A presentation for Dune: Awakening has explained why developer Funcom chose Unreal Engine 5 to craft its open-world survival MMO. The Dune: Awakening Direct comes shortly following the release of Dune: Part Two, the highly anticipated sequel to Denis Villeneuve's film adaptation of Frank Herbert's titular novel.

Revealed in 2020, Unreal Engine 5 was promised to be a new frontier for video game graphics and presentation. In the years since, a plethora of tech demos have highlighted various systems and capabilities, but it is only recently that games powered by the engine have started to be released. Dune: Awakening was first announced in 2022, shortly after Unreal Engine 5 was made publicly available, during Gamescom Opening Night Live. The CGI trailer left prospective players with little other than that it would be an open-world survival MMO, but Funcom has now provided gameplay footage alongside more information.

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Funcom Talks Unreal Engine 5 Benefits

Towards the beginning of the Dune: Awakening Direct, at approximately 4:24, Chief Creative Officer Joel Bylos describes Unreal Engine 5 as "obviously one of the better choices." Bylos praises the flexibility and graphical fidelity that the engine provides, dedicating time to highlighting how Funcom is utilizing Lumen and Nanite for lighting and rendering respectively. Anyone familiar with Unreal Engine 5 tech demos will recognize both features, which have been heavily advertised as major selling points for the technology. Greig Fraser, a cinematographer who worked on both Dune movies, described how even the film crew used Unreal to plan and visualize particularly complex scenes.

Although few triple-A video games built in Unreal Engine 5 have been released, many more large and prominent studios have already adopted it. STALKER 2, Hellblade 2, and Avowed are just a few of several major releases due this year that are being built in Unreal Engine 5. Furthermore, CD Projekt Red has confirmed that it is pivoting away from its proprietary REDEngine, which was used for The Witcher 2 and 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, adopting Unreal Engine 5 for future projects.

When questioned about the status of development, Bylos stated that closed beta tests have been "running for several months" and that more people are gradually being invited to see what Dune: Awakening has to offer. An open-world survival MMO, especially at the scale that Funcom advertises, has been a dream ever since vanilla World of Warcraft defined what massively multiplayer online experiences could be. For decades, the MMO genre has been rife with disappointments, with The Day Before a particularly recent and public example. Despite being explicitly advertised as one, a developer claimed shortly after its disastrous release that The Day Before had never even been an MMO. So those looking forward to Dune: Awakening are likely to be cautiously optimistic, especially considering Funcom's lofty ambitions and graphical promises.

Dune: Awakening

Developed by Funcom, Dune Awakening is an open-world MMO that will drop players in the cutthroat world of Arrakis. The survival game will feature third-person combat, exploration, base building, social interactivity, and more.

Platform(s)

PC , PS5 , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S

Developer(s)

Funcom

Publisher(s)

Funcom

Genre(s)

Open-World , Survival , MMO