Dune: Awakening – Details, Screenshots & Schools of the Imperium Trailers
By PDG Staff
Dune: Awakening is a heady cocktail of sunburn, sandworms, survival and spice on a genuinely epic scale. Fingers crossed you’re hungry, because this is no video game snack — it’s a vast Roman banquet. An open world multiplayer survival game with MMO elements, Dune: Awakening has an entirely new storyline peppered with new and familiar faces, underpinning a rollercoaster of water recovery, worm avoidance, desert skirmishes, and spice-fuelled political chicanery. Intel Gaming Access shared a tube of sunscreen with Ole Andreas Haley, lead producer on Dune: Awakening at Funcom, and found out what’s big in the world of sand.
Inspired by Frank Herbert’s legendary sci-fi novel and the award-winning films from Denis Villeneuve and Legendary Entertainment, Dune: Awakening is the first-ever open-world, multiplayer survival game set in the Dune universe—built on a massive scale. The game is set in an alternate timeline where Paul Atreides was never born. Instead, following the edict of the powerful Bene Gesserit sisterhood, his mother gave birth to a girl, House Atreides survived, and the Fremen were wiped out (possibly). “As huge Dune fans ourselves, we take great inspiration from the source material, as well as the films and games that came before us,” says Haley. “The alternate timeline in Dune: Awakening allows us to stay true to the source material, but also explore other areas of the universe that fit well with an open-world game like ours. It’s been such a fun experience to work with this IP!”
Stay alert — you have a lot to learn to survive on Arrakis, the harshest planet in the universe, as you build yourself up from the dust of the desert floor after a nasty crash landing. Get into your stride exploring, harvesting, building shelters, and generally staying alive, until you can expand your reach with vehicles, find some new friends, forge valuable alliances, and start to make a name for yourself. As you progress you’ll learn more about what’s going on and why you’re there. If you make it to the later stages of the game without ending up as worm food, you can pledge allegiance to one of the great houses, dip your toe in political intrigues, and join your guild to fight for the spice fields with an arsenal of weapons, armors and vehicles.
“The game is for anyone who loves multiplayer survival games, the Dune universe, exploration, and great world-building,” says Haley. But if you’re a Dune fan who prefers to explore solo, Haley promises something for you, too: “Even though the game is multiplayer, we do see solo players in the beta also enjoying it, and it’s tuned to allow you to experience most of the game solo if that’s your style.” That said, the game world really comes into its own as an MMO experience, especially when it comes to the guilds and the late-game political meddling.
However you play, you’re certain to encounter the spectacular sandworms, which of course make a beeline for you when they hear the pitter patter of tiny feet (and no, you can’t sandwalk, at least not right off the bat). “The sandworms in the game have their own AI behaviors, and roam around in their defined territories under the sand,” says Haley. “The way we built it and how they are attracted to vibrations is very much a sandbox mechanic, and something I hope our players will find both terrifying and thrilling.” With this much sand in play, you’d be forgiven for thinking the visual range of the game is limited, but the Funcom team have gone to great lengths to make it otherwise. “With the game set on a desert planet, one of the development challenges we had was how to ensure that we have visual diversity,” says Haley. “Our art team did a fantastic job in taking inspiration from biomes described in the books that offer visual variety.”
So in Dune: Awakening you will of course come across multiple types of sand biomes, but there are also underground areas including human-built mines and the natural Hagga Rift, a deep canyon whose dark depths are lit by luminescent crystals. Other biomes offer more greenery and plants, like O’odham, and — perhaps the most imposing of all — the majestic mountains of the Shieldwall. As a third-person action game, strong PC performance will give you a smooth experience when exploring and fighting it out on Arrakis, while ensuring the environments always look their best. “Our game makes use of all the latest Unreal Engine 5 technology, like Lumen for gorgeous lighting,” says Haley. “Making sure your hardware is at our recommended settings will allow you to experience the game in its best light (pun intended).”
Funcom and Intel have collaborated on previous games, but this was Haley’s first time working with the Intel team. “Intel has been a great partner and is actively helping us integrate XeSS 2 into the game as soon as possible after launch,” he says. “Intel has helped report bugs and come up with solutions for technical challenges. Their engineers have a unique experience and understanding of their own solutions, which allows us to get to good solutions in those areas faster.” The result is a better player experience — with plenty of spice. But go easy on that spice, cowboy — it can take your mind in surprising directions. We’d expect nothing less.
Dune: Awakening launches on June 10, after which the Funcom crew plan to continue pouring fuel on the Fremen flames in the form of updates for years to come. “Dune: Awakening is a persistent multiplayer world and a live game, so we will keep expanding on it post-launch with free updates and DLCs for our players,” assures Haley. “We have some exciting updates in store, and I can’t wait to see where the game takes us!”
Dune: Awakening — Schools of the Imperium | The Mentat
Dune: Awakening — Schools of the Imperium | The Trooper
Dune: Awakening — Schools of the Imperium | Bene Gesserit
The Spice Will Flow on June 10th!
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