Sticking a media playtest for a Dune game in the frigid depths of a Norwegian January is peak comedic irony. Yet there I was, layered up, exploring the unforgiving Arrakean desert from Oslo’s former multiplex-turned-gaming hub, Eldorado, having been invited by developer Funcom. While the venue may serve a different purpose nowadays, I still witnessed moments of absolute cinema during my six-hour Dune Awakening preview as I wrestled with raiders, legged it from sandworms, and familiarized myself with the laws of the desert. God made Arrakis to test the faithful, and Funcom’s making Dune Awakening to test the gamers.
Dune Awakening is a survival MMO game built around Spice, and I’m not just talking about the psychedelic super substance everyone and their grandma’s tussling to get their mitts on. ‘SPICE’ is an internal acronym that describes its five core gameplay pillars: Survival, Politics and intrigue, Infinite exploration, Combined arms, and Expression and customization. While politicking is a proponent of the late-game experience – something I didn’t get to see – a full-fledged Dune survival experience is one of those ‘how hasn’t this been done before?’ type beats, and getting hands-on with its other major tenets has only reinforced that feeling.
Having been bequeathed the IP rights to set the game in the cinematic universe by Legendary Pictures, albeit with several huge restrictions on what can be included narratively (as if the iconic book series isn’t 60 years old at this point), Funcom’s had to pull the plug on Paul Atreides completely. Dune Awakening takes us down an alternate history where Lady Jessica remained loyal to the Bene Gesserit and had a girl, Ariste. Suffice it to say, the butterfly effect is quite something.
Without Paul in the picture, Lady Jessica remains a truthsayer. As a truthsayer, she sees through Dr. Yueh’s treachery and ensures the Atreides survive the Battle of Arrakeen. A put-out Emperor Shaddam IV deploys the Sardaukar to Arrakis to ensure Spice shipments arrive on time, ‘eliminating’ the Fremen in the process. Leto I is alive, Duncan ‘the GOAT’ Idaho is alive, everything’s Gucci. Well… not quite. As creative director Joel Bylos explains in the pre-playtest presentation, the Atreides and Harkonnen are still at each other’s throats from the shadows, and assassins and subterfuge have replaced all-out war. A cold war on a (mostly) blistering hot planet. How delightful.
Crafting an original story within the confines of the well-established Dune canon sounds like a daunting task. After all, ‘bastardizing sci-fi’s golden child’ is not something you want to pop on your resume. Nonetheless, the narrative team at Funcom is taking special care to spin a yarn that brings the best out of Arrakis without spinning out of control creatively. It’s a delicate balancing act on a strand of twine, but I’m impressed by Awakening’s opening act.
As Dune Awakening begins, I am brought before the Reverend Mother who gives me the choice of four ultimately interchangeable classes: Bene Gesserit, Swordsmaster, Mentat, and Trooper. Opting for the Bene Gesserit grants me mind control powers and an ability that makes me sprint faster (what more could I need?). I then proceed to lock in my caste, a Bondsman from Giedi Prime, before the Reverend Mother tasks me to find the Fremen and “wake the sleeper” on Arrakis. Once I’ve shoved my hand in the box, I’m sent on my merry way.
After rudely being shot down by assassins during my descent into Arrakis, I gain control of my somewhat disheveled, stone-broke character; a gorgeous, bald Harkonnen sporting eye makeup Chappell Roan would approve of. Awakening’s character customization isn’t so vast that it’ll let you punch in the exact shades of color you’re after (RIP, making my face the perfect PCGN #F65002 orange roundel), but there’s enough to delve into for character creator mains hoping to wile away the hours tweaking proportions.
Say what you want about tutorializing survival games and offering a linear narrative, but Awakening’s innate approachability makes it a dream to get stuck in with. Historically, I’ve disengaged from survival games pretty quickly as the tedium of ‘pick stick, mine rock, make axe’ with very little macro direction doesn’t compute for me. This, though, I can stick with. There is a fair amount of hand-holding to start, but it’s merited considering the number of systems you need to learn and master to not die – be it from thirst, the environment, or the desert’s inhabitants.
Once I’d become the king of hydration, morphing into a human mosquito as I extracted blood from raider after raider for sustenance, it was time to build my first base or ‘fief.’ While the user experience needs some extra polish, Dune Awakening’s construction is robust enough for now. There’s a plenitude of parts to build your dream condo, and you can even take a schematic scan of it to replicate elsewhere or sell to others.
