Dune: Awakening: The Final Preview

In our final hands-on preview of Dune: Awakening, we found a combination of solid mechanics that put a twist on the usual scenarios, and a deep deep obsession with the work of Herbert that strengthens the world building beyond the abilities of most narrative designs.

Jan 30, 2025 - 20:00
Dune: Awakening: The Final Preview

There's only one thing worse than being chased across the desert by a sandworm in Dune: Awakening, and that's getting eaten by a sandworm in Dune: Awakening. Not only does the giant phallic cretin suck you down into the bowels of Arrakis, it eats everything you're carrying. Your clothes, your weapons, and especially your Spice Liquor. Suddenly you're respawning at your base in nothing but your underwear and are forced to do the run of shame across the sands to start rebuilding your inventory.

It's easy to be sceptical about an MMO survival game set in the Duniverse, but after a few bouts of dehydration and sunstroke, the day I spent in Arrakis convinced me that Dune: Awakening is one to watch. More than that, if the developer can deliver on its plans for the endgame, it could see an EVE Online-style future for its hardcore playerbase. This massive project is the work of Funcom - the studio of the Conan: Exiles dong slider fame - and sets you on a path from broke-ass Arrakis hobo to an influential figure harvesting Spice on an industrial scale and pushing their personal agenda at the Landsraad. It's got everything you expect from an MMO - intricate skill trees, PvP mechanics, base building and character customization, but with ornithopters and mind-altering substances thrown in.

Dune: Awakening is set in a world where Lady Jessica had a Sliding Doors moment and chose to follow the instructions of the Bene Gesserit and have a daughter, Ariste, instead of the little twink we know and love, Paul Atredies. Cut to 29 years later and the Harkonnens and Atredies are at war over Arrakis, the Fremen have been (apparently) wiped out, and alternative religions have evolved to fill the gap left by Lisan al-Gaib. The alternate timeline isn't meant as a nipple twist to fans, Funcom needed the narrative space to make the player character consequential.

The alternate timeline isn't meant as a nipple twist to fans, Funcom needed the narrative space to make the player character consequential.

“Obviously we did the somewhat controversial but I think very correct choice of creating the alternate history, which allowed us to detach a bit from what was going on in the movies and kind of focus on developing the game," explains producer Nils Ryborg.

"It's also been very helpful in that it allows us to bring a lot of the big-name characters that people really want to interact with back into the story. So in the books, a lot of the big-name characters die off quite early. With our story, we get to keep them around, which is really cool. There are obviously things that we want to include more of in the future that were very popular in the movies. We won't have sandworm riding at launch, for instance. But sometime in the future we'll look at that."

If it still doesn't sit right, Dune purists should know that Funcom got the blessing of the Herbert estate for the project, working with it and the makers of the current movies to keep everything true to the lore. It influences everything from the skills you can learn to the crafting progression, and it's a key part of trying to ensure that Awakening stands out in an ever-growing pack.

Survival games are all over Steam right now, and I've tried most of them. Drop me naked in a jungle and I'll happily bash rocks and branches together for hours. Abandon me penniless in a fantasy landscape and I'll be crafting swords before breakfast. Dune: Awakening stands out the minute you exit character creation for one very stressful reason; Arrakis isn't exactly a tropical island or verdant forested ecosystem. In the opening area, Hagga Basin, there's no water, scarce wildlife and a distinct lack of coconuts. Oh, and the sun is like really, really hot and you're susceptible to sunstroke, there are scavengers who want to kill you everywhere, and did I mention the sandworms? For the first few hours my entire life hinged on dew drops, granite, and plant fibers, and the advice of an NPC with a pet bat who babied me through covering the basics of weapons, armor, and hydration until I could make it on my own.

You're not totally pathetic during this time thanks to a selection of abilities that you can unlock as you gain experience. I leaned into my manipulative wifey side and chose the Bene Gesserit skills, giving me the power to compel enemies towards me and to hang in front of me for a few moments before going back to trying to kill me. Don't get me wrong, I was still very much a toddler in the eyes of Dune: Awakening - one ability I unlocked was better sunstroke tolerance - but by the end of the day in Arrakis I had slightly better weapons and had mastered a super fast dash move that got me out of some trouble. I could only dream of the wild combinations of ranged and melee combat, combined with passive and active abilities that could be swapped in and out according to need, shown off by the developers, but the skill point acquisition felt fast enough that I'll get there without too much hanging around once I'm playing at home. You won't be tied to your first specialty of choice either, so you'll be able to mix and match. The other starting classes are Trooper, Mentat (recon and strategy focused), and Swordmaster.

The Spice of Life

Another key element we only got a taste of was the very lifeblood of the Dune lore, Spice. Spice is powerful in the world of Dune: Awakening in every sense of the word, but it's also not easy to amass as a lone noob in the early hours. You'll find Spice Liquor and food in the world which unlocks a brief period of Prescient power - though it comes with withdrawal symptoms - but later in the game you can build transports, harvesters, and automated Spice-collection systems to score the quantities you'll need for trade, serious crafting or managing a raging Spice addiction. I suspect the value of Spice to players, versus the pain of collecting it, will be something Funcom will be balancing long after the game is released.

