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
Episode 1 - 4th March 2024
The first episode aired at 2024-03-04 17:00 UTC[1], 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.[2], 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 second episode will air at 2024-06-20 17:00 UTC[3], again hosted by Soe Geschwind. Topics are yet to be announced, stay tuned!
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
