Funcom’s Dune Awakening sound design is inspired by the Villeneuve movies

No, Dune ain’t done – but Funcom is letting you have a little listen.

The Dune Awakening developers dropped a new dev blog this morning focused on the game’s sound specifically. Audio director Arild Iversen says that the team is following three foundational design pillars (I know): evoke, advise, and flow. Evoke, he says, is about capturing the “familiar, nostalgic, yet mystical” feeling of Arrakis. Advise is meant to accompany gameplay and warm the player about threats. And flow is the happy fading of important sounds into the background to ensure that “the sound may be dirty, but the mix must be clean.”

Iversen also says that Funcom is using a combination of sound libraries, custom recordings, and synthesizers to create the “language” of sound in the game. In fact, there might be a bit of the movies in there too.

“This brings us to the 2021 movie by Denis Villeneuve, which of course plays a huge role in our work,” Iversen writes. “While we do have access to all the sounds from the movie, we are not obliged to use them. The movie’s sound design by Mark Mangini and his crew is nothing short of incredible, and in my humble opinion, perhaps the best sound design one can find in the known universe.”

“Although Dune is one of the most beloved and influential franchises within sci-fi, it’s a very different IP compared to the likes of Star Wars or Marvel, where the audience has clear expectations of what something should sound like, such as a lightsaber. That sound is set in stone, and a major departure would cause confusion or even outrage. We don’t have the same pressure, but due to our admiration for the film’s sound design, we often look to it for inspiration. We decided that we would align with the movie for the sounds that we think have already become iconic for the universe, such as Ornithopters, The Voice, or that deadly and intricate little Hunter-Seeker. Yet even where we align with the movie, we have a rule that we recreate every sound ourselves, sometimes reverse engineering what we have from the sound library to truly understand it, put our own spin on it, and most importantly, know how to expand upon it.”

Naturally, you’re going to want to head to Funcom’s full blog post for the rest – and more specifically, for all the sounds themselves, since the team is featuring everything from sandworms to vehicles here.

We’re still waiting for more details on the MMORPG’s launch ambitions, of course; while the company was teasing beta last winter, we haven’t heard a whole lot more since this past summer, when Funcom infodumped at the PC Gaming Show.

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