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Dune: Awakening
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My Desert. My Arrakis. My Dune (Gamescom) - Dune: Awakening Interview with Funcom
We spoke with Joel Bylos, Funcom's chief creative officer and the creative director of the upcoming MMO survival game, set in Frank Herbert's legendary sci-fi world.
Audio transcription
"Hello everyone and welcome back to Gamereactor.
As you can already infer by the wonderful background we've got here, I'm with Joel from Funcom to talk a little bit about Dune Awakening."
"Now, I've just come from the really busy public side of Gamescom, where I've just had a chance to play a bunch of the game, which I think is like the first time really anyone's getting a chance to play it.
Yep."
"Are you, you know, how do you, what's the sort of expectation?
Are you hoping people are going to enjoy this game?
What's the sort of vibe around it?
I mean, naturally I'm hoping they enjoy it."
"But yeah, no, the vibe's been good.
People are really excited about the trailers, but a lot of questions about like what the game actually is.
So getting it into people's hands and letting them actually get a feel for like what a survival MMO really means is kind of useful for us."
"And then yeah, like getting it out there just to have players sort of give feedback.
Yeah.
And when you were building a Dune game, what's the sort of like, I don't want to say hurdles, but what's the sort of challenges that go into that?
Because it's a very beloved brand, iconic brand."
"How does that work?
Yeah, I mean, it's a very nervous experience.
You sort of take what you need to find in the lore and like we've been working with the legendary movie guys and we've been working with the Herbert Estate to try and, you know, build something unique for the game that isn't exactly the books or the movie."
"But of course then that leads to sort of, you know, people coming out of the woodwork with like, that's not Dune.
So it's been really important to us to try and start from the layer of Dune and then everything that we build that is different, I can kind of justify it from a lore perspective."
"And I've run it by the guys who really own the lore.
So it's kind of about making sure that works.
Yeah.
And when you were building the game, because obviously it's set in this alternate timeline, was that something that you went in thinking, this is what we're going to do."
"We're going to make it in an alternate timeline.
We're going to build around it.
Or did you go, this is a Dune simulation.
Here's the narrative."
"Which way did that go?
So we explored a lot of ideas, right?
We knew we wanted to have the politics of the universe.
We kind of knew that we wanted to have factions on the planet, like the Harkonnen and the Atreides."
"There's no real timeline in which they exist on the planet.
Like there's a few hours while the Harkonnen are destroying the Atreides, but otherwise there's no real timeline.
So we were kind of looking at that and like, how do we get all these factors to come into place?
And we looked at setting it 100 years before the books."
"We looked at setting it way in the future, in the time of the God Emperor of Dune.
And eventually we sort of landed on, what if Jessica had a girl instead of a boy?
Because that changes everything."
"It allows us to keep characters who die in those battles alive so you can meet them in the game.
It allows us to have the player influence things in a stronger way.
And it also just means that people who've read the books or seen the film now have something new to explore."
"It's not just the Dune that they know, which to be honest has already been done way better than I could ever do it.
So there's no point in copying it.
That was your words, not mine."
"Obviously, Funcom has a lot of experience making these sort of huge open world games, survival sort of experiences.
How have you used that experience and translated it to a Dune template?
I mean, some of it's just like figuring out the mechanics that work for Dune and making sure that they're good."
"Some of it's bringing over mechanics that we've made in, say, Conan Exiles that we knew people loved.
Building and climbing were two of the things people loved in Exiles.
We brought them over to Dune, we improved upon them, we made them better."
"Building is much more cooperative in Dune and we tried to make the user interface and experience of doing it more interesting.
And so, yeah, it's really just sort of taking what people love, figuring out what people don't like."
"And then on a more philosophical level, it's looking at how people play.
I've seen how people play Conan Exiles PvP and when we were thinking about that for Dune, we were like, okay, how can we do this in a slightly different way that works?
I saw or I had a presentation of the game back in L.A. at Summer Game Fest and it was mentioned that this game is significantly larger than Conan Exiles."
"What sort of scale are we looking at for Dune?
I mean, so the starting map, Hager Basin, is the same size as the whole game of Conan Exiles.
And then there's multiple other maps, right?
We have the social hubs and then there's the deep desert."
"In and of itself is nine times the size of the Conan Exiles map.
Of course, with a caveat, right?
It's a desert. There's a lot of empty negative space in between things.
It's rock islands where things happen."
"And then there's a lot of sand between.
And that's kind of, you know, so I don't want to cheat and say it's as dense as Conan Exiles in that map, but it's a lot larger for sure.
And what sort of secrets have you put into the world to make sure that those big sort of empty vast spaces of desert aren't, you know, they've got reasons for players to go out and explore."
"Yeah, so, I mean, we built the system called the Coriolis Storm.
And so every week the deep desert, the large sort of empty area, gets wiped by the storm and the landscape shifts.
Like it uncovers, you know, new shipwrecks and dungeons and things like that."
