Funcom’sDune: Awakeningbrings the vast, dangerous world of Arrakis into the survival MMO space, where players are required to navigate politics, brutal sandstorms, and the ever-present threat of sandworms. Apart from its striking visuals and massive scale, the game’s soundscape plays a pivotal role in making its world feel as alive and unforgiving as it is.Dune: Awakening’s soundtrack, especially, stands out not just for how it accompanies players on their journey, but for how it gives Arrakis its own voice.
Game Rant recently interviewed Knut Avenstroup Haugen, the composer forDune: Awakening, about how he approached the challenge of scoring such aniconic world. During the interview, he opened up about his creative process, his early start on the project, and the delicate balance between creating something original while still honoring what mostDunefans might expect from it.This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Creating the Music of Arrakis
Q: What were the core themes or emotions you wanted to evoke in your score to reflect the “depth and mystery of the lore, as well as the haunting majesty of Arrakis,” as you mentioned in the soundtrack release?
A:I think it’s not so easy to pinpoint exactly what they are. It’s moremy feeling of what Arrakis is. If Arrakis had a voice, or if Arrakis could make music, that’s what I was after and what I’m meant to or try to explain with that comment. It’s the feeling I get when I see the art, when I play the game, and the small parts that I have played. It’s not concrete, it’s just a feeling. I feel that it’s warm, it’s sandy, also in the air, it’s filled with sand. It’s connected to the mystery, the mystery of the Fremen, and there is a sadness about it. The Fremen are missing. There is something that has been lost. Arrakis wasn’t always a sand planet. There are elements of all these things.
One of the things I tried to do was to give Arrakis a voice and make it into a character in the game. So, I worked a lot developing a musical language or what I usually refer to as “conceptualizing.” When I start to score, I conceptualize. You have all the different musical genres in the world fromdifferent time periods, and the same with instruments, and I attempt to find things that give me the right associations and then combine them. And this is very instinctual.
However, the difficult thing is to make all of these things fit together, because they are normally not used together. It’s difficult to put all of these elements together in a way that makes sense, and also sounds inevitable. Of course, this isDunemusic. This is thesound of Arrakis. Obviously, no one questions that. That’s the challenge. That’s what’s difficult. The questions you have to ask yourself to get to that point—it’s difficult to define what they are or exactly what your associations were. At some point, this is how you feel it should sound.
It’s also about the musical language. It’s not only about the choice of instruments and styles, it’s what kind of melodies you write. Are they influenced by maybe some Chinese type of music or Arabic type of music? Maybe you hear a little bit of many things, but you develop a musical language that you can express yourself through. But this process is very important. It’s the most important thing you do in the wholevideo game score, because when you have established this identity, this language, then everything you write is expressed through this language. If you don’t do it, the score will sound very fragmented, and it will also not have an identity.
You want it to be memorable and identifiable. First of all, identifiable, and then secondly, memorable. If you can make it iconic, fantastic. You know to make it as special and unique, and as good as possible. You basically make most of these choices in the beginning, before you even write any music. So, when you hear all the music, when everything is finished, it should sound like one long piece of music with different chapters, like almost a symphony with different movements. It should all sound consistent and homogeneous.
Q: And are you aDunefan yourself?
A:Well, I have become one. And I have to admit that the time when they approached me was actually quite a long time ago. It was before the first of the new movies was out. I think it was 2020 when I started. So, at that time, my knowledge of the universe was theDavid Lynch film from ‘84or whatever it was. And I was vaguely familiar with some of theDunegames that had come out through the years, but I never really played them very much. I just knew of them. I tried them a little bit.
And I knew about thefailed JodorowskyDuneproject. I watched the documentary, and it was very fascinating. I would have loved to see Giger designing the Harkonnen and see how that would have turned out, but it was an impossible dream for that to become a movie. That was my knowledge of the universe, and when they approached me, I started reading the books. It was very important, I think, because it allowed me to dive deep into the world and to familiarize myself with it. That would allow me to go deeper with the music and avoid the music becoming superficial.
There’s a lot of reading to get to that point where it actually affects what you do with the music. There is no kind of direct relation there, but with all that information, it does affect you. It does make you think differently about certain things, and when there are choices, you think, “No, this would be more appropriate because of so-and-so.” So yeah, I read them, but before, no, I was pretty green to the wholeDuneuniverse.
