Dune Awakening Direct

Dune:Awakening Direct is a series of showcases live streamed by Funcom on their Twitch and Youtube channels, hosted by Soe Gschwind where new information about the game will be announced.The series is set to start to coincide with the release of the latest movie, Dune Part 2

The teaser image used in the preview announcement, of the stage where the interviews will take place

Episode 1 - 4th March 2024

The first episode aired at 2024-03-04 17:00 UTC, consisting of two sections - a featurette titled Creating Worlds, from Book to Film to Game, which features interviews with academy award-winning cinematographer on Dune: Part 1 and 2, Greig Fraser, and Funcom Creative Director, Joel Bylos, giving a glimpse at what it takes to bring the ultimate Dune fantasy to life., and a never-before-seen trailer rendered entirely in-game to show many features of the game

Creating Worlds, from Book to Film to Game

The featurette starts with an interview with Joel Bylos, the creative director of Dune:Awakening and explores the process and the relationship the Funcom team has with Legendary, the producers of the latest Dune films, and how that has helped craft the game. This was followed by a direct interview with Joel. Some notable information presented here:

• The game is made in Unreal Engine 5, using Nanite and Lumen technologies to add modern, advanced graphical fidelity and lighting to the game.
• The Dune Movies also used UE5 so they were able to share assets between the two projects.
• When the players land in the game, they will first fight for physical survival, attaining water and shelter, travelling by night and sticking to the black shade - until later ascending to political survival in the late game.
• There are two forms of Sandworms - "smaller" ones with split jaws that chase players, and much larger "ringworm" ones in The Deep Desert that can swallow harvesters and equipment whole. There's only one rule: The Sandworms will always come.
• To get water in the early game, you need to drink from Dew Fields and eat plants - but eat too many and you throw up
• The game has a full levelling system, and has a Combined Arms system, of Melee and Ranged weapons, Vehicles and abilities:
  • The Bene Gesserit Voice can be used to command enemies to come to you so you can stab them
  • The Swordmasters have a knee charge to knock people to the ground
  • The Troopers have Shigawire Claws to grapple away and shoot from afar with sniper rifles and shotguns
  • There's a large amount of craftable weapons (The Deep Desert)

• There aren't strict classes, but players choose their mentor during character creation to give their starting abilities
• More abilities can be learned from different trainers throughout the world
• Sandworms cannot be killed or defeated, only avoided
• Thumpers can be crafted and placed to distract sandworms
• Vehicles are craftable - Sandbikes, Groundcars and Ornithopters
• There is a Journey system of larger, over arching story missions
• There are contracts, of more straightforward, isolated missions
• There is a grouping system where players can play together to do Journeys, Contracts and fight together (and revive each other in combat)
• The Baron Harkonnen is a good looking man.
• There is a War of Assassins ongoing, players can ally themselves within factions (Atreides, Harkonnen etc) and do missions to advance and level up through the ranks
• The Landsraad demand the players do certain things, which the Factions will have to work against each other to achieve the objectives
• Players can choose to opt out of the Landsraad and play the game in any way they want - even just being an isolated rock farmer
• Closed Beta tests have been ongoing for several months, are getting larger over time
• The Deep Desert is a full PvP area where weekly Coriolis Storms come and totally change up the landscape
• Players can create Blueprints of buildings, to create holograms that their guild/group can help build
• Blueprints can be traded, creating a market for buildings

Survive Arrakis Trailer

The episode concluded with a brand new trailer drop, rendered in-engine and showed many new elements to the game that were not previously known, such as:

• Characters leave trails and footprints in the sand
• The "small" split-jaw worms chasing the player and roaring as they reach the rocks
• Using a laser to melt a blue ore to gather resources
• The mining system having a bright blue line to gather resources effectively
• The fabricator crafting a stillsuit
• Placing windmills (or windtraps?)
• A spaceship crashing onto the sands, leaving a black smoke trail
• Several player characters gathering from loot drops at the crash site
• A huge ship overhead with spotlights that hunt the players
• Horizontal climbing across a cliff face
• Players can deploy Hunter Seeker drones with an "infrared" vision - highlighting enemies in bright yellow
• Various underground facilities - research and eco labs
• Mining lasers can cut (and gather?) wrecked ornithopters
• Personal antigrav systems can levitate the player like a jetpack
• A trading settlement with many stalls selling various goods
• A "spice vision" scene with the player having bright blue/purple eyes
• Binoculars can view far into the distance
• Large scale battles with dozens of visible characters, flying and ground vehicles
• Crawling on all fours after battle

Episode 2 - 20th June 2024

The list of topics covered in Episode 2

The second episode aired at 2024-06-20 17:00 UTC, again hosted by Soe Geschwind. It features several sections - Reshowing the story cinematic shown at GDC, an interview with Joel Bylos about the story and game lore, Lea Talbot giving a run-down of Religion and Spirituality in the game. Nils Ryborg gives a look over the character creation process. Finally Joel gives an update about the Closed Beta tests, and finally a look over the server infrastructure.

