Dune Awakening Will Be Released When It’s Ready, as Funcom Wants to Reduce Its Famous Jank
At GDC 2024, Wccftech attended a presentation and subsequent roundtable Q&A about open world survival MMO Dune Awakening with Creative Director Joel Bylos. The full interview will be available soon, but in the meantime, here's what Bylos told us when we asked whether the game would launch this year:
The best question. I would love to know. I don't know. We don't want to ship it till it's ready. I don't know how many of you have played Conan Exiles. We have a reputation for interesting ideas and some jank. I would prefer to get rid of the jank. I'd like to launch a game that's really polished from Funcom. We've grown as a company. I think we can deliver a really polished survival experience. It's a big IP. It's really hot right now. When we took the IP in 2019, we just knew there'd be a film.
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We didn't know it was gonna be the films that they are right now. It's blown up into something gigantic. That puts more pressure on us, and obviously, we feel that pressure. So, I want to make sure the game can fulfill the fantasies of Dune fans.
Clearly, the stakes are higher than ever for Funcom. The developer, now owned by Tencent, has had a larger budget at its disposal to make Dune Awakening and understandably, they'd want to release a more polished experience than their usual rough gems.
It does seem like they may be on the right path. The GDC 2024 presentation started with the very beginning of the game, which is highly reminiscent of the first Dune movie when the Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit tests Paul. After customizing their character's look, players will also pick their background (including which planet they're from, for example) and make other choices that will influence a dialogue trait available to them.
Shortly after that, the ship used by the player character is immediately shot down, forcing players to survive in the harsh environment of
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