Q: Speaking of the timing of all this, with you being approached before the movies came out, did you honor Zimmer at all in your work, and if so, how did you balance your own identity with what he did?
A:So, this is an interesting question because, first of all, I started before, so I had to develop an identity, like we talked about, the concept, I had to develop it before any of us had heard the music from the films. So then, I was quite nervous before I listened to the music for the first time, because if it was too far removed from what Zimmer was doing, people would say — well, Funcom included and Legendary and Tencent, they would all say, “No, this doesn’t sound likeDunemusicanymore.” Luckily, I wasn’t too far away from what he had chosen to do.
All theDunefans will obviously have watched theDunemoviesbefore they play this game, so they will think the same. “This is notDunemusic,” if it were too different. So, luckily, it wasn’t too far away and that’s also a good thing. You’re saying there is a balance, and you absolutely cannot get too close because then it’s plagiarism, and you’re copying someone. If you go too far away, it’s no longerDunemusic, so you have to find a balance.
To be honest, I can see that, in some places, my music is closer, more similar, and in other places it’s more different, and I think many things are very different. I do a lot of sound design, and there is a lot of treatment of sounds, like acoustic instruments which I manipulate the sounds and process the sounds. I also do the same with the synthesizer sounds. There’s a lot of layering, both of synthetic sounds and live sounds with synthesizers. I combine them to create new sounds, things like that. There’s a lot of that, andHans Zimmeralso does a lot of that.
I use a lot of arpeggiators and the way I use the synthesizers, a lot of it is quite old school. It’s what you would find Jean-Michel Jarre or maybe Tangerine Dream more than any. They did these things in the 70s, and you also saw it in the 80s. So, some parts of the soundtrack are quite vintage in terms of the synthesizer sound, and I’m using instruments that have a lot of that character, because I love them. I think it sounds so visceral and real, it’s so imperfect. And it’s never the same, it always changes. It feels like a real instrument, and I like that. It has a lot of texture, and I just love it. It just makes me happy to listen to it. I think it’s so pleasing to listen to it.
Another thing I think sets me apart from thescores of the filmsis that I use a lot of melody. I write very long melodies. There are melodies inDune: Awakeningthat go on for a minute, long melodic lines in the strings, for example, or in the vocals, which are quite different from what you will hear in the movies. There are lots of motifs, but you don’t hear the same long melodies. Also, I put the orchestra a bit more front and center, to emphasize that the celli in the orchestra play these long lines, and I wanted to be able to hear that clearly. The same with the soloists, like the singers.
So, there is a balance there. It needs to sound contemporary and modern, and progressive, and not old school. I didn’t want it to sound old-fashioned, and there is a balance there as well. If you do too much of the orchestra, suddenly it sounds old-fashioned, and it doesn’t work so well anymore. So, it’s all about finding the right balance where it still has that contemporary feeling. But I was still able to use the orchestra to play these very expressive lines.
In extension of that, I would like to say that melodic writing, I do it as much as I can, and I’ve always liked it very much. I think there’s a lot of focus on ambient scoring nowadays. In video games, you have to make a lot of ambient music. It’s just the nature of the medium. But also in films, good films, they usually have a very strong theme, obviously. They’ve probably gone hundreds of rounds with that theme before everyone is happy with it. They usually have strong themes, and many films have good melodies, and they use melody more frequently, but there is still an emphasis on ambient scoring.
I think there are missed opportunities for melodic writing because melody can convey something difficult to say only with thesoundscapes and ambience. Melody is in many ways a story, and I like to tell stories with the music. Of course, the most important function of music is to support the narrative of the film or the video game. Many times, I think you do that best if you are able to write melody as well. So, I really try to do that as much as possible, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of anything, as long as I feel that it only benefits the narrative, and it doesn’t take up too much space.
Making Arrakis Sound as Tense as It Feels
Q: Speaking of that, one of my personal favorite things about the score is that you do a lot with so little. There’s a lot that you communicate with so little, and it’s very minimalistic. There’s a lot of restraint at times. How did you balance that simplicity with the scale and size of not just the game, but of Arrakis itself?
