There is no such thing as a better feeling–of awe, despair, exhilaration–in Dune: Awakening than being eaten by Shai’Hulud. Within the 60-plus hours I’ve spent with developer Funcom’s open-world survival MMORPG, I have been swallowed by the sandworms of Arrakis precisely twice. Each encounters have been moments I am going to always remember.
Dune: Awakening is crammed with these sorts of moments, ones the place the desert world of Arrakis turns into the star and the participant merely a small actor. Whether or not it is crossing the open desert sands and narrowly escaping Shai’Hulud’s maw or piloting an Ornithopter for the primary time, Funcom’s newest makes creator Frank Herbert’s iconic e book really feel actual in a method not even Denis Villeneuve’s critically acclaimed Dune movies managed to perform. Dune: Awakening is nothing if not formidable in that regard, adapting an infamously difficult-to-adapt masterwork of science-fiction with confidence. Although it will definitely does change into repetitive, its endgame lacks path, and its strict adherence to the supply materials is typically an Achilles’ heel, Dune: Awakening nonetheless manages to rigorously combine and match genres to create a Spice Melange cocktail that’s arduous to place down–at least for the primary few dozen hours.
From Dune: Awakening’s very first moments, Funcom’s reverence for Herbert’s universe is evident. Whereas clearly impressed by the look of Villeneuve’s movies (sure designs, just like the Ornithopters, Imperial Testing Stations, and the look of the Harkonnens are ripped straight from the films), Funcom additionally places its personal spin on the Dune universe, successfully mixing the 2 appears to be like collectively to create one thing that feels each acquainted and completely different, however unquestionably Dune.
Dune: Awakening takes place in an alternate timeline from Herbert’s story, one the place protagonist Paul Atreides isn’t born and Arrakis has was a battlefield between Home Atriedes and Home Harkonnen, giving Funcom simply sufficient inventive respiration room to take inventive liberties and ship some surprises over the course of its major story.
All of that is on show within the recreation’s opening moments. The sport’s character creator is offered as a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mom Gom Jabbar interrogation: Funcom’s tackle one in all Dune’s most iconic scenes. It is right here the place you may not solely select your look however your backstory and social standing within the Dune universe. You may additionally select a beginning class (Mentat, Bene Gesserit, Swordmaster, or Trooper), although Funcom well does not lock gamers into these roles.
Everybody can unlock entry to every class tree by finishing a sequence of quests from varied trainers, although some trainers are simpler to succeed in than others. On the finish of the character creator, you might be then given your mission: Discover the Fremen, the oppressed indigenous inhabitants of Arrakis that has gone mysteriously lacking.
Surviving Arrakis
One ship crash later, and you end up on the floor of the inhospitable desert world Arrakis with nothing however a scrap-metal knife and rags for garments. The solar desires to kill you. The bandits need to kill you and take your water. Hostile patrol ships dot the skies with searchlights on the lookout for you. And the worms need to swallow you complete for daring to stroll throughout the open sands.
I would be the first to confess that I’m not usually a survival-game fan, and in its opening hours, Dune: Awakening performs like a typical survival recreation, albeit a particularly polished one. You collect assets, craft objects, and construct shelter. There’s, a minimum of, some overarching path, as the sport directs you to craft sure objects and collect required supplies crucial for surviving life on Arrakis.
Reasonably than punching rocks, you may trend a makeshift Cutterray that’s used to assemble assets, carried out by scanning an object after which tracing a path with a laser beam to dismantle it. Since gathering assets is an enormous a part of Dune: Awakening, it is no small feat that even one of many recreation’s most simple items of moment-to-moment gameplay managed to maintain my consideration dozens of hours later.
Funcom well revolves practically all of Dune: Awakening’s survival mechanics across the want for water. You should keep hydrated and stick with the shade, as staying in direct daylight for too lengthy will shortly trigger sunstroke that, if left unchecked, will outcome first in dehydration after which in dying. At first, you’ll possible be barely scraping by, harvesting dew from tiny vegetation and extracting (and, if really determined, ingesting) the blood from enemies with a view to survive. But it surely’s not too lengthy earlier than water turns into much less about survival and extra of a forex. Gadgets begin requiring water to be crafted, and shortly, effectively gathering water turns into a core gameplay loop.
