Gamescom 2024 was a crucial step for Dune Awakening. Funcom finally shared the early 2025 release window (for PC, with consoles to come later) and showed off the first solid chunk of gameplay in a presentation posted on YouTube.
The developer also allowed the press to get their hands on the game for the first time, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity, having been waiting for Dune Awakening since its announcement.
The first impact was harsh in the sense that Arrakis showed its teeth right away. The demo didn’t have a tutorial, so we were basically dropped into the desert without much guidance. Even so, it didn’t take long to figure out that the player character doesn’t last long without water. Initially, you need to extract water from plants, although that only works up to a point. You also have to be mindful of not staying too long in the sun, lest you gain a rebuff called sunstroke, which accelerates the rate at which your water level depletes.
As with any survival game, harvesting is very important in Dune Awakening, too. To spice things up, Funcom has added a sort of mini-game to cutting metals. The cutter analyzes a structure to find its weak points, and you’ll then have to aim the cutter accordingly to get the best mining efficiency.
It wasn’t long until I stumbled into an NPC outpost. At this point, the developer who was overseeing demo stations ‘cheated’ to unlock certain skills on our characters, such as the Shigawire grappling hook and the suspension belt. Between this and the freeform climbing, it is possible to approach an enemy base from various angles.
Combat felt pretty good, although there is room for improvement in the next few months. Graphically, I was expecting a bit more from the game. While Lumen’s lighting prowess was on full display, the sharpness wasn’t great. However, I quickly learned from the graphics settings that the display resolution was set to 1080p, which would have explained my perception. The low resolution may have been picked for the demo due to ongoing performance optimization. The full game will support NVIDIA DLSS 3, by the way.
Overall, I enjoyed my brief time with Dune Awakening, even though many questions lingered in my mind. Thankfully, to answer some of those, I subsequently interviewed Chief Product Officer Scott Junior. You can read the full transcript below.
Let us start with the announcement of the release window. Why did you choose to lead with PC and delay the console launch?
So, PC development is right within our wheelhouse, given our background. We wanted to make sure that we gave the console platforms the timing it takes to do optimizations, making sure that the controller is working properly, the interface and all that. So, we’re starting with Steam right there and PC, and then we will add more content and prepare for the launch of the other platforms.
But it’s not going to be an early access launch, right?
That is not the plan.
Speaking of the other platforms like consoles, can you share whether you plan to have crossplay eventually when Dune Awakening launches on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X?
A lot of that has to do with the actual platforms themselves and our discussions with them. We have not come through it on that yet so I can’t say for sure.
When I played the game at the Funcom booth, no controller was available. Will that be supported for the PC launch?
Yes. If you see there on the screen right now, we have controller onscreen prompts. We just had a keyboard and mouse for the Gamescom demo to streamline the experience. However, the game is already fully playable with a controller. We designed all the UIs with the controller in mind, we designed the interactions and the player’s abilities accordingly. Unlike in some games where you have an infinite amount of keys to pressure, we designed everything to fit with the controller as well.
I believe there are three active abilities in total, correct?
You have attack, parry, dodge, sprint, and all those things. In addition to that, you can map the three active abilities from the different archetypes in the game. You start out Dune Awakening with one archetype, and then you need to go out and meet other masters who can teach you the other archetypes. The player creates their own class by selecting abilities and techniques from those archetypes.
So you can mix any skill from any class in any way, right?
Yes. Whether it’s the Bene Gesserit, Swordmasters, Mentats, or Troopers, you can unlock those and mix them however you want to do to create your own kit, if you will.
The Gamescom demo dropped us right in the middle of the action with no tutorial, making it confusing at first, but then it was fairly easy to pick up what you needed to do. Of course, the survival focus is strong initially, but I’m wondering how much emphasis you plan to keep on survival elements later on. Will those be important even after 30 hours of gameplay?
For the initial survival experience, we’re really focused on water. It’s Dune; it’s Arrakis. Water is an incredibly rare and valuable resource there and you need it when you’re starting out just to survive. That survival pressure will lessen with water specifically when you start getting a stillsuit and better tools.
However, you will be introduced to new mechanics like adding a sandbike or an ornithopter. Those are some of the more advanced things that you can build, and they put different pressures on you. Eventually, as you are on Arrakis, you will be introduced to spice pressure, whether it’s from using it to pay out the guild, using it to bolster your abilities, or simply to counteract your addiction. That pressure will continue to increase. So, when you get more tools, you can gather things quicker, but there will be new types of pressure in the late game.
I noticed that on the map, I could see another party listed as having four players. How big is the party size in Dune Awakening?
We have a couple of different party-type systems. Your normal group would be a party of four, and then you can have a larger group, a party of sixteen or four groups, which would be like a raid or a strike group. I don’t think we have come out and set the exact term on that yet.
We have different content for solo players and party players. Large groups could be doing a big spice harvesting operation, using several vehicles and coordinating in planning out logistics and building bases.
How do you plan to balance it so that very large guilds don’t completely dominate the field?
Large guilds will require large amounts of resources to do what they need to do, while solo players will require way less. While a solo player cannot do the exact activity in the same way as a larger group, they’re still going to be able to interact in those activities in different ways, whether it’s sneaking onto a harvester and stealing spice out of that and then running away or trying to steal ships or ornithopters from players. It will be hard, but we want to make sure that this is accessible whether you’re solo or not.