A:I don’t think they are contradictions, actually. If you want to translate scale into music, it’s about something that is slowly moving, and also something that spreads across the frequency spectrum from the deepest bass to the highest frequencies. Then you feel it’s big. So, you don’t necessarily need so many instruments. You’re right, there are many places where there might only be strings. Maybe strings with a synthesizer in the background or something. Maybe two or three elements, it’s true.
It’s a cliche that “less is more,” but it’s a cliche because it’s true. And it’s especially true when it comes tovideo games and films, because you are always there supporting something else, you’re part of something else. It’s not music that is written to be listened to alone. It’s written to accompany something else, and it can very quickly become too much.
I noticed this when I started working more than 25 years ago with video games. In the first years, I worked on games that were never released, but in the beginning, I wrote combat music or fighting music that was very busy. Of course, if there is aboss fight, I still do that, but the small fights, the kind of casual fighting that goes on all the time, I did very much. I thought that it was fine.
But then I playedOblivion, and it was very similar to a game that I worked on at the time, which wasAge of Conan. I remember how littlemusic there was for the combat sequence, and I thought it worked a lot better because it creates the kind of tension that you need, but that’s basically what you need. You just need to raise the tension level a little bit. It’s a thing that everyone struggles with. You always think when you get into this line of work that you need to do a lot. Also, people are paying for your work, and especially in the beginning, you feel you need to give them their money’s worth. So, you kind of do more than you have to.
Also, maybe you are working with someone who doesn’t understand this concept. They will see it when you try it out in the game, but many times there is no game. The game comes later. I usually write most of the music before there is a game. They are working with all kinds of tools that they’re going to implement in the game, but the game, as it looks when it’s finished, comes very late. If you work with someone who cannot see how themusic works in the game, they will also think it’s too little. It’s a bit of a problem, but it’s usually better to hold back and be a bit careful. It’s much more efficient.
Q: Regarding the tension, that’s one of the main things to me about theDune: Awakeningscore is the tension that it creates. The sandworm theme, anytime the sandworm comes out of the ground or whenever you go out into the open sand, and you just get that explosive synth, that’s one of the most unsettling parts of the game for me and I know a lot of other players. How did you approach that?
A:I actually made three different themes for thesandworm inDune: Awakening. So, there is one where there is a choir, and there is a distorted sound when it comes up. It’s like the music also grows out of the ground in a way. So, that’s kind of the intention behind that. It just needed to be really big and intense.
And then there is a more threatening theme that’s going on when the worm is coming towards you. Then there is a cue that is supposed to start playing at the first sign of the worm. It’s very rhythmic and has a lot of percussive synthesizer sounds. To be 100% honest, I am not sure if that is even there. But I made three different themes, and I know I’ve heard the other two.
Q: Was there a particular sequence or track that you enjoyed working on the most, or that you feel best captures Arrakis and thatDunefeeling?
A:It’s very difficult for me to name specific tracks that are my favorites. Of course, I have some favorites, and I think some tracks were more fun to write, and I felt they came together better when I wrote them. Some tracks, I like them because of how they ended up sounding in the end. Maybe surprisingly, they turned out better than I had hoped for. There is something that can be said about most of the tracks that I like, which was the reason why I wrote them in the first place. So, I like all the tracks more or less, with a few exceptions.
There is another thing. The album is 90 minutes, but in the game, there are more than fivehours of music. Cutting down the duration of the album was difficult, only 90 minutes when there is so much music. But if we focus on the music that is on the album, I remember the first time I heard Clara, the vocalist, when she sent me the recordings for the song that’s now called “Sayyadina’s Lament.” And the first time I heard that, I thought, “Wow, that is so much better than what I could have hoped for.”
It just came to life, and it’s so organic, and it’s kind of floating, and you cannot really place the rhythm. It’s just as if she’s speaking, and it transcends the boundaries of the written music. You cannot really write it down because it goes across the bar lines, and the durations are not mathematical. It just flows very organically. She has this dynamic which is also difficult to notate. The swelling and the difference between the very soft whispering notes and the more pronounced notes. It just sounded like it came from another place. It just transcended what I had written, and it elevated the music in a way that I would never have imagined.
I also have to say that theorchestra is so brilliant, it’s so good. Everything they played came out exactly as I intended, only better, and that’s how it’s supposed to sound if you record something. You want them to do what you wrote, but then they make it better. So, I was extremely happy with the orchestra and what they did. Also, when we were there, I knew that they were fast, so I had prepared much more music than we planned on recording. And we ended up recording everything. They recorded 50% more than we anticipated because they are so experienced, so efficient, and so good. That was a fantastic experience.