"I think Spice is really cool. Obviously super important in the lore and we use it not only to… it has some story aspects that I won't get into, but it's also the fact that we can use it to improve the strength of our abilities and how well we get to interact with them," says Ryborg.

If you're constantly high up on Spice, you will start seeing weird and wonky things.

"But then having the drawback of Spice addiction and needing more of it, and it's like constant need of more and more and more. A lot of the endgame systems being reliant on, 'Hey, can you get enough Spice to pay all your taxes for your huge base and to have the correct political sway that you need and build whatever endgame things that you need to build?' I feel that's been a very rewarding thing to pull off because we're now allowing all the iconic things that you think of from the Dune books to become natural mechanics that fit very well into the game.

"If you're constantly high up on Spice, you will start seeing weird and wonky things. I think it's fun, right? Because you're empowering your abilities, but you're also potentially putting yourself in a situation where you have worse possibilities. So you're balancing that whole act of, ‘Oh, I need to do this or this.’ And then also knowing that you need this resource for progression in other mechanics. So you're tapping into it now for a temporary boost for this fight but long-term I need this to pay taxes, gain political sway, and so on."

Once you've learned to live Arrakis style, you can start to focus on more than just beverages. There's a simple building system so you can start to construct your base, or sub-fief, and which you'll slowly start to fill with machines that automate the basics of survival. A machine to extract water from blood that you can harvest from enemy corpses, another to purify the ores you find. You'll need a fabricator to create armor and weapons. We only had access to very basic granite building blocks at the early stage of Dune: Awakening, but options for customization will increase as you progress. Personally I can't wait to build some severe mansion with Harkonnen aesthetics. You can also copy your base to move as your focus turns to new areas of Arrakis, so none of that tedious multiple base nonsense that survival players are sometimes cursed with.

It's easy to picture my time spent in a loop of harvesting materials, completing side quests or contracts, and taking out Scavengers whenever I come across them. And I did come across them a lot. There are camps dotted around the map, and enemies will respawn there on a regular basis, so you'll always have some walking blood bags to exsanguinate when you need to. At times the enemies and the camps felt a little cut-and-paste. Early on I was passing the same camps over and over as I ran across the map, staying in the shadows to avoid the heat of the sun, and dealing with them started to feel like a grind. Close to the end of the demo the development team took pity on us and spawned ornithopters, and it's easy to see how that issue won't reappear once you're not trudging back and forth across the map looking for a new supply of ore.

You're free to just wander the desert collecting twigs, but there are multiple story arcs - or Journeys - that push you deeper into the world. As well as bat boy's Arrakis 101 seminar, there's a Herbertian set of trials you're tasked with completing after a Spice Dream, and that's where things get trippy. No spoilers, but the first, the Trial of Aql, involves stealthing around a cavern to avoid the notice of a giant golden glowing eye. The weirdness was a welcome interlude in the cycle of harvesting materials, killing scavengers, and fulfilling basic contracts for the tradepost, and I'm hungry to know what the other trials have in store.

There are multiple story arcs - or Journeys - that push you deeper into the world.

Some stuff we didn't get to try for ourselves were the more social aspects of Dune: Awakening. Prove your skills for survival and skulduggery in Arrakis and you'll get to the endgame, wielding influence at the Landsraat, where factions of players can make choices that will affect the world. Being as we were in the toddler end of the Dune: Awakening pool, we only got to experience the PvE part of the experience, which with everything else I was trying to deal with felt like a blessing. Ryborg says that while you can enjoy the game as a loner, those later social aspects will be vital to being an Arrakis Kingpin, from taking on the tough dungeon-style lab locations to trading for items.

"So we've got the whole story and there's a lot of single player content but there are areas where you definitely need other people. If you want to get into the really tough ecological testing stations, some of the tougher ones, you definitely need people.

"But especially when you want to delve into the deep desert, the full endgame. If you want to engage in the endgame political loop, you will need more people. If you want to do the proper big Spice raids and actually get enough resources to really make a dent into the endgame, you will need people. But I think one way to think about it is you don't have to do that every second of the day. That can be like, let's plan a big event as a group of people, let's go do that. And then the rest of the time you can enjoy building your base and engaging with the story and building up your character in different ways."

It might not be easy, living in the world of Dune: Awakening, but as a Frank Herbert fan I'm confident that the experience is in good hands. It's a combination of solid mechanics that put a twist on the usual scenarios, and a deep deep obsession with the work of Herbert that strengthens the world building beyond the abilities of most narrative designs. Yes, I'm basically peeing in my Stillsuit with excitement, even after all the sandworm trauma. Now I just need Funcom to add an ability to make a Muad'Dib my in-game pet, rather than just another furry blood bag.

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