"And it covers over old ones.
So what's there is fresh every week.
So players go out, they re-explore, the fog of war comes back and you go out and you map the area again."
"So the idea is to try and keep infinite exploration, make it as fresh as possible and get people to keep playing it.
And tell me about some of these like more sort of Dune specific things.
How do they play into it?
Like talking about, let's say, shields."
"How are they going to affect things and what sort of challenges will they impose on the player?
Yeah, I mean, we've gone with a bold new paradigm in this game because like it's very easy to default to something like Halo shields, right?
Where it kind of, you know, it takes damage."
"It's like a secondary health bar and then when it bursts.
What we've done is shields are basically to make you invulnerable to range damage for as long as their power lasts.
And their power lasts basically forever."
"Like they're very low drain.
So you have this option, right?
To sort of put on your shield, avoid range damage.
But then people are going to come at you from all sides, right?
With melee attacks."
"So it's really about this sort of moving in and out of combat and then people have abilities to counter shields and things like that.
So it's kind of, yeah, I mean, it's just combined arms.
It's just this combination of range, melee and abilities."
"Just moving in and out, quick paced combat, very fluid hopefully.
So yeah.
And I know for a fact that you can meet some characters despite the fact that this is an alternate timeline."
"What sort of faces, what sort of individuals can we run into during our adventure?
I mean, so when you swear allegiance to one of the factions, you get to meet kind of the leader of that faction."
"In our world, that would be Rabban of the Harkonnen and Ducalito of the Atreides.
Still alive in our game.
You interact with, well, I don't want to spoil too much because in the main story you kind of run into people."
"But yeah, like there's characters from the books that actually aren't in the movie.
But they're still sort of very major characters in the books that are actually showing up in the game as well."
"So yeah, it's kind of, yeah, there'll be familiar faces for people who know the books.
And how far through the books did you go for inspiration?
Because the Dune series is enormous."
"So how far through did you go before you went, oh, this is kind of getting weird now?
So we considered the first three as kind of the core source for the game."
"So it's Dune and Dune Messiah and Children of Dune.
And then we've taken all the stuff that Brian did as background for these as well.
So elements of that creep in as well."
"And we mention characters from those books.
And then, of course, it's just the larger universe.
So we look at things.
But it's mostly those three."
"That's the thing I tell the team is our primary source.
Let's talk about the worm in the room then.
Tell me about how you made these feel real and impactful.
Yeah, so the worm was always like a tension mechanic."
"It was always like every time you step on the sand you need to feel like this thing is going to come and eat you.
And it's really dangerous.
So there's a few things we did."
"First of all, it's this giant, it's an AI system.
So it's a real worm roaming around in the world.
It's there whether players are there or not.
It doesn't matter."
"And it has territories.
And there's multiple of them.
And they take up different spaces.
And so it's listening for vibration."
"And when it hears it, it moves towards what's making the most noise.
So it can sort of change targets as well depending on who's making the most noise.
In addition to that, with the idea that you make vibrations on the surface, it's just kind of this, I wanted people to really feel like they hear the Jaws music when they start walking on the sand and they know."
"And so it also limits your traversal options.
So it also helps us to build progression into the game.
Because the sandworm will eat you if you run too far.
Eventually you upgrade to something that lets you move a bit faster which leads to you spend less time on the sand."
"So you can get a little further.
And eventually you get flying vehicles.
And then the sandworm becomes less of a threat.
However, then we decided to do that really nasty thing of putting things on the sand that you need."
"So now you have to land to pick them up.
And so you're always thinking about it, right?
Now, Dune Awakening is getting closer and closer to launching.
But for when it does eventually actually make its debut, what's one thing, what's one element of the game that you're really excited for players to experience for themselves?
So we haven't really talked so much about the endgame political system, the Landsraad."
"I talked about the Coriolis Storm and the way that that resets.
That's something that I think might be really unique and people haven't seen before in a game.
So that's kind of cool."
"The Landsraad is the other side of that.
It gives you these big meta goals that you need to do.
And I'm really interested to see how players interact with that system.
And so those two things, which we haven't really talked about, I think they're going to be interesting."
"And then there's another thing that I'll mention, but I won't spoil.
And that is, of course, what happens when you take enough spice?
Oh, okay then.
That's all right, then."
"As a final question, give us a timeline.
When's Dune Awakening going to be coming and on what platforms?
Yeah, so we're aiming to launch on PC in early 2025.
We're not giving you the exact date yet because there's details to be sorted out."
"Consoles will come sometime after.
We're not 100% sure yet because TCRs and all the things that you have to do with consoles.
Well, there you have it. That's Dune Awakening."
"No doubt there'll be plenty more we hear about this game.
And if I have another chance to speak to you down the line, I'm no doubt we'll get into some more weird Dune lore.
But until then, yeah, this has been Dune Awakening and stay tuned for the next Gameractor interview."
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