Funcom’s first Dune: Awakening Direct revealed impressive new details on the upcoming Survival MMO, including a stunning new gameplay trailer.
The Dune good times keep on rolling. Following this weekend’s release of Dune: Part Two, Funcom has pulled the curtain back on their upcoming Dune MMO. This morning brought the first Dune: Awakening Direct, a new video series that will take gamers deeper behind the scenes of the game, while revealing new details and footage.
The 15-minute show kicked off with a deep dive behind the scenes at how the developers are crafting the world of Arrakis for a video game, and how they worked closely with the film crew to bring everything together:
In Creating Worlds: From Book to Film to Game, Funcom takes us on a breathtaking journey into the heart of Arrakis, featuring never-before-seen footage from the game. Interviews with Greig Fraser, academy award-winning Cinematographer on Villeneuve’s Dune Part 1 and 2, and Funcom Creative Director, Joel Bylos, reveal the creative overlap between Dune: Awakening and the recent movies.
Dune: Awakening combines the grit and creativity of survival games with the social interactivity of a large, persistent multiplayer game to create a unique and ambitious open-world survival MMO. Dune: Awakening is more sandbox than theme park. The emphasis lies in the freedom it offers in choosing and pursuing your goals, and the emergent moments that arise as they clash with that of other players.
In Creating Worlds, Joel Bylos summed up the meaning of Dune: Awakening, “Funcom as a company has been on this journey for a long time, creating multiplayer worlds where players can live out their dreams and fantasies. We were there in the beginning with massively multiplayer online games. We’ve been there in the beginning with survival open-world crafting games, and Dune: Awakening is a culmination of those legacies, bringing us forward into the future. It’s a culmination of what Funcom means as a company and what we can deliver.”
The Direct presentation ended things with a brand new trailer for the game, featuring oodles of gameplay footage that hints at the many (awesome) things players will be able to do:
I’m not a big fan of MMO games (mostly because finding time to commit to them is difficult), but I know Dune: Awakening is going to consume me…Especially since it’s coming to consoles as well.
There’s still no release timing yet, but Dune: Awakening is slate to hit PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PCs. You can head to the official site now to sign up for upcoming Beta tests.
