During the PC Gaming Show Dune Awakening shows gameplay footage for the first time, answering the question. How do you make Dune into a massively-multiplayer game? Speaking with members of the team behind the project at Funcom in Oslo, Norway, the studio tells us about how combat will unfold, the roles players will take, and how political power will be represented in this ambitious survival-MMO.
Dune Awakening shows gameplay footage
The Interview
The interview starts off with a quick piece from Joel Bylos, creative director for Dune Awakening. We get an overview of the vision behind Dune Awakening and its core values: “Dune Awakening is a survival open world massively multiplayer game, it is a game where players are invited to explore the world of dune they involve themselves in politics they involve themselves in entry they involve themselves in combat they have to survive on the most dangerous planet in the universe and through this experience they come to know the factions of the world and the universe”
The Beginning
“So when dune Awakening begins you are a castaway on the planet in the deep desert and all you have is a knife that you’ve made out of scrap metal, you need to creep into enemy camps and knife them in the back and steal the water from their still suits. by the end of the game perhaps your running a guild and have a fleet of vehicles. ornithopters flying in formation, sand bikes cruising across the desert beneath the tanks. kicking up a cloud of dust as you drive to a spice blow in the distance in order to harvest with your guild and you see the distance another guild coming towards you and just as you clash you hear the rumble of a sandworm coming that is combat in dune awakening”
Survival
After some brief new alpha footage we head over to Viljar Sommerbakk, game director for Dune Awakening: “you start out in the desert surviving clinging to life and in the end you might become someone like Band Harkonnen and then you try to cling to power. Arrakis is the most dangerous planet in the universe surviving on Arrakis means you need to be prepared for sandstorms you need to find water its a constant threat against survival. water discipline is an important part of survival in the beginning it might just be water for yourself in the end you might need industrial levels of water because you have industrialized your base. and the storms are an important part of survival as well you have to find shelter in the beginning you have nothing to your name after a while you will have a base and then you will build a bigger base so that that doesn’t become as important but then always have to go out and in to the desert and make sure that you compete against the desert in the end you might even be riding the storms of the desert to actually gain access to unique resources, but you always need to return and every time you go out you have to be careful of the worm because if you get caught by the worm there will be nothing left of the worm and you will leave nothing behind”
Combined Arms
speaking on combat in Dune Awakening we head back to Joel Bylos, creative director for Dune Awakening: “with Dune we have a particular focus on a style of combat we like to call combined arms that takes all of the elements players would expect from the books and the movies and then puts them together in this great chaotic kind of experience so we have vehicle combat we have abilities that you might see in the great schools in the dune universe we have melee combat and we have range combat and all of these things works together to create both PVE and massive PVP battles and its the combinations of these things that really makes it feel like sandbox combat where players have the ability to pick their loadouts and see how they go into battle”
Combat
Viljar Sommerbakk, game director for Dune Awakening: “We have a broad spectrum of combat capabilities we have melee weapons like knives and swords, we have range weapons and then we have ground vehicles and air vehicles. they all come with configurable capabilities like glass guns, rockets ,mini guns things like that you will be fighting on foot you’ll be driving vehicles you’ll be flying in ornithorpers. and it all comes together there the more coordinated you are the better it is, the better prepared you are the better it will be. if your playing with someone for the first time or you didn’t prepare properly it will be chaotic but if you prepare, if you coordinate then you will preform with lethal efficiency”
Politics
Joel Bylos, creative director for Dune Awakening: “so the world of Arrakis is full of political intrigue and we have this fantastic concept from the stories called Canley. and Canley is basically the rules of engagement its the thing called the great convention that defines areas of the world where players are allowed to interact in different ways, so in dune awakening players will have different areas of the world that are enabled for for example full player vs player combat and areas that are safer and that you know are patrolled by Sardaukar troops and kept safe. so players really have this sort of free opportunity within the sandbox to find the locations where they can fight with eachother or to stay in the locations where they are safer right and that is up to the player and how they want to approach the game”
The Weapons Of Arrakis
Joel Bylos, creative director for Dune Awakening: “in dune awakening we have many different weapons from across the universe drawing upon the books and the movies. we have lasguns, molar pistols, we have scatter guns ,pellet guns. in addition we have all of the sort of melee weapons you’d expect to see, Kris knives and Kindials and short swords and rapiers. and in addition to that of course we also have abilities that players can learn through the great schools of the universe such a Mentat abilities or Bene Gesserit skills you can fight other players wearing Holtzman shields there is a system involved where people want to get close because the solar blade penetrates so you want to use melee to get through a shield in a duel like that and of course if people don’t have shields because shields draw the sand worm you want to make sure to use range weapons. so there is a real interplay between systems between the way shields interact with both the world and the environment with Sandworms and also how they interact in close personal combat. any time that you set foot up onto the sands of Arrakis you risk drawing the Worm you can multiple that by driving vehicles on the surface you can multiply that by using shields or suspenser belts, Holtzman technologies will draw the worm “
