We had the chance to participate in Funcom’s latest closed beta for Dune: Awakening, which might be as addictive as the spice melange.
On the second day of the Dune: Awakening beta, I had absolutely no intention of playing that night. I’d managed to put in quite a bit of time into it the day before; having a blast learning the systems, building up my first homestead, and getting to the point where my character to the point where I wasn’t on death’s door. The problem that evening, however, was a pounding headache brought on by insomnia. Insomnia I’m dealing with thanks to a recent spinal procedure necessary due to injuries I sustained months ago in a car accident.
Regardless, I felt more screen time would probably make things worse. That evening, I determinedly walked into my office with the sole purpose of answering a couple quick, pressing emails. It only took a couple minutes, but a nagging thought popped into my head…
Part of the survival aspect in the game is keeping the power on at your homestead.The generation you craft is what powers everything else inside, from water recyclers to fabricators (crafting stations), and shields. The shield around your house is an important thing as it keeps your structure safe and intact when you’re not around.
Without a shield, your home is susceptible to the elements. There are Coriolis storms that will wear down the walls/overall structural integrity. Such destruction obviously means having to rebuild and, of course, being open to getting raided by other scavengers. Oh, and without the shield a worm could swing by and swallow it, with all your belongings, whole.
If you let the fuel (energy cells) run out on your generator, the shield goes down. When I logged out the previous night, I only had 24 hour’s worth of juice—counted in real time. So if I waited until the next day, I might lose my stuff. Since I was already seated at my desk, I figured I’d log on real quick, top off my generator for another night, and return the following day when my mind would, hopefully, be fully “in the game.”
Next thing I know, I glance at my phone and am absolutely gobsmacked to discover an hour and a half had flown by. I knew then, without a doubt, Dune: Awakening was going to be a problem.
Spice Addiction
Even in beta form, where I only had access to roughly the first 20 hours of story/game, Dune: Awakening was incredibly hard to put down. And when I wasn’t playing, I was thinking about the next steps to take for things I needed/wanted to do within the game.
For me, this is a wholly wild experience. I am decidedly not a survival-MMO gamer (or MMOs in general honestly). I like the idea of those type of games, and sometimes enjoy watching streams of others playing them. I’m just no good at them. Like, at all. I’m pretty terrible at most online games, or PC games that aren’t RTS’. So the fact Dune: Awakening became so addictive, so fast is kind of crazy.
It likely comes down to a combination of things. For one, it does an excellent job of immersing you in the Dune universe, which makes the fan in me jump for joy. Secondly, the developers do an excellent job of easing you into all of the various mechanics. It’s a smooth learning curve that caters to noobs like myself, but won’t feel limiting to more experienced gamers.
While I don’t have much frame of reference here for the genre (just streams I’ve watched), the gameplay aspect feels a bit more streamlined. Almost more in line with a typical action-adventure game. Regardless, the result is gameplay that quickly feels natural, which makes you eager to push forward and uncover what comes next.
Every time I played, I had that “just one more thing” conversation with myself before shutting it down. Which would inevitably lead to yet another “one more thing,” and so on until I ultimately had to force myself to stop playing.
This is the Bond of Water
Easily the most impressive thing, at least for this long-time Dune fan, is how well the game captures the feeling of surviving on Arrakis. It’s not just another survival game (though there are obviously familiar mechanics) using the desert planet as a backdrop. Everything about how you survive, down to the gameplay itself, adds to the idea you’re on Arrakis itself.
From the moment you’re dragged from the wreckage of the starship that leaves you initially stranded, you’re confronted with the harsh realities of this world. Water is a precious resource, and you’re almost always just a few moments away from dehydration. You’ve gotta find pockets of bush scrub that you can suck the dew off of to slake your thirst. But that only goes so far as the unfiltered moisture can make you sick if you drink too much.
Different things you find along the way will assist with your water needs (including the ability to draw out fallen enemies’ blood, stillsuits, litterjons, etc), but even so…it’s a resource you’ll have to constantly monitor. Even when you’ve built up some reserves, it’s easy to get careless.
Which is exactly what happened to me during one of my excursions. I was out and about, exploring crash sites and old Imperial testing stations, while taking down scavengers like a seasoned pro. For someone who isn’t typically good at these kind of games, I was feeling pretty great.
