Dune Awakening Interview: Art Directors Gavin Whelan and David Levy on Bringing Arrakis to Life

At PAX East 2025, there was one booth that dominated the convention floor and had dozens of stations open for people to play: Dune Awakening. Not only did I have the opportunity to download and play some of the Dune Awakening beta over the weekend, but I got to sit down with Senior Art Director Gavin Whelan and Associate Art Director David Levy to talk about their work on bringing Arrakis to life.

In our Dune Awakening interview with the art directors, let's dive into what it took to design and build this new MMO.

Dune Awakening's Inspirations: Pulling From Many Sources

"We all have experiences of what our perception of Dune is," Whelan said. "Some of the older devs like myself, we have the 1984 movie, which scarred me mentally when I was way too young. A lot of people have read the books, and there's the newer movies and TV series. The sandworm is kind of just this thing that's part of our general consciousness."

The original Frank Herbert novel provided a lot of lore for the dev team to go on, but so much of the style of the world has been adapted to film and TV already. I was curious how much of those designs were incorporated into the game versus what was being developed from scratch.

"We have the legendary movies, which we were working with those guys very closely," Whelan said. "They shipped a bunch of us down to the set. We got to sit inside an ornithopter, and the relationship between us and Legendary Pictures was very close. They were sending us concepts, reference images, prop photos, so we could start modeling things based on that." 

Whelan also met with Cinematics Director Greig Fraser to discuss details for the game. Plus, Dune Awakening Creative Director Joel Bylos was a passionate fan from the start who brought his perspective to every detail. 

"It's great to have that sort of safety net," Whelan said, speaking of Bylos. "He is such a lore nerd on this. He will just go, 'No, that's not the way it goes. Here's the line in the book.'" 

The close relationship between the developers and the filmmakers helps make Dune Awakening be an extension of that universe that shares similar themes while still carving out its own space in the Dune timeline. 

Setting the Tone for Dune Awakening 

Associate Art Director David Levy, meanwhile, was bringing his own experience to the team. 

"I worked on the TV series for Dune Prophecy, I was a lead for the concept team, so I worked on the TV series for three years," Levy said. 

Having a team that's passionate about the source material was critical for getting the details of the world accurate and making it feel more lived-in, from the design of the lighting from the harsh Arrakis sun to the vehicles you can see and interact with. 

"You'll see in the game we have big ships flying across the sky," Whelan said. "I nagged for so long to get those in because it wasn't essential gameplay, it was just something in the sky, but it set the tone." 

Of course, you can't talk about Dune without talking about sandworms. These are designs that are well-known from screen adaptations, but I was curious what the design process was like for the sandworms in Dune Awakening.

"We needed to have a certain amount of articulation in the mouth for the smaller worms," Whelan said. "The tri-mouth design was much easier to anticipate and give it some articulation. And we have those out in the deep desert, though those are the small worms. The big worm – I have never worked on, and will never work on, a game where we have a creature that big." 

I had to ask the two of them directly: can you ride a sandworm? 

"We're working on it," Whelan said. "There are a whole bunch of challenges, it's going to be an interesting journey to get that working right. It has to be a visceral, engaging feeling." 

Dune Awakening: Deep Desert & Beyond 

A core element of Dune Awakening is the deep desert, a PVP area with high-risk, high-reward opportunities. 

"It's a balance between the amount of freedom and amount of danger we give the player," Levy said. "It's going to be a very high-octane area." 

The two developers wanted to make sure that exploration pays off, giving players plenty to see and do if they venture out into the deep desert. At the same time, for players not interested in PVP gameplay, there's plenty of other missions to take on.

"There are aspects of this game for all gamers to come into," Whelan said. "I have a friend who is exclusively into PVP, and will really be into that area. Other people can research, resource gather, build, or craft. There's just so many cool elements that can attract a lot of people." 

Plus, huge sandstorms will sweep across the map and reset the deep desert, giving Funcom opportunities to create new points of interest out there. 

Every aspect of Dune Awakening, from the deep desert design to the character creator to the narrative, was built from a global team that had to navigate the challenges of developing a game when COVID was at its peak. 

"Eventually, we all transitioned to working online," Whelan said. "We had to coordinate something so complicated remotely. I love having people face to face in a room, where ideas can flow and you can see body language. Anybody can come up with the perfect idea, the perfect solution. But doing things on Teams meetings, it was a slow and challenging process." 

In Levy's role, he was taking charge of how the lighting works in the world and how to make each day in-game feel dynamic and new. 

"I love photography, and we were able to translate Gavin's vision into something that is immersive and unconscious to the player, like the day-to-day changes. Every day will be slightly different weather. How do we make it beautiful, but also oppressive? There's so many different biomes, I'm excited for the player to feel that sense of immersion in the atmosphere." 

Dune Awakening: One Big Sandbox

At its core as an MMO, Dune Awakening has been designed to give the player agency to explore what kind of experience they want to have. 

"I'm blown away by the creativity of the players," Whelan said. "We build a sandbox for players. They take ownership of it, and they start to shape it. Some people want to play straight Dune fantasy, we accommodate that. Others just want to have fun with it. We have heat maps so we can see what the players are doing and how they explore." 

"The player is the component of the game," Levy said. "They're not just a passenger who's going through a very linear experience. The player is making Dune Awakening after we've built it." 

A core goal of Dune Awakening was to constantly let the player branch out and try new things. The immediate needs must first be met – food, water, shelter. But similar to other survival MMOs, once the player has a handle on those things, the world really starts to open up, and before too long they'll be flying ornithopters and gathering resources to make more complex tools. 

Not only were Levy and Whelan interested in making the game accessible to as many players as they could in the design of the world, they also wanted it to run on as many machines as possible.

"We have been very conscious of the fact that there are economic challenges," Whelan said. "People can't rush out and buy a graphics card. We want to make sure that the lighting and the world looks beautiful and consistent on low-end machines.

"We get to a point where the game looks beautiful, and then we start optimizing. We bounce back and forth making sure Dune Awakening looks good and runs well." 

Dune Awakening was a big hit at PAX East, with the beta weekend allowing me to try it out on my Nvidia GeForce 3060Ti (runs great!) as well as on my Steam Deck (runs not so great). The Dune Awakening release date is June 10 with early access for those who buy Dune Awakening Deluxe Edition on June 5.

Whelan, Levy, and the whole team have worked to make Dune Awakening an authentic Dune experience for fans, and there should be many secrets to uncover when players jump in for themselves in just a few weeks.