To construct higher objects, you want an even bigger base, crammed with extra item-fabrication machines and extra water, which in flip require extra energy. Since I am not usually a survival-game enjoyer, it should not be too stunning that I am additionally not usually a fan of base-building. It is my least favourite facet of video games like Fallout 4 or Valheim–a chore I typically really feel like I’ve to do with a view to get to the great things. Dune: Awakening, nonetheless, makes base-building very simple for individuals who need to do the naked minimal, although sooner or later solo gamers might want to make investments the time and power into making and powering greater constructions with a view to make higher-end gear. Partitions, roofs, and flooring all join collectively quite seamlessly, and there is not any must run energy cables to numerous machines. Gasoline on your base is simple to return by and issues, by and enormous, simply work. Refineries and fabricators pull from storage containers inside a base, minimizing the necessity for fixed stock administration, and shifting energy from one construction to a different is all pretty easy.
Whereas I largely relied on a gaggle of associates and guildmates when it got here to constructing bigger bases within the late recreation, the handful of smaller bases I constructed alone got here collectively shortly and painlessly, which isn’t one thing I can say of most survival video games I’ve performed. In a wise innovation, bases will also be saved as shareable blueprints that may then be simply re-constructed in a special location later with the press of a button (assuming you’ve gotten the correct assets), saving you time down the road.
Bless The Coming And Going Of Him
It is after these first few hours, as soon as you have crafted your first water-collecting stillsuit and constructed a barebones base, that Dune: Awakening begins to return into its personal. There comes some extent round this time the place you may inevitably must cross a big physique of sand. That’s, in fact, the place Dune’s iconic sandworms reside, and carelessly sprinting throughout the open desert is a surefire technique to entice their consideration. Whereas usually dying in Dune: Awakening is a comparatively low-risk affair, solely ensuing within the lack of some held assets and currencies (each which might be reclaimed by returning to your web site of dying), in addition to merchandise sturdiness, getting eaten by Shai’Hulud holds greater repercussions. Dying to a worm means dropping all the things in your physique at that time limit. All of your armor, weapons, assets, cash. All of it. And there is not any technique to get it again. That provides some actual stakes to crossing the desert: a sense of hazard that by no means really goes away, even after you have crafted your first automobile.
A sense of development and mastery over a harsh, untamed land is one thing that Dune: Awakening does particularly effectively. Whilst you begin in nothing however rags, it is not lengthy earlier than you may discover or craft a suspensor belt, permitting you to extra simply climb (or fall) from increased elevations due to anti-grav expertise. A number of hours later you’ll craft your first sandbike. Instantly, the world of Arrakis opens up, as now you can cross bigger our bodies of sand extra shortly and discover new areas. Funcom pulls this magic trick once more dozens of hours later as soon as gamers have gathered the assets to make their first flying Ornithopter. As soon as once more, the sport modifications dramatically, and beforehand inaccessible or hard-to-reach areas are actually only a brief flight away, making for extra environment friendly useful resource gathering and quicker traversal throughout Dune: Awakening’s major Hagga Basin map.
However those self same automobiles may also lure you right into a false sense of safety. Each of my sandworm deaths occurred once I was utilizing my bike. One time was just because I used to be careless. Following a few of my associates throughout the sands on their bikes, I noticed that the worm was shut by however determined to press my luck, pondering I may attain the close by rocks in time. My sandbike could not outrun an indignant Shai’Hulud, and I misplaced all the things, together with my bike.
To say I used to be devastated and pissed off can be an understatement, and it is simple to see how some gamers may merely stroll away from Dune: Awakening without end after struggling such a destiny. It’s price noting that Funcom is seemingly effectively conscious of how soul-crushing getting eaten by a worm might be, particularly when it means dropping a automobile. On my first sandworm dying, I used to be offered with a Fremen imaginative and prescient, after which I used to be given the prospect to recuperate my sandbike simply this as soon as. I fortunately accepted the supply, solely to die by a sandworm once more a couple of hours later. This time it was as a result of I drove right into a patch of quicksand. As I thrashed about attempting to flee, the worm got here and ended my struggling. Fortunately, I used to be in a position to save my sandbike earlier than dying by storing it in what I can solely assume is a few form of pocket dimension utilizing the sport’s useful vehicle-backup device, one of many extraordinarily few cases in Dune: Awakening the place gameplay comfort overrides established Dune lore.
Mixed Arms
Unlocking the sandbike is the place Dune: Awakening really finds its rhythm, because the world, for essentially the most half, turns into yours to discover. The primary arc of the sport’s major story suits properly into this sample, tasking you with exploring the world to find Fremen shrines sprinkled throughout the sport’s varied areas, the place you may be taught extra about Fremen tradition and acquire the flexibility to craft iconic desert-survival instruments like thumpers.
