That existing lore, and the attention to detail of die-hard fans, was something the developers at Funcom constantly had at the front of their minds while developing Dune: Awakening . I spoke to Gavin Whelan, the studio’s Senior Art Director, about working with an existing IP and what the future holds for the upcoming g
Typically, six hours with a game is enough to really get a vibe for the title. That’s not really the case with Dune: Awakening because there is so much to it that we couldn’t experience in this timeframe. Dune: Awakening has a lot of unique mechanical elements, and that’s probably what stood out the most. The mechanics are fully Dune and can be fun to play with. However, having just played six hours of a game that Funcom hopes keeps players immersed for hundreds of hours, it’s hard to say how much we really experienced the game. If anything, it felt like a few grains of sand in the otherwise endless dunes of Arra
The meta-human aspect of Dune (constantly swirling around the concept of spice, an enhancing/mystical drug of sorts) lends itself well to basic archetypes, without going too over the top. Early abilities are largely locomotion-based , Observatorioedu.Com either attempting to close the gap between opponents or pull them toward you. It’s a simple mechanical callback to action games of old, but it makes combat more exciting out of the g
Then, as you progress, things start to “elevate more into a story and become connected to the wider story and the wider story arcs. Players will develop their own storylines that will integrate and form larger clans, larger groupings, and drive things in the deep desert gameplay, where you want them to sort of create their own storylines, but there still is that big overlap in story that players will interact wi
With some familiar series imagery, you’ll craft your avatar through an Elder Scrolls -esque intro sequence, complete with dialogue choices and a bit of Gom Jabbar pageantry . **Notably, Dune: Awakening takes place in an alternate universe ** , where Paul does not exist, but the Atreides and Harkonnen families continue to feud. It creates an interesting “what if” scenario, which plays out through a series of light story missions and a multiplayer sandbox wo
When talking about future plans, “you can go places,” Whelan said vaguely. “There’s nothing really stopping us from doing that. There’s nothing technically stopping us from going to other planets in the future. It’s such a wide universe that they’ve created. I just want to work on a place with trees, so there’s no end to what we can do. It’s great. It’s a great license for th
The Imperial Testing Stations and wrecked ships are full of useful stuff, from blueprints of unique items to high-tier metals and processors used for machinery upgrades. While you might want to progress quickly to the next area to continue leveling, you can easily farm a few high-value PoIs as they resp
While Lynch’s film is distinct for how it explores the Dune universe, there’s only so much desert players will want to explore. Whelan said his team thrived on developing the city locations that break out the rolling dunes of Arrakis. “[Developing cities] was significantly easier than making sand interesting, other than just changing the colour of the sand. The faction identity was brilliant to work on, because, like I said, they’re uniq
Getting there required us to test everything we had learned so far, as it was the longest trek across Dune presented to us so far. Getting there took us through a stealth sequence, where we were tasked with the sight of gigantic eyes. As we did so, voices narrated various events surrounding the Fremen and Mauddib (although this would not be in reference to Paul per Dune: Awakening ‘s spin on the lore ). Completing this trial saw us receive a new task from Zantara: finding a moisture-sealed cave to acquire some Fremen compone
And Lynch’s strange film isn’t being ignored either. “Lynch tried to grapple [with] a lot of the strange weirdness of the license, which is something which we don’t want to ignore, we don’t want to forget. That’s part of the uniqueness of the world, and it’s something we just want to keep on adding. And I keep telling the rest of the artists working on this, this is an opportunity that doesn’t come around very often, to work on something this uniq
It is “one of the challenges with regular sandbox survival games,” Whelan said. “You know, you rub sticks together to make fire. You cut down a tree for a stack of logs. It’s a very organic, understandable, relatable thing. In this universe, we just don’t have that. And we’re not underestimating the intelligence of our players. They can figure this stuff out. They know that there are technologies that are available to th
However, the Dune world isn’t just the modern films. There’s the saga of books Funcom has primarly worked from, previous Dune strategy games, and the movie directed by the late David Lynch. With so much lore, it’s been a challenge for Funcom to ensure no mistakes make their way into the game. Helpfully, “Joel [Bylos, Dune: Awakening’s Creative Director] knows everything,” Whelan says. “He knows the books inside and out, so you cannot get things past him because he sits right behind me, so he will catch thin
