During an extremely short behind-closed-doors demo for Dune Awakening, I was given my first glimpse at what the team at Funcom is expecting from this open-world survival MMO: A huge time investment from players, a compelling take on the Dune story, and several factions you can choose to learn new skills and abilities from for your journeys into Arrakis. It’s clear that the developers who gave the demo are excited about the concepts at play, boasting that the desert section of the map alone is the size of all of Conan Exiles, and that they imagine you’ll spend 30-50 hours of the game leveling there. But that just seems to scratch the surface of what you’ll be able to do.
What makes Dune Awakening different and interesting is the fact that every single week, the sections of this world not protected by a shield will be hit by a sandstorm, wiping out all the buildings you and your opponents have constructed in the seven days leading up to this weekly event. The official website describes them as “cataclysmic Coriolis storms [that] regularly alter the landscape, uncovering new valuable resources and sweeping away player-built outposts. When the dust settles, the race is on. Scout the fresh new land and uncover the secrets of the sands.” This was demonstrated to us as a player journeyed into a radioactive crash site and showcased the ability to climb any geometry in the world while teasing secrets that can be found at the highest peaks.
But the one aspect they kept going back to was Survival. This aspect of Dune Awakening became clear during our hands-off demonstration when a Sandworm erupted from the ground and chased down the player we were following. Death is devastating, and you cannot fight a Sandworm. You can only survive or lose everything you’ve acquired to that point if you get eaten. The same will be true should you lose in PVP and become a refreshing beverage for your opponent, or fail to take cover during a world-changing event. Even becoming dehydrated in the desert if you don’t pay attention to your heat meter and get heatstroke will put you at a severe disadvantage. Surviving will be a key part of your journey.
It’s also clear that Dune Awakening has a lot of ambitious gameplay elements the team is trying to tie together. For instance, a fictional story where the assassination of Paul Atreides doesn’t take place because he was never born – because his father survived. And because his mother had a daughter as she was instructed to, instead of a son. With these overarching story elements used as a jumping-off point, the team gets to play with a unique future and a new outcome for the factions, and key players of the Dune Universe interact in a way you wouldn’t see in the novels. There is a political system that pits players against each other in a battle for territory. Sandworms will eat you if you’re caught in their path and take all of the gear you had with them. And sweeping sandstorms that will obliterate any structure you’ve built on the map and create an entirely new landscape every week.
All of these systems are doing their best to craft a template that will keep the world of Dune Awakening fresh and interesting for players. During our demonstration, the team estimated that you would spend your first 30-50 hours of the game in the starting location alone, and that was one of several on the map that we were shown as explorable. On the one hand, I do like the idea that the game world will be kept fresh via sandstorms that destroy all you’ve built up and unlock an entirely new overworld to explore. On the other hand, I am wondering what each new week will look like as teams scramble to utilize their building templates to prop up a new structure and claim a zone as their own to defend against combatants as each week begins. Here’s hoping it’s absolute pandemonium.
While there are story changes you should expect, the need for water and even more importantly alliances are intact. Eventually, you’ll be able to choose an NPC to train you. We were shown five skill trees that can be unlocked by doing said training, which will then allow you the option of three techniques you can mix and match as your main attacks. That’s in addition to the three passive skills you can also equip. To unlock all of the options available will take a significant amount of time, but getting the right build using different attacks from each will give you access to interesting abilities. The main ability I’ve seen as an example would be a scanner that shows more information about a location you plan to explore, including enemy NPC locations.
In my demo, the team promised two maps to start with and more to come. We got to peek at the Deep Desert, where most of the conflict will happen and hundreds of players will focus on collecting resources and fighting over key locations each week. There's the Hagga Basin which will have a 40-plus player cap. And two social hub locations Arrakeen and the Harko Village. There is, of course, a plan to add even more to the world as time goes by.
So far Dune Awakening seems incredibly ambitious. Abilities can be unlocked by the Mentats and Bene Gesserit. There will be cool gear to collect like Holtzman gadgets and templates of interesting firearms to unlock. There’s a heat system that will require you to stay hydrated by any means necessary. And giant sandworms that will eat entire convoys if you’re not careful. One speed-run demonstration from Funcom wasn’t enough to scratch the surface of the various systems and how they’ll interplay with one another, but I’m excited to see more.