Crafting higher-end recipes requires discovering completely different supplies discovered solely in particular areas of the map, encouraging you to slowly progress via the world. Unlocking these crafting recipes, in flip, requires intel factors, that are gained from leveling up and discovering intel hidden inside enemy NPC encampments. As somebody who likes to filter a area of the map virtually in its entirety earlier than progressing to the following, I discovered I typically had way more intel factors than I knew what to do with, as I roamed from enemy camp to enemy camp, reducing my method via enemies as a melee-focused Swordmaster. Apart from gathering assets and base-building, that is the core loop of Dune: Awakening: Survey a area, filter enemy camps, acquire intel, be taught crafting recipes, make higher gear, and progress to a brand new space. Rinse and repeat.
It is a loop that sustains itself for dozens of hours, even when fight, it needs to be famous, is not Dune: Awakening’s strongest characteristic. The Dune universe’s distinctive setting, one the place troopers nonetheless use knives and swords hundreds of years into the long run and put on shields that virtually make them invulnerable to firearms, does make for some enjoyable rock-paper-scissors-like encounters. Utilizing lore-accurate slow-blade assaults (Dune: Awakening’s model of a heavy assault) to penetrate enemy shields is at all times satisfying due to the sport borrowing among the similar visible and audio cues from Villenivue’s Dune movies. There are additionally ranged weapons within the type of varied dart-guns that are available in pistol, assault rifle, sniper, shotgun, and minigun varieties. My favourite ranged weapon, the Drillshot, fires sluggish penetrating darts which can be wonderful for disabling shields, permitting me to then shortly shut distance and have interaction in melee.
It is all pretty fundamental by way of its precise gameplay–there is a stamina bar, a parry button, and short-ranged dash–but it will get the job carried out. It is the presence of shielded enemies who’re practically invincible until handled within the correct method that manages to maintain encounters from shortly turning into boring, even when you do find yourself preventing what looks like the identical handful of enemy sorts, in extraordinarily samey-looking cobbled-together constructions, time and again.
It definitely looks like Funcom, in staying true to Herbert’s lore, bumped into the difficulty of being unable to ship better selection when it got here to Dune: Awakening’s enemies and areas. There aren’t any “pondering machines” (aka robots) within the Dune universe. Nor are there aliens or outlandish monsters (except for the sandworms). Meaning you might be relegated to completely preventing similar-looking people that are available in only a few completely different forms–knife-wielding melee enemy, ranged assault rifle enemy, ranged sniper enemy, and shielded heavy enemies who use both a minigun or flamethrower. Some late-game enemies will use among the similar talents gamers have entry to, like anti-gravity fields or Bene Gesserit kung-fu, however these barely change the mathematics of an encounter.
This seems to be one in all Dune: Awakening’s biggest weaknesses, and one which additionally interprets to its dungeon-esque Imperial Testing Station dungeons, all of which really feel practically similar. Whereas Arrakis is brilliantly dropped at life, staying true to Herbert’s world means most of what you truly see and do in Dune: Awakening is exhausted inside the first two-dozen hours, even when main milestones like gaining a brand new sort of auto or a significant new class talent do inject some new life into the equation.
Fight is the place the sport’s class system is felt essentially the most. You possibly can have three completely different energetic talents geared up at a time (with the third unlocked over the course of the principle quest) in addition to three “strategies” that grant varied advantages. There is no such thing as a restrict on the variety of passive talents you may be taught, which make up nearly all of talent nodes in every class tree. Whereas I centered initially on Swordmaster, giving me entry to particular melee-parry talents, elevated melee injury, and extra stamina, I finally branched out into different class timber by finishing varied quests from class mentor characters.
Apart from its major quests, these coach missions are literally the place most of Dune: Awakening’s narrative takes place, with voice-acted NPCs and ongoing narratives that pull deep from Herbert’s lore. I want Dune: Awakening had extra of some of these quests, as many of the recreation’s different quests (or contracts, as they’re known as) are relegated to partitions of textual content and accepted from mission boards discovered inside the recreation’s varied NPC outposts. It does not assist that these mission-board quests (and a good quantity of the particular coach quests) are sometimes nothing greater than MMO-filler–go right here, kill 10 slavers; go to this spot, choose up this merchandise. Whereas Dune: Awakening’s major story missions do deviate from this components (the Fremen imaginative and prescient quests focus extra on platforming and environmental gameplay, whereas the principle story’s second half takes a extra cinematic strategy with extra novel aims), it is nonetheless disappointing that a lot of the sport’s questing looks like busy work.