Also, we talked about how the music is a kind of mix and match of a lot of different elements, stylistic elements, and instruments. The track “Welcome to Arrakis,” I was very pleased to hear how all of that came together because it’s an orchestra. There is a band, a drum kit, an electric bass, and there are synthesizers — there are so many things going on. All of this came together, and it made sense, and it felt like one coherent song.
Haugen’s Past, Future, and Aspirations
Q: So, how does this compare to your past work as far as what you’ve put together forDune: Awakening?
A:First of all, this is very different from most of the work I’ve done before. I’ve touched on this way of writing before, but I’ve never done a big game like this. That said, I’ve always been a huge fan of synthesizer music and synthesizers, and it’s maybe the first kind of music that I really liked and that I listened to very much. So, I went back to my roots in some ways to make the score, so it’s not a new thing for me. It’s not something that I’ve never done before.
I’ve always had synthesizers. I’ve always worked with synthesizers and played in bands and things like that, but it was different to work like this, and there were many things that I hadn’t done before. But, of course, I have to say that on this project, we were able to do things at the highest quality — the best studio, thebest musicians, the best orchestra, the best people in the studio, and the best people to help with preparations and the post work.
Every part of the production was top, and it makes a huge difference, and you may hear it in the result. It’s very solid. I’m not complaining about other orchestras or other studios or anything like that. It’s just very streamlined when you work in London, and it helps the process. It makes it easier for you as a composer. It also became much more important for me to focus on mix and production, because it’s such an integral part of this way of composingmusic for a video game.
Previously, I felt in many ways that my part ended with me delivering the orchestrations and being in the studio and guiding them to perform it in the best possible way. That was kind of the end of my contribution. But now, my contribution also involved being very close to the mix process with the mix engineer, and also all the preparations made it different. Also, the way we recorded, we recorded the orchestra in elements according to the needs of the particular piece.
For every piece, I went through them and wrote into the score notes on what needed to be recorded separately or in a unique way. In the case of “Welcome to Arrakis,” it’s actually two orchestras playing because we needed more instruments, so we recorded on top of each other. All of that planning and the focus on production techniques eventually give you other results. You need to be hands-on the whole way, and it feels very solid, the end result.
Some previous times, it felt like an orchestra recorded in a hall, more like a classical performance in a way. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s a very different sound, a very different feeling. So, the production is vastly different from what I have done before. There are definitely examples of times when it has been somewhere in the middle of the kind of pure orchestral thing andwhatDune: Awakeningbecame. There are some scores that are in the middle there somewhere, and they also sound very good. It is such a big focus on the production that I had never done before.
Q: Are you hoping to work more on theDuneuniverse in the future?
A:Of course, that would be super fun if I got the opportunity to work more on it.
Q: And I’m assuming you’ll continue to work with Funcom as they expand the game?
A:Yeah, we haven’t started talking about that yet, and I know nothing about any plans for the time to come. The release was not long ago, and the work doesn’t really stop there, so it hasn’t really stopped for me either. There are always some things to relate to, so I don’t think anyone has really landed properly yet. I guess in the fall, people will start thinking more about what’s next. We’ll see then, I guess.
Q: What do you really hope players, fans, and anyone who hears the soundtrack will walk away with in terms of how the soundtrack relates to the gaming experience or how it impacts them?
A:I think there are two things that I hope for. One is that the players think the music works really well with the game and that they don’t turn off the music, at least not until they have played it for a very long time. That’s my hope. I actually heard some very goodnews from Funcom aboutDune: Awakening. They said that they had been told by many players who played it for 150 and 100 hours that they still played with the music on. And that is a really, really great compliment because that’s what you want. You want the music to be part of the experience. And if the players keep the music, that means that it really works.
So, that’s my first ambition, and the second ambition is that the music also works on its own terms. We talked about how it’s simple, and it’s kind of less is more and all of these things, but I still like to write music that feels like music or is entertaining, and music that gives you something when you listen to it, even without the game. In this case, it’s kind of a mix between the orchestra and synthesizers, but as avideo game soundtrack, I really hope that people will like the music for what it is.
[END]
