Funcom showed up at Summer Game Fest 2023’s PC Gaming Show to give Dune Awakening fans a glimpse at Alpha gameplay footage and a lot of information on the upcoming survival sandbox MMO.
Creative Director Joel Bylos outlined the five pillars of the game: survival, politics and intrigue, infinite exploration, combined arms, and expression and customization.
Dune Awakening is built upon a foundation of five pillars. There is survival, which is obviously everything you’d expect to see in a survival game. It’s water discipline, it’s surviving the sandstorms that sweep across Arrakis. Then we have politics and intrigue, which speaks to the faction gameplay. It’s about siding with one of the factions thinking about how they work together, and perhaps assassinating members of the other factions.
Then there’s infinite exploration, which is one of the things I’m most excited about due to how the world changes over time. We have a concept called the Coriolis storm. When it sweeps across the landscape, the sands shift revealing new points of interest and hiding others, making the game renewed every week. Then we have combined arms, our combination of vehicle combat, melee combat, ranged combat, and abilities all working together to create a seamless sandbox combat experience. Finally, we have expression and customization which is really more than just the visual expression and customization, which of course we have through armor sets and clothing and a robust character creation. But in addition to that it’s really about playing the way you want to play. Do you want to be a trader, a fighter, a spy? You can do all these things.
Later in the interview, Bylos explained how PvP engagements in Dune Awakening will be disciplined based on rules established in Dune lore.
Dune is full of political Intrigue and we have this fantastic concept from the stories called Kanly, which is basically the rules of engagement. There’s this thing called the Great Convention that defines areas of the world where players are allowed to interact in different ways.
In Dune Awakening, players will have different areas of the world that are enabled for, for example, full PvP combat and areas that are safer as they are patrolled by Sardaukar troops. Players really have this opportunity within the sandbox to find the locations where they can fight with each other or to stay in the locations where they’re safer. That’s up to the player and how they want to approach the game.
Players and guilds will compete to gather spice resources (which can then be consumed to augment a character’s skillset at the risk of becoming addicted) on the planet of Arrakis. However, using vehicles or gadgets like Holtzman shields in combat will increase the likelihood of the sandworm appearing to eat everything and everyone still in the area.
Funcom didn’t provide an update on the release window, though they encouraged Dune Awakening fans to sign up for the upcoming beta. The game will launch on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X.