Dune: Awakening’s class trainers are unfold throughout the Hagga Basin and the sport’s two social-hub cities. The sport does not skimp on rewarding you on your time, as you acquire XP and degree up for gathering assets, exploring new areas of the map, or defeating enemies, rewarding talent factors within the course of. Because of this, early on, you’ll possible have extra talent factors than you need to use just because you do not have a technique to entry the coach you might be on the lookout for. This does hamstring the sensation of character development within the early-to-mid recreation, and it could have made extra sense to have the primary class coach for every class extra simply accessible at first of the sport, versus the Bene Gesserit coach, for instance, being on the acute far aspect of the map.
Dune: Awakening does, a minimum of, allow you to respec your expertise with virtually no penalty (there’s only a 48-hour cooldown earlier than it may be carried out once more), permitting you to take a position factors in the intervening time after which experiment with completely different talents as you acquire entry to new class timber over time. The Bene Gesserit tree particularly is among the many recreation’s most flashy, permitting use of the franchise’s iconic “Voice” talents to stun enemies or dash with superhuman pace.
Spice For Spice’s Sake
It is a disgrace then that these class talents, ones that gamers have gotten accustomed to and experimented with for dozens of hours, change into largely forgotten in Dune: Awakening’s closely Ornithopter-based endgame. As soon as gamers can create an Ornithopter, they’ve entry to a brand new map known as the Deep Desert. Although the structure of the Deep Desert map modifications weekly, it is the place the sport’s finest crafting recipes and most beneficial assets, together with the biggest quantities of Dune’s oh-so-important Spice, might be discovered. You want a number of Spice and different supplies to make the sport’s remaining tier of substances and base services. To name it a grind can be an understatement.
Till not too long ago, virtually the entire Deep Desert was a PvP-enabled zone the place different gamers may battle over assets. That largely resulted in massive guilds or teams of gamers utilizing their Ornithopters to bully solo gamers from the air, with ground-based fights utilizing the sport’s melee fight or third-person capturing virtually nonexistent. To its credit score, Funcom has a minimum of realized that having Dune: Awakening’s endgame be virtually totally managed by roaming helicopter dying squads is not a enjoyable expertise, particularly since PvP in Dune: Awakening is a particularly uncommon incidence up till that time and most gamers (myself included) do not need to must grind to rebuild their treasured Ornithopter after it is blown to items in battle. As of a current patch, round half of the Deep Desert is now participant vs. setting, permitting solo gamers or those that do not need to have interaction in PvP an opportunity to assemble some endgame assets, although the biggest portions of them are nonetheless discovered deeper within the PvP-enabled space of the zone.
Whereas Funcom has addressed a few of Dune: Awakening’s endgame points, its largest drawback nonetheless stands: There’s merely not a lot level in grinding for dozens extra hours to amass hundreds of Spice and endgame supplies. There is no such thing as a endgame raid or troublesome PvE problem that requires, or a minimum of can be made simpler by, having the best-of-the-best gear. Within the Deep Desert, you might be largely doing precisely what you have already been doing for hours in Hagga Basin: clearing out camps, mining assets, and diving into Imperial Testing Stations for uncommon recipes. Certain, gearing up within the highest-quality gear and weapons is enjoyable, and turning into a multi-millionaire by working a classy Spice-mining operation has its perks, however until you need to get a bonus in PvP, there isn’t a carrot on a stick for persevering with to take care of Dune: Awakening’s repetitive, grindy, and pointless-feeling endgame.
I think about most gamers will stop shortly after having accomplished Dune: Awakening’s major story and arriving on the Deep Desert. However that does not imply all of the hours previous to reaching the endgame aren’t price experiencing or aren’t pleasant. Funcom has turned Herbert’s legendary sci-fi planet of Arrakis right into a fascinating online game setting. Half story-driven RPG, MMO, survival base-builder, sci-fi helicopter simulator, and third-person shooter, Dune: Awakening is a multi-headed hydra of experiences that, by some means, coalesces right into a largely satisfying complete. Whereas it suffers from a critical lack of selection with regards to enemies and actions, and its endgame as of writing is a largely pointless endeavor with no actual purpose to try for, Dune: Awakening nonetheless succeeds at bringing the universe of Dune to life in a method by no means earlier than seen. When the Spice is flowing, it is simple to lose oneself to the rhythms of Dune: Awakening’s desert for hours at a time. Simply take care to not entice Shai-Hulud.