I’m thinking especially of small guilds. Lots of players tend to have a small guild with five to ten friends. Will they still be able to join these PvP fights and have a chance?
Of course. We expect, especially late-game interactions, to often be in an unfair amount of numbers given that you’re in an uncontrolled environment, right? We’re not a session-based game where you’re always 16 versus 16; it’s a sandbox where you’re going to have a group of one or a group of sixteen, so we’ve tried to make ways where people can deploy techniques or tools to alert them when other players are coming. There are also ways for people to get out of the fight and disengage in a fight they don’t want to participate in.
There is a penalty for dying in the Deep Desert, right?
We’re still working on the balance for that, but generally, when you die, you lose some credits and then the spice that you have on you.
What about PvE content? I know you’ve talked about the underground laboratories.
Yep, the Eco Labs. Our survival map and the Deep Desert have a couple of different types of PvE content. The first one is what you said, the Eco Labs. These are ecological testing stations where the environment is very different from the normal sand and rocks that you have on Dune, so there’ll be different plants, different animals, and things like that down there.
And each of them tells a different story when you’re going down into something that hasn’t been explored in quite a long time. We also have shipwrecks, both dynamic and static shipwrecks of these large, massive crashed ships that create a dungeon-like experience.
Usually, in most MMOs, you gather a group for a specific boss fight to get specific loot. Can players have that kind of experience in Dune Awakening?
Yes, the Eco Labs are that kind of experience. I mean, comparing it to a dungeon, an MMORPG dungeon, it’s not a one-to-one like copy or instance of that, but there will be NPCs that you’re encountering, encounters that you’re fighting throughout it, and then there’ll be a culmination, whether it’s a boss fight or something that you need to do at the end of it to get some rewards.
Does the game support different roles for players, like support builds, for instance?
It is not concretely defined like that. However, there are abilities that are more damaging and others that are more supportive. It won’t be exactly like a dedicated healer, but yeah, there are ways to prevent some damage from being dealt to your teammates.
Is there a concept of aggro or threat in PvE?
In some ways, yeah. Not as clear as in a traditional MMORPG where you have like taunting, but there will be ways to have NPCs attack you.
Is there some loot exclusive to Eco Labs, or do you plan to allow all loot to be craftable?
Each Eco Lab will have its own loot table. One of the differences is that a lot of these are going to be limited-run schematics that you use to craft unique versions of things that you have. These will be items that, again, are unique with unique effects compared to what you can craft regularly.
Dune Awakening seems like a live service type of game. Moving to the future, post-launch, what kind of post-release content can players expect?
When we launch, we have a story and a journey that the player goes through. It comes to a conclusion in our first post-launch update, which will have new story content and an extension to the storyline between the Atreides and the Harkonnen, the introduction of new NPCs, new contracts, and new journeys for the player to go through. We’ll also be adding new Eco Labs, new vehicles, and new mechanics for the survival regions of the map.
Your game director, Joel Bylos, said that the way you structured the world makes it easier to add more zones in the future.
Yes, exactly. Once you get an ornithopter, you’re able to leave the survival map, the Hagga Basin, and there you can go and explore the overland map, which is all of Arrakis. Post-launch, we will be adding new exploration spots and new maps that you can go into, which will offer new survival experiences and new story content.
Do you think the game will favor ranged combat, or will it be fully balanced with melee?
The goal is to support both. We use the shield mechanic that’s famous in the lore, which is that slow bullets penetrate the shield. There will be times when the player needs to combine both melee and ranged with their abilities to win, so you can make a well-rounded character that covers everything.
I know that when you create your character, you can select your background and stuff like that. How will it play into the story?
Exactly. When you’re interacting with the NPCs, they will react to you on what your background is. Whether you’re coming from a noble house or whether you were a slave. It’s not every single NPC, but there will be quite a few branching paths based on your background.
It’s not going to have any impact on the gameplay, combat, or anything like that. That is mostly based on the trainer you select from the background and then those you unlock throughout the game.
In the endgame, you have the Landsraad system, right? With your guild, you side with either the Atreides or the Harkonnen. How does it work?
The Landsraad system, from a high level, is the endgame where guilds fight against other guilds sworn to the other faction across the entire game world. They will be fighting for the same objectives and then at the end, whichever faction wins, it’s a server-wide reward for everybody that participated in.
Okay, so the battle between Atreides and Harkonnen resets at some point.
Yeah, there’s different phases that happen, whether once every week or once every month, but yeah, there would be the battle phase where you’re not fighting, but you’re fighting over objectives to complete those. Then, for whoever wins, there will be a council meeting, and you’re selecting what the rewards will be for the victor, whether it’s access to unique content or something else.
I believe you said previously that even PvE players can participate.
Indeed, everybody will be on it.
I know you’re starting with these two factions, but do you plan to add more factions from the lore at some point?
Perhaps. We’re not ready to talk about that yet.
Are you going to have a larger Dune Awakening Beta later this year?
We’re in a relatively small closed beta right now. We expect to expand that over the next couple of months with more people, so the beta will grow exponentially. We’re continuing to invite more people who signed up for the beta from our official website.
Do you think there will be a full open Beta before the early 2025 launch?
We’re not ready to talk about that yet.
Thank you for your time.
