With the recently released Dune Part 2, director Denis Villeneuve has once again created an impressive cinematic experience. The upcoming survival MMO Dune: Awakening intends to stay true to its sources.
In line with the release of the film Dune Part 2, the team at Funcom released a Dune: Awakening Direct. This showcases, among other things, a new gameplay trailer and insights into the game’s development.
For more information about the Dune: Awakening Direct, you can find it here: Just in time for the blockbuster Dune Part 2: First gameplay is here, but we will reveal more
In the video “Creating Worlds, from Book to Film to Game,” a part of the new Direct, Creative Director Joel Bylos talks about how closely the game follows the films and what it’s like to step into such big shoes.
You can watch the entire video here:
From Book to Film to Video Game
The origin of Dune, of course, lies in the science fiction classic by Frank Herbert. However, Dune: Awakening is not only based on a transformation of the book source. Visually, the game has been primarily inspired by the new Dune films directed by Denis Villeneuve.
Villeneuve’s films are characterized mainly by their stunning visuals and excellent staging. Making the desert planet Arrakis feel equally epic in a video game is not that simple.
What was the collaboration like? To do justice to the source, we have worked closely with Legendary, the production company of the films, from the very beginning. This helped to understand the vision that Villeneuve had for the world, the characters, and the portrayal of Arrakis. This vision is now to be expanded to meet the scale of a video game.
“One of my favorite moments of this project was when I was allowed to visit the set of the first film with a group of Funcom people […] We got to walk around in the actual set that they built in the classic, old-fashioned style – truly gigantic palaces,” reflects Joel Bylos, the Creative Director of Dune: Awakening.
In order to accurately stage a planet like Arrakis, it’s essential that the world feels enormous and the player feels tiny, explains Bylos.
The right scaling was also aided by the set visit: “We were able to view the Ornithopters inside and out to walk around them and get an impression of their size.”
The Most Dangerous Planet in the Universe
With its merciless environment, Arrakis is considered the most dangerous planet in the universe in the world of Dune.
The Australian cameraman Greig Fraser, who won an Oscar for his work on Dune, explains the approach of the films: “The idea was: Whenever you see the desert, it is extremely brutal. And if you venture into the desert without the right protection and knowledge, it’s a certain death.”
Dune: Awakening aims to evoke this sense of danger in the player as well. In addition to threats like desert storms and very limited water sources, there are, of course, the gigantic sandworms.
When a player takes their first steps on the open sand, they hear the ‘hisss’ of the sand in the distance. Then a sandworm begins to move towards you. And when it is close enough, you hear the roar as it bursts from the sand beside you. From that moment, you have only seconds to live if you do not reach rocky ground in time.
This is how Joel Bylos describes the first encounter with a sandworm in the game. There is only one rule, he adds: “The sandworm will always come.”
As in the films, the sandworms represent an enormous threat. Moving over open sand, using shields or vehicles, always runs the risk of attracting one of the massive beasts. There is also no way to injure or kill the sandworms. No matter how strong you are, the desert will always remain a threat.
“It’s a Huge Legacy”
Cameraman Fraser is also excited about the interplay between films and video games. On one hand, you get exactly what you liked about the films. At the same time, you can now create your own stories and places, having “full control”.
This bridge is what Funcom wants to build with Dune: Awakening. They want to enable players to live out their fantasies, inspired by Dune, as they please.
“I believe there are a lot of people who just want to live in the universe that Frank Herbert created. And they want to live in the visual world they saw in the films of Denis Villeneuve.”
– Creative Director Joel Bylos
They approach the source material with much love, but also reverence. “It’s a huge legacy and sometimes feels extremely overwhelming, but we really hope we can deliver something for everyone,” says Bylos.
Just like the video game, the films have also closely adhered to the book source by Frank Herbert in many respects. However, there have been some changes that fans discuss. Why one of these changes makes Dune 2 even better, you can find out here:
Dune 2 manages to surpass the book with one single change in the film
