This afternoon, Funcom announced the first in a series of Dune Awakening Direct showcases. Slated to go live on Monday, March 4 at 6 PM CET (noon Eastern Time, 9 AM Pacific Time) on Twitch and YouTube, it’ll be hosted by Soe Gschwind and include new footage of the open world survival MMO. Fans will be treated to the Gameplay Reveal Trailer and a featurette titled Creating Worlds, from Book to Film to Game.
In the gameplay reveal trailer, we’ll get a taste of what it’ll be like to soar across open Dunes in an ornithopter, survive the sandworms, and build a shelter. The featurette, on the other hand, is made of interviews with Dune Awakening Game Director Joel Bylos and Greig Fraser, a producer and cinematographer who worked on the two Dune movies by Denis Villeneuve.
The proximity with the theatrical launch of the second movie is likely no coincidence on the developer’s part. Hype is at an all-time high, especially after Dune: Part Two has received incredibly flattering reviews from critics. Having seen the film myself last night, I can tell you it’s as good as you heard, and then some.
Of course, Dune Awakening the game will have to stand on its own merits. It’s been five years since Funcom first announced it had acquired a license to make games in the universe created by Frank Herbert. There was Dune: Spice Wars, a 4X RTS game developed by Shiro Games and published by Funcom, but Dune Awakening is by far the biggest project based on that deal.
In 2020, the Norwegian game company known for Anarchy Online, Age of Conan, The Secret World, and Conan Exiles was acquired by Tencent, and the scope of Dune Awakening was increased in the process. The first concrete details on the game were unveiled at Gamescom 2022 when Funcom said it would be a hybrid of the MMO and survival genres. Here’s a brief official overview:
Rise from survival to dominance in a vast and seamless Arrakis shared by thousands of players. 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.
Funcom has been doing limited closed testing, but soon there will be bigger beta tests as the game’s launch draws near.
