Awakening makes sure to honor both Frank Herbert's novels and Denis Villeneuve's films in its story, combat, and design.

Awakening has some very lofty goals. It is a shared open-world survival game, so players can encounter, work with, and compete with others. The game takes players through four stages that Funcom internally refers to as Survive,

Dune Awakening creative director Joel Bylos revealed during a press Q&A earlier this month that "a bunch of constraints" were put in place for the team as part of its collaboration with Hollywood. This, it turns out, was one of the core reasons why the game takes place in an alternate history.