Dune: Awakening, the MMORPG based on Frank Herbert’s bestselling science fiction novel, launches in less than a month. With such a detail-rich, lore-packed series, Senior Art Director Gavin Whelan and Associate Art Director David Levy had plenty to consider when working on Funcom’s new entry into the world of Dune.
On the same weekend as the latest beta test, we sat down with Whelan and Levy at PAX East 2025 to talk about their work on Dune: Awakening, including unique challenges they overcame as part of the art team and how they approached creating a survival MMORPG that was true to the Dune series.
Is it Dune? Is it fun?
Funcom has worked on numerous MMOs in the past, including Anarchy Online, Age of Conan, and The Secret World. However, Dune: Awakening was a first for them with sandbox survival and blending between genres. It has two pillars at the core of its development: Is it Dune, and is it fun?
“You start with, is it Dune as the first one. It’s the primary one to make sure,” said Whelan. “Make your game play [around the concept of] Dune, not sort of try to cram it in. Don’t tint it or color it so it kind of blends in. It needs to be at its core because there’s so many weird and interesting things in Dune already. It’s not a restriction. It’s not a limitation.”
As art directors, Whelan and Levy were part of the process of delicately incorporating details from the Dune series with how well interactive features blended in with the environment. Arrakis is a desert planet, so the climate and landscapes at this point were limited to what was portrayed in Dune and could be believably incorporated.
“Other worlds we’ve created, whether it’s in The Secret World or Conan Exiles or Age of Conan, had very, very different environments. We had different elevations that we could go to. Here, it’s a flat desert for the majority of the open playfield,” said Whelan.
“Creating something which felt both realistic and engaging for the player to be able to lead them through and give them new experiences was incredibly challenging. But through trial and error and a really good world direction team, we created something which feels organic as the player explores through the world.”
You may have learned to expect visually distinct regions with varying climates and colors, but that isn’t the case on Arrakis. As Whelan explained, “You’ve got your ice realm, and then you’ve got your desert, and you’ve got your jungle. And the colors change quite dramatically. Here, it’s a lot more subtle.”
Whelan credited Levy and the lighting team for a lot of these subtle changes. Levy used to work in movies and TV, which helped with cinematic direction. He also worked on the Dune TV series, Dune Prophecy, for three years. “The sand is mostly the sand throughout a lot of it, but then the work that David’s team did on it was fundamental to changing the mood,” Whelan said.
“Everything I’ve learned over the last 25 years is handy on a daily basis,” Levy added. “And, in terms of photography, the series and the movies have consistency.”
“When Gavin said, ‘Hey, would you want to work on the lighting side of things,’ [my experience] came in handy because [he] was very clear on what he wanted, which is a feeling of oppressive sun falling on the shoulders of the player, so they understand that the planet is dangerous. But also making sure that there was enough, let’s say, ups and downs in terms of atmosphere.”
Day and night cycles also tie into the survival aspect. It’s not just lighting. The sun has a heavy impact on the player’s health because they need to drink water to stay hydrated. In Dune: Awakening, you need to monitor your hydration levels a lot more during the day when the sun is out. At night, you don’t need to worry as much about dehydration, but you can’t see as clearly as you can during the day.
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It’s these kind of aspects that make Dune: Awakening more interactive—the player needs to think about the survival aspects rather than just grinding for resources. Creating a three-hour film like the Dune movie is much different than creating an experience that players could spend hundreds of hours with, something that the team considered heavily when developing Dune: Awakening.
“A lot of the work was done by a massive team. Especially for Gavin, it’s making sure that the vision stays the way he described it earlier, which is subtle, always reflecting the movie, but also being engaging and varied so that the player doesn’t get bored over many hundreds of hours,” Levy said.
”It would be sort of reckless to say we started with a mental vision of how everything was going to fit together. But still, it’s really close to the way we envisioned it. A lot of times, its technical limitations will force our hand in a certain direction. But you can be really creative when there are those limitations.”
Gray and gray morality
Dune: Awakening takes place in an alternate timeline where Paul Atreides, Dune’s protagonist, never existed. His mother, Lady Jessica, gave birth to a daughter instead of a son. On the desert planet of Arrakis, the House Atreides and House Harkonnen are engaged in a civil war with each other. Also, the Fremen are nowhere to be found. Your character, a player-created agent of the Bene Gesserit, is looking for them.
“You kind of always kind of grew up with the villainous, evil Harkonnens, and then the more noble Atreides. But now, we’ve changed the story a little bit,” Whelan explained.
“People have a lot of perceptions that they bring, whether it’s from the books or the movies. And we want people to sort of be able to feel both influences on it, but also kind of branch out and go in their own direction, and not feel so restrictive.”
You might expect a choice between Harkonnen and Atreides, but it’s not. “There’s going to be lots of the great houses, which we introduce. There’s more coming in bit by bit. And there’s also influence that you’re able to do that affects the world itself by taking contracts for these great houses that affects the world that you’re in.”
In that sense, Dune: Awakening paints each faction in gray rather than a stark black or white. It adds more meaningfulness to each decision when there isn’t a clear “good” and “bad” answer, especially when the backstory is full of political intrigue.
Your protagonist stars in a classic story arc where they start as a nobody and work their way to the top, involving themselves unexpectedly with the political drama behind the scenes. The story also takes into account the differences between characters like their mentor (are they Bene Gesserit?) and other customizable options that may affect your play through.
“You need to have [political intrigue]. It’s core and central to the story, central to the books. And you have to have that running through,” Whelan said. After fifteen years on Arrakis, the Atreides have changed from the courageous, noble house portrayed in the books and films. “They’ve leveled down to something a little closer to the Harkonnens. It’s a bit more gray in tone this time. So we didn’t want to create good guys and bad guys. And people will feel drawn towards the Harkonnens just as much.”
Funcom is already planning to expand Dune: Awakening after launch, building on its story and world outside of what we know at this point in development. To do this, Whelan and Levy noted the team’s efforts to blend the “density and engagement” from sandbox survival games with the “scale and openness” from MMOs, which gives Dune: Awakening a way to keep adding stories in different areas and new biomes.
“I was going to say, the sky is the limit. It’s not even,” said Whelan. “It’s not the limit, because we’ve got a highliner in the sky. So fast travel to different worlds is a possibility. So then you’ve got a universe that we could actually expand into. It’s not just desert and sand. The books themselves span thousands and thousands of years. There’s so much richness in there that we can pick from.”
“We’re just scratching the surface. “
At this point, the art team is already working on future chapters. Development is currently focusing on stabilization in preparation for the game’s launch.
Dune: Awakening will launch for PC on June 10, 2025, with early access beginning on June 5. Versions for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S are also in the works.
