Dune Awakening Producer Says The Game's Sandworm Was A David Lynch Reference All Along

Dune Awakening may largely be based on the Legendary Pictures film series, but that hasn't stopped Funcom from putting their own spin on things.

At gamescom 2025, we spoke to Scott Junior, Executive Producer from Funcom about what happens when you put a bunch of Dune fans in charge of making a Dune open-world MMO, ahead of its big Chapter 2 update.

Keeping Up With Dune Awakening

"Fundamentally at Funcom, we want to be as true to the IP as we can, right? Especially the primary source materials, and for us, that is the books, and then the movies, and both, you know, the Villeneuve and Lynch's movies, and then the extended books by Brian Herbert are in secondary or tertiary parts of [what we're looking at]", Scott says.

"But primarily, we want to be really close to books one and two. That's what we were aiming for. And book three, I guess, also, for what we are showing at launch".

Given that the setting for Dune Awakening is an alternate, sans-Chalamet version of Arrakis, Funcom got to make some changes to the rules of Dune.

"So, the Fremen, I'll start there. They're a bit non-existent, just because of the plot of the game. So, like, Zentara is not exactly a Fremen, right? So, he's going to act a bit different. But when the player eventually does start interacting with them, which is the post-launch content, they will feel more familiar if you've read the books or known the movies".

"With the Harkonnen and the Atreides, the book, the first one especially, is told from the Atreides' point of view. And so they're seen kind of as the good people of Dune, and we didn't want to do that necessarily", he adds.

"We wanted to make sure that it's from a neutral perspective, like how they interact is more how a neutral person would have told the story if they were telling the book, right? Instead of it being Paul Atreides, who's pretty biased in his thoughts on the Harkonnen".

It's not like you're immediately jumping into the thick of it, though. As a survival game, the first step is learning how to not kill yourself. Scott highlighted the flow of Dune Awakening- first you survive the desert, then you deal with the people living there.

Speaking of geopolitics, Scott also commented on the real player politics of the game. After all, MMOs are a treasure trove for these kinds of interaction- and the players getting to choose backing house Atreides or Harkonnen- though he says players have a rather predictable trend when it comes to that choice.

"It's something we expected because most people are introduced to Dune from the books and the movies and it's told from Paul's perspective," he says. "Atreides are the good people and Harkonnen are the bad people so more likely people are going to join the Atreides".

"Despite that, there are mechanics in the Landsraad to help balance things out if they get too out of whack", he continues.

"We're seeing different servers depending on how populated they are with PvPers or PvErs but generally people are trying to pick the same decrees when they're coming up whether it's the bonus crafting type thing or the unlocking abilities. We are tracking data there and we'll be making adjustments just so that everything is a viable option."

He also shared the secret of still making it feel part of the greater Dune IP: their close relationship with Legendary and the Herbert estate.

"Early on when we were working on it we got access to a lot of the Legendary 3D scans for everything they were doing. That helped form the original art direction. Then we put our own taste on it. We didn't want to come out and completely reinvent Dune. We wanted it to be something comfortable for people that had experienced the visual medium", he says.

"It's been great working with them, Legendary has been really hands-on, giving us feedback, giving us advice on what we're doing, whether it's from audio that we're doing to story trailers. We share all of those with them and they give us feedback".

Now We're Gonna Talk About Sandworms A Bunch

To outsiders, if you know anything about Dune chances are you know about the Sandworms. From viral popcorn buckets to even a gorgeous display at gamescom itself, they're a symbol of Dune to the main stream the same way you might think of Darth Vader being emblematic of Star Wars.

That being said, only true fans might notice differences between Sandworms. As we talked about them, Scott shared that Dune Awakening's Sandworm wasn't exactly modeled after Legendary's interpretation of the creature- instead drawing on the late David Lynch's take.

"So, the Sandworm, the big tri-mouth one, that's like the David Lynch Sandworm", he explains.

"We made some changes to it so it's closer to the new movies, but it's still the triangular mouth, right? And then we also have the ring mouth one, which is the new interpretation from Villeneuve's [movie]".

He was also particularly proud of how Dune Awakening introduces players to their creature- by crashing their vehicle and forcing them to learn the game to get away from it.

"We want it to be a threat, a survival threat in a way, but more alive than you would get in a normal survival game. I think we did a pretty good job there. How we built the world and how we forced you to cross the sands makes you interact with what is basically the first boss monster in the game, the Sandworm".

"Your first huge trial is to escape where we put you. You crash land in this area of the desert and you can't go anywhere because there's the Sandworm roaming between it. You have to tech up, get technology, build a sand bike to get past there", he explains.

Rather than becoming a clip posted to Boss Fight Database, Scott explained that having the Sandworm be this giant threat was more about having it be a vehicle that drives you to interact with other systems. I'd even compared it to the Deathclaws in Fallout New Vegas- the point of putting them so close to Goodsprings wasn't so you could learn to fight them, the point of having them there is to teach you not to fight them at all.

"We always want the Sandworm to be a point of tension and a point of danger, but it's not the main attraction. The main attraction is Arrakis and Dune and the politics and the intrigue and the factions and just the entire world. The sandworm is a very important part of that".

"We didn't want you to interact with it necessarily. It's more of a boss that you're avoiding. It's sort of like the Mr.X mechanic in Resident Evil, it's sort of like that in a way. You're just running away and trying to stay away from it".

If you're curious about living in the world of Arrakis, Dune Awakening is available now. With Chapter 2 bringing new content and features, you'll be able to explore the world of Arrakis the way you want to. As long as you don't run into any Sandworms, of course.