‘Dune: Awakening’ Art Director Knows the Environment Is the Main Character

Frank Herbert’s Dune is one of the most recognizable, fleshed-out universes in fiction. Arrakis as a world has been copied, homage, and recreated countless times, both in straight adaptations of Herbert’s sci-fi literary masterpiece and also in the many titles it inspired. Even in video game form, there have been six projects released, but Dune Awakening, the upcoming open-world survival MMO from Funcom promises to deliver an Arrakis that’s unlike any other.

The game takes place in an alternate timeline where Paul Atreides was never born, the Atraides are in an open War of Assassins with House Harkonnen, and the Fremen have effectively disappeared after being hunted down by the Sardaukar. After playing about six hours of the game at a recent press preview event, my first and most significant impression is that this is a beautiful-looking game.

Though we have seen Arrakis portrayed on the screen many times before, no movie, TV show, or even parody has managed to make the titular Dune planet look this good. One thing that is clear from Herbert’s writing is that as harsh an environment as Arrakis has, it is not without beauty and variety in its landscapes.

Much like the deserts of our world, the sand dunes of Dune Awakening can have different colors, stretch out for hundreds of miles, and be broken up by rock outcroppings and mountain ranges containing desert life. It’s a different Arrakis than moviegoers might be used to and part of an effort by Dune Awakening to stand out as an adaptation of Herbert’s world.

We spoke with Dune Awakening Art Director Gavin Whelan about making the desert world of Arrakis as stunning to look at as it is dangerous, allowing for player customization while keeping things distinctly Dune, visiting the set of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation, and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

“First and foremost, this is a game, and then we need to apply as much Dune on top of that as possible.”

But Why Tho: I want to start by asking about the look of the desert, because it is rare to see not only the harshness but the beauty of Herbert’s world depicted like this. How was it to translate the world of Dune into a game and make this vision stand out from other portrayals?

Gavin Whelan: It was tricky. We have a few things working against us, in that we have a massive landscape, and we’re trying to do fairly complex things with it. At one point, we wanted to have the top of the sand dune get deeper as you run through it, which would create a bit of friction as you’re running. But that gets frustrating after 100 hours of gameplay; players don’t want a simulation; they also want to be able to play and run.

Probably the biggest limitation we had was just the amount of detail for the scale of the game. Sand is tricky; there is a lot of beautiful variety and variations, and we researched every single desert in the world, but it’s still technically challenging to replicate it. You can’t use grass or trees to cover up the cracks and seams where textures and materials come in contact with each other.

The environment is the main character for me. Arrakis is the character that you have to survive first. Sunlight is the killer. It was always that ambition that we have, the sun being dangerous. We also wanted nighttime to be valuable, giving you a different color palette. That is another place where we deviate from the book because we give the player visibility at nighttime because you want to be able to see and hear a sandworm coming at you. First and foremost, this is a game, and then we need to apply as much Dune on top of that as possible.

But Why Tho: Speaking of the sun as an enemy, is there any mechanic in place to have the environment or your character be physically affected over time by exposure to the sun and the sand?

Gavin Whelan: Sand buildup and dust buildup were definitely important to add extra depth and definition to the clothing, vehicles, and the world itself. Rust would have been amazing, but there is no moisture on the planet, so we couldn’t do it. Still, there is a balance to get right, and we are still working on getting the sandstorms and the buildup effect right because I want to get it working so that a sandstorm blows it and it changes your stuff.

But you also don’t want the player to have their beautiful vehicle they spent hours crafting to just look broken. The dust needs to drop away when you’re moving. It’s important to us to get it right. You can repair all your things, and you should be able to clean your vehicles and clothing.

But Why Tho: What was the process of making the game stand out visually as an adaptation of the book? Especially when there are the movies that now a lot of people had as their first Dune experience.

We started before the movie really got into production. We had already done preliminary character concept design and vehicle design, and we had an idea of what the game would be. But then, when the movie production really started, Legendary started feeding us concept art.

They actually flew a bunch of us down to the movie sets and got to see inside the full-size ornithopters and the interior locations of Arrakeen. I also had a few calls with the cinematographer, Greig Fraser. But still, we have our own story to tell because of the alternate timeline.

Also, as a game, we want people to be able to customize their look and change things around. We hand the game over to the players. They take ownership, so they should be able to customize it and play the way we want to play.

We accepted that at some point, players are going to have pink stillsuits. You can’t control that, and you don’t want to take it away from people to be able to do that. You want to be able to give people the option. People want to have that fantasy world. They want to have that escape.

There will be always a degree of customization, especially at the end game, where you’re in a big open world. You want to be able to identify your clan, and your friends.

ButWhyTho: I’m curious, as a fan of the book, what were some of the elements of the book that you desperately wanted to get right in the game?

Gavin Whelan: The sandworm was always going to be the challenge. We have the one that’s on the main artwork, the one you possibly encountered in the early game, and that one was hard enough, but we mastered it. Then we have the deep desert version of the sandworm, the ones that can eat entire spice harvesters. We wanted to build a full ecology of different sandworms, as they are mentioned in the books. I want to have the sandtrout. I want to get those guys in at some point. It is tricky building that ecology, so we had to start with the big ones first.

But I’ve always wanted to bring them down in scale to make the worm faster and more aggressive in certain areas. But that’s future stuff that I still want to keep pushing on. We got all the hopes and plans for post-launch content, and these are just several of the factors we want to throw in at some point.

Dune Awakening will be available sometime in 2025.