Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two film wormed its way through theaters over the weekend, and if you’ve still got sand in the brain, there’s plenty more where that came from. Namely, Funcom shared a closer look at the upcoming Dune: Awakening survival game, which is in the works for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
To bridge the gap more elegantly, let’s start with the “Creating Worlds, from Book to Film to Game” developer diary. This one has Funcom CCO Joel Bylos and Oscar-winning cinematographer Greig Fraser (Dune: Part One and Two, Rogue One) talking about what it takes to adapt something like Frank Herbert’s classic novels. Dune: Awakening is ostensibly a survival/crafting game at its core, but those traditional survival elements eventually evolve from physical to political. See where the inspirations came from and how they expanded upon the world depicted in the film adaptation below.
The timing of Dune: Awakening‘s production seems to have paid off, particularly in the way they were able to visit the actual sets from the film in an effort to bring the world to life more accurately. The new tech utilized in Unreal Engine 5 certainly didn’t hurt either, and it’s cool to see how it also helped in previsualization for the films.
For another look at what all that work is building up to, you can see some cinematics and gameplay in the new trailer.
How well Dune works in the open world survival genre remains to be seen. As for when we’ll be able to run for our dear lives from every Sandworm rumbling beneath the surface, that also remains to be seen. There’s no release date in place for Dune: Awakening just yet, but hopefully, we’ll know more soon.