No sooner had I built my prime real estate did I spot that I had a neighbor – a neighbor who had built their little piece of paradise a story taller than mine. I added another story… and a balcony. Feeling the burning urge for domestic one-upmanship like a desperate housewife in the throes of suburbia, except it’s in the middle of desolate Arrakis, will never not be funny.
Careful design considerations are to be found at every level in Dune Awakening. As Funcom has done its due diligence with its world-building so far, so too has it made some fabulous creative choices when it comes to gameplay. Bylos has told the team “Make your designs fit Dune, don’t make Dune fit your designs,” and it shows. Even where the team has had to make compromises, it doesn’t feel like it’s cheapening the experience. This is best exemplified by Funcom’s approach to shields.
Unlike Denis Villeneuve’s films, shields aren’t completely impervious to large quantities of gunfire from multiple enemies or specific weapons. Additionally, your shield drops while firing guns, opening you up to counterfire. This system might not strictly adhere to the source material but, in a 1v1 situation, a killing blow from a slow blade remains the most efficient way to bypass them.
The absence of melee combat has been heavily criticized as recently as Gamescom last year, but Bylos assures me during an event Q&A that it’s simply because it hadn’t reached a form worth showcasing at the time. Gunplay still takes precedence, and melee combat still isn’t as weighty as I’d like, but it’s taking shape. What’s more, the combat triangle of ranged, melee, and abilities begins to balance itself out once you get into the meat of the game, and shields start to become a more prominent fixture (just not in the desert itself, sandworms hate shields).
I’m also impressed more broadly by the trade-offs each shiny new piece of utility comes with. The traditional upgrade loops in its associated genres seldom come with drawbacks, but out in the open desert, your chances of getting gobbled up by a worm can increase exponentially. For example, using the suspensor belt to hover creates a huge amount of sound, as does roving the dunes on a bike. You’re always trading efficiency for safety and that’s exactly how it should feel to be on Arrakis.
My biggest concern coming into Dune Awakening was Arrakis itself. It’s sand on sand – coarse, rough, and it gets everywhere. How do you make endless exploration captivating when its sole biome is an ocean of beige? Though I can’t speak for long-term gameplay, Funcom’s managed to dig into the mysticism of the sands and provide early game locales worth exploring. They’re not quite Aladdin’s Cave of Wonders, but the loot at the end of crashed ships and testing stations is suitably shiny for instant gratification magpies like myself to get our beaks into. The desert, I’m told, gets even wilder the deeper you get, and I can’t wait to see how Arrakis expands in the mid-game and beyond.
The other element that ensures you’ll never get bored in Arrakis is its most threatening denizen, the sandworm. I found out through writing this preview that worms aren’t actually bugs, but because I like my headline so much I’m simply going to ignore this inconvenient truth – I’m a writer, not an entomologist. The sentiment that they are the best part about Dune Awakening rings true, still. Sandworms are fucking awesome.
Picture it. You’re out in the desert, en route to your fief after collecting a ton of rare goodies to upgrade your gear with. The fastest way back is a direct line through the open desert, and you fancy your chances. You slowly move across the shifting sands, being careful not to alert the worm, but it comes for you anyway. The music changes abruptly, an ominous trill ringing out, signaling that death is on the horizon. You begin sprinting – caution is a pointless pleasantry at this point – your boots heaving sand as you thrust them through the dunes. But it’s on you like the extension hose of a vacuum sniffing out a spec of dust. The last thing you see is a trail of sand and an emerging maw before you respawn, naked, without a pot to piss in.
Sandworms epitomize the interplay between safety and efficiency. They force you to take the scenic route and appreciate even the most mundane parts of the environment. That’s not just a basic rocky outcropping; it’s a lifeline. Their constant threat, alongside the other survival risks, ensures a continuum of tension and demands your full attention. That being said, I do wish they were a smidge more threatening, though the worms I got to play chicken with in the early game areas are, apparently, nothing compared to what lurks in the deep desert. I’ll reserve my judgment for now, then.
While I barely scratched the surface of what Funcom is crafting with Dune Awakening, I, alongside many others in my group, left the playtest itching for more (we may have formulated a plot or two to sneak back in). There are certainly rough edges to be sanded down, as some of us fell prey to the odd glitch here and there that required dev assistance, but that’s what the polishing phase of its development is for. If the devs can iron out the creases in time for launch, then I don’t doubt Dune Awakening has the legs to make it out of the new release cycle unscathed. I never thought I’d yearn to return to Arrakis, yet here we are.