Dune: Awakening dev says "when we do bring stuff like sandworm riding into the game, it'll feel like an epic moment like in the movies," but you can't "trivialize the sandworm" because that breaks Dune

The sandworm in Dune: Awakening.

Developing a live-service game is tricky, especially when it's based on an already established universe. Funcom has the unenviable task of finding the balance between what we as players want and what the devs as artists envision for us in Dune: Awakening, but the team seems confident.

"You need to strike the balance of what's fun gameplay and what's correct in terms of the lore and the canon of the universe, and then at the same time, hit what players' expectations are," production director Ole Andreas Hayley tells GamesRadar+ at Gamescom. "It's a tricky balance to strike, but we have a great team I would trust fully to take all of those things into account."