The Five Pillars Of Dune
Joel Bylos, creative director for Dune Awakening: “Dune Awakening is built upon a foundations of five pillars, Survival which is obviously everything you’d expect to see in a survival game its water disciple its surviving the sandstorms that sweep across Arrakis. then we have politics and intrigue, it speaks to the faction gameplay of the game its about siding with one of the factions thinking about how they work together perhaps assassinating members of the other factions, then there is infinite exploration. infinite exploration which is one of the things i am most excited about is how the world changes over time we have a concept called the Corolia storm, when it sweeps across the landscape the sand shifts revealing new points of intrest hiding others making the game renewed every week. then we have combined arms, combined arms is our combination of vehicles, melee combat ,range combat and abilities all working together to create a seamless sandbox combat experience. and finally we have expression and customization which is really more then just talking about the visual expression and customization which of course we have, armor sets and clothing and a robust character creation but in addition to that its really about play the way you want to play. you want to be a trader you can do that you want to be a fighter of course you can do that if you want to be a spy maybe that is the gameplay you are looking for all of these things build into these pillars”
Funcom’s Previous Experience
Viljar Sommerbakk, game director for Dune Awakening: “so Anarchy Online, when we started Anarchy Online was a huge undertaking for Funcom at the time we didn’t always know what we were doing but we were learning on the job to a large extent as Funcom, now has a long track record of MMO’s we known were not new when it comes to challenges relating to server technology and relating to player population balancing with relating to the RPG aspects of it so everything that went into the earlier MMO’s that we did comes into play here we are taking it a lot further. because were not a traditional MMO in the sense that there is combat in our game that is much more second to second and intense then you would find in an MMO for instance its much based on the second to second experience how melee and ranged and gadgets and abilities how ground vehicles and air vehicles how it comes together in the ultimate challenge that is getting spice”
Spice
Joel Bylos, creative director for Dune Awakening: “in Dune Awakening PVP is about large scale competition and small scale competition players in guilds competing for Spice resources in the world and PVP can be done on many levels between players it doesn’t necessarily mean players killing players it can also be players out intriguing other players finding ways to feed them false information tricking them into going to the wrong area to look for a spice plume or perhaps misleading them into looking in an enemy base for the wrong thing, in our game spice is obviously a very important mechanic as it is in the Frank Covert stories. as players can consume spice they unlock the abilities to level up skills and those skills as you train them you choose which ones to train you have active skill training as you train those skills the more spice you consume the more your allowed to train if you don’t have a lot of spice in your blood you obviously cant train as much however this also comes at the cost of becoming woefully addicted to spice”
Survive, Protect, Expand and Control
Viljar Sommerbakk, game director for Dune Awakening: “So the journey of the player we have divided that into four parts we think of them as survive, protect, expand and control. the survive part means that your up against the planet itself and your clinging onto life. in the protect phase you have gathered some stuff you might have a base but you also want to make sure that nobody else comes to take it away from you so you try to build defenses and make sure that your base is in the clear. then in the expand phase you lift your gaze and you look around and your see that others have stuff aswel and you might want to take their stuff, then in the control phase you may find yourself to be part of a guild or even the leader of a guild then the point is to control the flow of spice on Arrakis however your never save there is always someone lurking around the corner can you really trust your second in command so the goal of the control phase is that you are clinging to controle, in dune awakening we have a wide array of combat capabilities. infantry consists of melee with knives and swords you have ranged weaponry, gas powered, glass guns and you have gadgets you have abilities and building on that we have ground vehicles we have air vehicles with their own combat capabilities and when all of this comes together you find yourself in the desert in a spice harvesting operation and there might be another guild attacking you to get your Spice and whenever you get into combat in the desert of Arrakis try to get it over quick, because not only are you fighting human combatans the planet Arrakis itself is the greatest protagonist there is as your fighting in the desert there might be a sandstorm coming in and the sandworm will be attracted to the vibrations you cause so get it over with quickly and then return to solid ground”
Socials
Joel Bylos, creative director for Dune Awakening: “so i mean i love to interact with the community you should join us on the discord channel you should go to steam and wishlist us so we know how many people are excited about the game and ofcourse go to duneawakening.com to sign up to our beta”
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