when Rey joined the team, and their new studio space was fit for a science fiction setting.
Rey lead Bebe out of the over-large meeting room and down a hallway, “I’m not actually convinced that bugged roll dodge distance is so bad. And it’d also be nice if there was some kind of visual indicator on the HUD when a player’s force skills were proc’d. You know, to remind players of their full suite of abilities.”
Bebe’s thumbs were a blur as they input notes on their phone, staring intently at the screen and smacking the wad of bubble gum in their mouth loudly, “Ohhh yes, I think Luke has a task on him to mock that up–-hasn’t gotten to it yet.”
Rey nodded as they rounded a corner, entering the vaulted ceiling and open air warehouse-chic space that held dozens of desks, all aligned in neat rows and punctuated by wooden shelves bursting with tchotchkes, trinkets, and trophies. The entire interior continued that same white, metal, and wood panel design from the demo room, broken up by a thick red accent stripe that spanned two of the walls opposite them. The fresh paint smell was finally starting to dissipate.
“I’ll follow up with Luke, then.” Rey parted ways with Bebe and wound her way past desks, yoga balls, and a slightly bent cardboard cutout of a Strom Trooper from Original Trilogy that was being used as target practice for some foam dart toy.
She made her way over to a corner of the building which was much darker than the rest of the office--a prized location for digital artists. A self-satisfied smile crossed Rey’s mouth as she passed a wall covered in printouts of various concepts and assets the art department had completed. Quite a few of them were her drawings. As she slipped quietly back into the familiar chair behind her desk, she tried to ignore the man who sat a meter away. Their desks were arranged at a 90 degree angle to each other, more elbow-to-elbow than side-by-side, which was still far too close for Rey’s comfort.
She snuck a glance out of the corner of her eye. Kylo was turned away from her, headphones on, hunched over his tablet display, drawing. Of course he was still working during a milestone review. Half of the dev team was milling around watching the demonstrations while the other half took a “long lunch” at Cantina, the team’s favorite dive bar down the block. But no, Kylo was working. Drawing. Honing his craft. She could tell it was a character lineup, but his broad shoulders obscured the rest of his screen from her view. His shoulder blade shifted under the fabric of his black henley as he worked.
Ben Solo. Her brain belatedly chimed in, We’re coworkers, I’m supposed to call him Ben now.
But even after a year, Rey still had trouble referring to him as Ben instead of his online handle–-@KyloRen. In fact, most of the team referred to him as Kylo, only their manager Luke and a few other Leads ever called him Ben.
Because, nepo baby that he was, Kylo was related to half of the leadership team and the other half could be his godparents. Rey would have been angrier about this fact if he wasn’t also one of the most talented visual designers currently working in the entertainment industry. He was a Senior-level concept artist at Skywalker Studios, a prominent member of an online digital art atelier called the Knights of Ren, and had over 250K followers on Quibble-–probably even more followed his Qtube. Rey had made an unfortunate habit of periodically checking his socials. Hate-watching, Finn had called it, but even Rey couldn’t deny that the man was an incredible artist with an innate sense of color and proportion. His character designs were appealing and stylized, his environments graphic and story-rich. The online life drawing course he taught was by far the most popular class on the Knights of Ren website, and slots in his classes sold out within a week of going live.
Because not only was Kylo an amazing artist, he was also striking to look at. Objectively. One young woman who had taken his digital illustration course had gone viral for a painting she had done of an ominous, brooding knight in shining black armor and long black robes, holding his helmet in one hand and sword in the other, the sword tilted so that its sharp metal reflected the reds and oranges of an out-of-frame fire. But the knight’s face-–it was obvious that the artist had just used Kylo, her own instructor, as a face model and painted him into the illustration instead of the live model.
She had been immediately hired by Actiwision Quizard.
Rey shook her head to herself, turning back to unlock her computer and pull up her latest assignment, a series of rare drop lightsaber hilts. Despite being acutely aware that she had a more junior title than Kylo, Rey still took pride in the fact that even as a mid-level she could draw circles around him when it came to hard surface mechanical assets.
Follower counts aren’t everything. She told herself, trying to make her brain believe it.
A seething drawl froze her in her tracks before she nestled into her headphones and playlist of rain noises,
“If we’re ever put on another exhibition demo, how about spending less time ogling the graphics and more time showcasing the actual combat?” Kylo’s low voice slid against her like a weight, heavy with disdain.
Rey’s hackles immediately rose and she spun to face Kylo whose headphones were around his neck and arms crossed against his broad chest. Her eyes snagged on the lineup behind him–-a cast of characters in bright outfits and fun shape language-–but she forced herself to meet his burning gaze.
“I was trying to show off the art department’s hard work, but I guess that’s something you don’t care about.” She shot back, forcing her voice to remain steady. He barely flinched,
“You and I both know that gameplay sells games.” Kylo rumbled, his grimace deepening.
“Yes, and art markets games.” She raised her eyebrows, trying to stay in control of the anger bubbling in her gut, “Or have you forgotten what department you’re part of?”
“You don’t get it.” He shook his head before turning back towards his computer and pulling his headphones back on.
Ass. Rey thought bitterly, angrily spinning back to her computer. Who cared about how a good an artist he was when he was such a pain to work with. His expectations were through the roof and his pursuit of quality was relentless, Rey had seen him berate more than a few coworkers for misinterpreting a concept of his or not understanding his feedback. When he wasn’t drawing he was playtesting and when he wasn’t at Skywalker Studios he was at home moonlighting as an illustrator. His life revolved around execution and improvement, and Rey suddenly couldn’t stand to be in the same room as him.
She pulled up the company-wide chat app and scanned the public channels before popping open her personal chat app, Quiscord. They weren’t allowed to use Quiscord for sharing work files, but she, Finn, Poe, Bebe, and their producer Rose used it to have backchannel discussions and send memes to each other that they didn’t want IT to see.
R0b0Rey <11:34AM>
hey
where is everyone
im alone in the bullpen with kylo and hes trying to kill me with his brainwaves
FN-2187 <11:34 AM>
loooolool
RoseyPosey <11:35 AM>
@BarrelRollPoe is still demoing, I think @BB-8’s with him
We’re at Cantina with half the team. I think Design is still watching the demo
R0b0Rey <11:35 AM>
k be there in a sec
FN-2187 <11:35 AM>
Rey
Just like
Tell him you're assigning him a Qira ticket
To fix his attitude
Tell him
The estimate is
R0b0Rey <11:36 AM>
finn this joke is already stale
FN-2187 <11:36 AM>
0.1 day
So he better hop to it
RoseyPosey <11:36 AM>
Finn, I’m a producer and even I think that joke is shit
FN-2187 <11:37 AM>
Poe would think it’s funny
@BarrelRollPoe
@BarrelRollPoe
@BarrelRollPoe
R0b0Rey <11:37 AM>
HES DEMOING, FINN
RoseyPosey <11:37 AM>
His phone better be on silent or it’s going to mess with the podrace!!
Rey pinched the bridge of her nose and began to pack up her backpack, shooting off one last message before shutting down her station for the day,
R0b0Rey <11:39 AM>
order me whatever Finn is having, its going to be hell catching up to him
With one last glance over her shoulder she ducked under a TIE fighter that someone had strung from the ceiling and headed for the lobby, eager to leave the stressful afternoon and a tense, brooding Kylo behind her.