A few many years in the past there was a interval when all videogames and particularly all Unreal Engine videogames needed to be brown and gray and dingy. “The Gears of Warrification of graphics,” we used to name it, huddled up within the chest-high trenches with our Xbox 360 controllers. Survival MMO Dune: Awakening threatens to carry that again in an enormous method: the novel and movies on which it’s primarily based happen, in spite of everything, on a whole planet product of sand.
Builders Funcom have varied plans for sprucing up the aesthetic, nonetheless. For one factor, elements of Awakening are set underground, the place there’s precise, canonical vegetation and thus, a wider vary of colors. For one more, it’s attainable Dune: Awakening will in the end go away the dunes behind and whisk us away on a journey to a different planet.
“Within the books of Frank Herbert, it is fairly clear that there is numerous vegetation in locations which are hidden out of the best way of the sandstorms and crevices between stones,” Scott Junior, the sport’s govt producer, advised me throughout a roundtable interview at GDC. These sources of underground flora aren’t only for ornament, after all – they’re harvestable supplies, with a number of the most useful being situated in eco laboratories which have been deserted for hundreds of years.
“Sure, we’re utilizing that to boost the world – sorry for the pun, however to get some totally different environments,” Junior continued. “As a result of while you’re on Dune, there’s loads of brown, there’s loads of rocks, there’s loads of sand. And we need to break that up and present some both extra tropical environments or extra alien takes on issues.”
As for travelling to different planets within the Dune universe – if it occurs, it’ll occur after the early entry launch, however you possibly can catch hints of attainable locations within the sport’s character editor, which helps you to select a background and related Nice Home, from villainous ivory Harkonnen to hearty and sturdy Atreides. “At the beginning of the undertaking there was Giedi Prime, there was Caladan, all the opposite [major] areas, we positively regarded into that,” Junior mentioned. “We’re going to launch on simply Arrakis, although, the place there’s quite a bit to discover, as a result of there’s not simply the northern hemisphere – there’s additionally the south.” (The southern hemisphere of Arrakis is sealed away by equatorial sandstorms – if I have been a sport developer, I might say that is a reasonably apparent alternative for a mid-to-endgame pace-changer.)
“We will probably go to different planets put up launch, however it’s not within the launch providing,” Junior went on. “However yeah, for those who see within the second film, I’d like to make a scene on Giedi Prime with the black and white factor they did there. I believed that was actually hanging.”
Additionally hanging: the spectacle of Dune: Awakening’s sandworms in motion, which considerably compensates for the marginally determined feeling I get enjoying yet one more survival sport on this, the yr 2024. You’ll be able to learn my full ideas from the Awakening GDC presentation over right here.