The world of Frank Herbert’s Dune series is one of the best, most complex and fleshed-out universes in fiction. The sci-fi book series has inspired countless homages, replicas and parodies, as well as several adaptations in film, TV, comics and video games. After Denis Villeneuve proved that Dune could successfully be adapted into a film (or two) and actually be a film that drew both critics and audiences, now it’s time to put this fictional world to the test and make it an immersive place people want to spend hours and hours with. That’s where Dune Awakening comes in.
That is the challenge Dune Awakening, the upcoming survival MMO developed and published by Funcom, is facing — making the desert world of Arrakis one people will crave to return to. Reader, after spending about 6 hours in Arrakis during a hands-on preview of Dune: Awakening, I have to say that this game nails the look and feel of Herbert’s world in a way no other adaptation has achieved so far.
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Dune Awakening is a survival MMO taking place in an alternate timeline where Paul Atraides is never born, and Lady Jessica gives birth to a daughter. The Atraides aren’t wiped out but are instead engaged in a War of Assassins with House Harkonnen in Arrakis. After spending time creating your character (with possibly the coolest customization option in the game being the small but significant ability to age your character’s tattoos) and choosing a background that places you either in the middle of the Atreides/Harkonnen conflict or with one of the sides, you wake up in the desert where you have to fight to survive.
Dune: Awakening is about survival through and through.
While the survival mechanics are familiar, it is the Dune flavor that makes this game unique and a thrill to play. There is no need to gather wood or food, as the game focuses on two things — water and shelter from the killer sun of Arrakis. The longer you’re exposed to the sun, the quicker you burn through your supply of water, and when that is depleted, your health bar.
Given how little refuge there is from the sun when you’re traversing the open desert, exploration, and movement is always a gamble in this game. Even at night, there are other dangers, like the Sardaukar. As soon as the sun drops, ships start patrolling the desert, and if one of their spotlights catches you, it suspends you in the air for a bit while Sardaukar troops drop down and hunt you down.
Though the first few hours of the game make it easy enough to stay on top of your vitals, it is nevertheless quite immersive and distressingly thrilling when you suddenly find yourself walking in the open desert and you get the warning that you’re getting dehydrated and have no supplies at hand. Sure, you can run, but that attracts the worm, and if there’s anything more dangerous than dehydration, it’s a sandworm.
There are many ways to gather water, but in the earliest hours of the game, you rely a lot on drinking the blood of your vanquished foes (really) and collecting water from the desert flora found throughout Arrakis. That’s right, there are plants here. That’s the first hint that the world of Dune Awakening is different than the Arrakis we see in the movies and much closer to Herbert’s original writings about the desert planet. There are diverse biomes here, and rather than a desolated and barren wasteland, it is a beautiful place with plenty of variety in the landscapes and even flora — more reminiscent of the deserts of Arizona in the U.S., for example.
Indeed, the desert of Dune Awakening looks absolutely stunning, with the sand shifting colors depending on the light and the location, rock formations and mountains breaking up the desert, quicksands, dunes, and more. Possibly the most unique landscape I saw during the preview was the location known as the Graven, a large area of vertical caverns, rocky formations, and drops hundreds of feet tall.
It looks like a giant, rocky trench in the middle of the desert, one that you really need either a suspensor or an ornithopter to navigate properly, as it goes on for miles and miles. It is a testament to the art department of Dune Awakening that the game looks simultaneously sci-fi but also recognizable, a lived-in world that feels real but also alien.
Arrakis is similar but new enough to spark exploration in Dune fans.
Of course, no Dune game would be complete without Shai Hulud, and Dune Awakening has a great sandworm design that’s closer to John Schoenherr’s original illustrations, while still being unique to this portrayal of Herbert’s universe. Though I did not get to see the late-game deep desert worms that are capable of swallowing entire spice harvesters, the early game worms are still quite menacing and visually stunning.
Most importantly, there is a good balance in how quickly you attract a worm when walking in the open desert, with enough warnings about the noise and vibrations you’re making to give you a heads-up to stop or run toward safety before the worm arrives.
At least in my experience, it was kind of hard to get a worm to come at you, at least when you’re just running through the open desert. If you use a larger vehicle, your chance of an encounter with Shai Hulud, but unless you’re harvesting spice or using an ornithopter that’s close to the ground, you won’t be losing your stuff every 15 minutes. Yes, losing your stuff. Though Dune Awakening only has you lose a percentage of your resources when you die, if Shai Hulud kills you, you lose everything. Permanently.
At a presentation shortly before playing the game, Creative Director Joel Bylos ran us through what the developers see as the stages of playing the game from the early stuff we got to experience to the late-game mechanics. As they explained it, the more you play the game, the more important it becomes to rely on a community and on other players. In the six or so hours I got to play, this rang true, as there wasn’t really anything in that early stage that you couldn’t do on your own.
Dune: Awakening balances solo and community play.
Still, according to the developers and what we saw in the late-game, the politics of Dune became increasingly more important as time went on. Joining a faction can literally change the game, as there is a mechanic wherein every week, the Landsraad votes to implement some change on Arrakis, and the faction that has gained the most favor from the Houses of the Landsraad gets to influence the vote in their favor — earning things like how much loot there will be on PvP areas or getting discounts for crafting.
When it comes to gameplay, the most interesting and fun part of Dune Awakening is its combat. One thing that makes Herbert’s world unique is the relative lack of guns. Because of the Holtzman shields, the majority of the action in the Dune series is swordplay, which can be lots of fun, but not so much if your preferred way of playing games is to be ranged.
The solution the folks at Funcom found is simple yet elegant. There are a number of abilities you can use to bridge the gap between range and melee, that come from the big schools in the lore — swordmaster, Bene Gesserit, Mentats, among others. You can use The Voice to force an enemy to get closer to you, while using another ability to appear invisible to enemies. You can employ small drones and turrets or use a grappling hook to cut the distance to an enemy.
These feel distinctly Dune-esque in a way that builds immersion without breaking the lore. And even if I didn’t get a shield in the time I got to play, I did encounter a couple of enemies wearing them, and maneuvering around a Holtzman shield is challenging and fun, trying to stun the enemy in order to go from a slow blade that can penetrate the shield.
Though I only got a small taste of what Dune Awakening has to offer, it was enough of a glimpse at the take Funcom has on the franchise to make for an intriguing, delightfully fun tease whether a fan of the Denis Villeneuve movies (which the game owes a lot to in terms of designs) or the books, Dune Awakening promises to be a must-play experience.
Dune: Awakening is available sometime in 2025.
Funcom Captures The Beauty And Danger Of Arrakis
We got the chance to go hands-on with Dune: Awakening – the latest from Funcom. A survival MMO, the developers have charted their own path forward with the books as guidance to capture the beauty and the danger of Arrakis. And they do it all while crafting a new timeline for the franchise.
