The Dune Awakening team had “a bunch of constraints” placed on what they could show by working with Hollywood

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.

“We’ve worked very closely with the Villeneuve team and Legendary entertainment, and working with the team that makes the movies. Of course Dune has inspired movies, TV shows, video games, graphic novels, music and more[…] We decided to try and take on this legacy to bring a new Dune game to the world. That means working with Hollywood during the active development of two-to-three films.”

Bylos continues: “This means we [had] a bunch of constraints placed on us, right at the beginning of the project. We weren’t allowed to show the Fremen. We weren’t allowed to show anything that would spoil the plots of the films. We had to avoid the reveal of any major characters before the films did. We had to avoid any and all spoilers about Paul Atreides.”

However, it’s here that Bylos elaborates on how these boundaries established by the Hollywood entities ultimately led him and the team to pursue the alternate history approach players will (hopefully) be able to experience themselves. “As a creative myself, I love constraints. They lead to freedom. They lead to us having to solve problems in interesting ways. This is our solution to the constraints that were put on us for this project.”

Following this statement, Bylos played the Dune Awakening story cinematic released a few months ago, in which Paul explains this is a future where he was never born. Bylos elaborates: “So, an alternative version of the story told by Frank Herbert, based in the lore from Frank Herbert.” This alternative retelling pivots from the books in that Lady Jessica chooses to have a daughter (Ariste), rather than a son (Paul).

How this all plays out is the big narrative mystery going into Dune Awakening. How will Arrakis adapt to a war between Harkonnen and Atreides without Paul’s presence, how will Jessica’s daughter Ariste play a part, and where does the player fit into all of this? We’ll have to wait and find out!