Alternate Timeline

• Paul does not exist in this timeline - he casts a huge shadow, but make it difficult to give players agency in the game
• Because of the events Jessica chose, she becomes a Truthsayer
• Atreides were prepared for the battle of Arrakeen, and are alive on Arrakis and in conflict with the Harkonnens
• Ariste is the daughter Jessica had instead of Paul - she has her own story, but is taken under the wing of the Bene Gesserit
• The Bene Gesserit still plan to marry her to Feyd Rautha
• After the battle of Arrakeen, Duke Leto petitions the Landsraad, and the Emperor declares The War of Assassins can continue but contained to Arrakis
• Above all, The Spice Must Flow
• The Fremen are **missing*, and according to Imperial propaganda are "exterminated".

Religion and Spirituality

• A big part of the story is to find the Fremen
• The Fremen leave a vacuum of power, with them no longer there, other powers have risen to fill that gap
• The game has more story than an open sandbox, but it's "optional" - the player isn't forced to engage with it
• The player will encounter lore characters who die in the "original" timeline (like Duke Leto)
• The devs work closely with Legendary and the Herbert estate to stick close to the source material and use it as a guideline
• They have a full timeline of lore for the game (over 10,000 words)
• The player is NOT the Mahdi, so will have to embrace the chaos of Arrakis
• Arrakis is still a harsh world to train the faithful, but
• There is no clear dominant force in the War of Assasins
• This gives a lot of opportunity for the player to step in and sway the war
• Many groups have grown and splintered to claim their patch
• There is a group of Fremen Cultists who have twisted their original ways
• The player uses Spice as a tool to help Awaken, and undergo the Fremen Trial of Aql to master the sands
• Religion and Spirituality have been wielded as weapons in the main Dune story, but how the Sleepers use it is yet to be seen

Character Creation and Start of the game

• The character customization options are really in-depth, having presets but a lot of options depending what the player wants
• See the Character Customization page for all of the sliders!
• The Reverend Mother gives the player an "interview" to determine
• The character chooses a planet to come from, such as Caladan
• The character chooses a cast to come from, such as Na Familia
• The character chooses an initial mentor, such as Mentat - this sets the starting ability
• The Reverend Mother gives us the Gom Jabbar test -
• The player is set off on Arrakis as an agent of the Bene Gesserit to seek out the Fremen and "Find the Sleeper"

Closed Beta Update

• The closed beta test is now in Persistent Beta - it is running 24/7
• The testers have been running in the game from start to end, forming groups and testing the "whole" game and gather feedback
• The testers have been breaking the game in wild and wonderful ways, logging into a server and being unable to move
• More gameplay will be shown, especially the combat system which has been revamped
• The beta is growing larger, and more people are being invited in over the year
• The game is an open world MMO, with many players playing in the same persistent world
• This has an MMO server architecture, with multiple maps within the same world - breaking with the traditional 1-server-1-world paradigm
• The "starting server" is Hagga Basin - the survival map, which are instanced and you can see where your friends are playing
• Once you have a thopter you can travel to the "overland" map, which you use to travel to other maps and see many other players outside of your dimension
• Two social maps - Harko Village, and Arrakeen. These are in a state of Guild Peace, non combat
• There are bars where players can dance, and CHOAM exchanges where they can trade
• The Deep Desert is at least 500km squared
• The Deep Desert has a strip of PvE space to prevent spawn camping
• The Coriolis storm wipes the Deep Desert weekly in the Shifting Sands mechanic
• The overland map allows for much easier expansion as they shift away from the one-server-one-map paradigm
• Funcom will be at Gamescom where gameplay will be shown "live"

Episode 3 - 29th August 2024

The third episode aired on on 2024-08-29 17:00 UTC and feature even more extended gameplay and interviews, hosted by Soe Gschwind

Gamescom Recap

• Joel being a very silly goober infront of the worm
• Introducting the gamescom booth and quick recap of the gameplay trailer shown
• Short interviews of the feeling of those who attended and the Funcom staff

Interview with Joel

• Recap of basics of known game mechanics in the early game
• New tagline: "Survive, Expand, Control"
• Survival:
  • Heatstroke mechanic
  • Dynamic day/night cycle - stick to the shade during the day, travel by night
  • Stillsuits and Stilltents
  • The Trials of Aql - How the Fremen survive, and how we unlock Fremen survival recipies and techniques
  • Hiding behind the shadow of a rock while you're harvesting it
  • Handheld scanner
  • Finding Treasure in the sand after it's buried by a sandstorm
  • Customisable building sets - CHOAM is the basic - upgrade and get faction sets (Atreides, Harkonnen)
  • Harkonnen very HR Geiger, dark
  • Atreides is more castle-like
  • Can combine both/all styles - expression is one of the pillars of the game
  • Floursand is soft sand, fine grained and white (Fremen like placing their tents on it) Used for crafting
  • Static Compactors collect all the floursand/spice in an area - but will make noise and attract the worm

References

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  Behind the Scenes of D:A Direct ep 1

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  Behind the Scenes of D:A Direct ep 1