Today, Funcom has announced the release date of its upcoming game, Dune: Awakening. Previously scheduled for Q1 2025 on PC, the survival MMO will now debut on May 20, priced at $49.99. Pre-orders will begin soon, said Funcom, promising the in-game bonus Terrarium of Muad’Dib, a beautiful in-base decoration that houses the iconic desert mouse.
Even more interestingly, the Norwegian developer has released both benchmark and character creator. Players can download the former to check how well their PC will run the Unreal Engine 5-powered Dune: Awakening while the benchmark goes through an ornithopter flight and a dramatic encounter with a colossal sandworm. With the latter, players will be able to create their characters starting today, which will then be importable into the full game on May 20.
They must undergo the Gom Jabbar test and fine-tune every aspect of their appearance, as well as pick their home planet, their caste, and their mentor, which is tied to different combat schools: Swordmaster, Bene Gesserit, Mentat, or Trooper. This choice also determines the player character's starting abilities, though the game later opens up access to all schools, letting players mix and match abilities from any of them to create their own play styles. Those who play both benchmark and character creator will get a complimentary Frameblade knife skin at launch.
Funcom secured the license to develop Dune games in early 2019, before any of the movies were released. Shortly afterward, they were acquired by Tencent, which allowed them to increase the scope of this project. Now, the studio is calling this 'the most ambitious survival game ever made', and it might just be correct based on what we've seen.
You can find our recent hands-on preview and developer Q&A at the respective hyperlinks. On PC, the game will support NVIDIA DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation for owners of the new GeForce RTX 50 graphics cards. A console version of Dune: Awakening is highly likely, but will come at a later date.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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