In all the fighting (different types of exertion impacts your overall hydration), I failed to keep track of my water reserves. When I got the notification that I was feeling “parched” and on the verge of dehydration, I was caught flat-footed to discover there wasn’t anything to drink. The catchpockets of my stillsuit were depleted along with my blood reclamation bag. I had nothing…and I was a long way from home.
I began scrambling to find some of those dew bushes but, as is fitting within the lore of the world, they’re sparse on the landscape. In terms of gameplay, there are more of them huddled around the initial areas you’ll explore (as that’s the only water you’ll have access to for a bit), but the further into the desert you go, the more limited they are.
By the time I finally found a patch of brush to drink the dew off of, my characters was—quite literally—shambling along. My hydration meter was blinking red and my health was taking a hit with every step. I ended up making it to the dew just in time, but it was a nail-biting experience; serving a lesson that impacted how I played going forward.
Scorching Desert
Beyond water conservation, just standing in the sun has consequences. As the novels/movies make clear, the heat from Arrakis’ sun can quickly cause heatstroke. Even if you have plenty of water on you and a stillsuit, being out in the open without shelter or external shade is a bad idea.
From the minute you step out onto the open sand during the daytime (the day/night cycle in the game isn’t tied to the real-world clock), a new “heat” meter pops up. It moves pretty quickly too, and the only way to bring this meter down is to stay in the shade. If you don’t, and the meter tops out, you enter an overheated state. This affects your movement and overall health (which starts dropping), and no amount of water will save you. Only getting out of the sun.
It was neat to see how much this aspect impacted the way I traveled. In the early morning, as the sun is rising, you can follow the shadows being created, using the shade to cover bigger distances before the sun gets too high. You’ve got to move fast to chase the shadows, however, which could bring a massive sandworm bearing down on you. So you’ve got to decide if the timing/distance is worth it.
One time, I needed to cross a bigger expanse of desert to reach the next outcropping as part of an ongoing mission. I could handle the trek without attracting the worm, but the main problem was the complete lack of shade. Not even a smaller bolder I could crouch behind to rest for a few moments. There’s no way I’d make it without getting a heatstroke.
The solution? Do as the Fremen do: travel by nightfall.
Such a simple solution, but not one available at all times. it very much depends on your current needs/situation. Little things like that, and the water aspect, make for a more immersive experience. More, it shows the level of care and detail the developers have brought to the game. Where even on the basic level of gameplay, Dune: Awakening goes to great lengths to ensure it doesn’t feel like you’re surviving on some generic Sci-Fi planet. This IS Arrakis…And that’s not even getting into the worm factor!
Shai-Hulud
Worms are legitimately terrifying in the game. For one, getting killed by a sandworm is even worse than being taken out by scavengers/other players. Don’t get me wrong, dying that way sucks too as you lose some of your supplies and have to start back from a waypoint (which might require a lot of backtracking to get where you were). Getting taken out by a worm—or Coriolis storm—however, takes ALL your stuff. You’ll be back at square one with no supplies, all your tools/resources gone, and unclothed.
Let it happen to you once (and it inevitably will) and it’s not something you’ll want to experience again, especially as the camera zooms way out when it gets close so you can get a full view of your destruction. Hell, I just built a little speeder bike thing and took it out for a test drive. The vibrations almost immediately brought a worm. I raced back to cover, but apparently parked my new bike too close to the open sand and had to watch as it was swallowed up. I’d have to rebuild all the parts from scratch.
Worms are a lot faster than you initially think and distance doesn’t always mean you’re safe. Also, they’re enormous. Even if you’re a good distance away from one of them popping up, it’s hard not to be in awe of their size and shrink a little bit closer to your rocky cover. Just hearing them is enough to make you stop in your tracks. The deep, resonant click-click sounds they make (pulled straight from the films) has an almost paralyzing effect, even if you’re in a safe zone.
Steeped in Lore
The last thing I want to touch on is the game’s story. I’m not going to dive into this too much, because I don’t want to spoil anything, but it’s worth mentioning how impressed I was with it. The concept of the game is essentially an “alternate history” take on things; a vision where Paul Atreides sees a timeline in which he was never born. It’s a neat approach that allows the developers to craft their own story outside the confines of the beloved book series, while still feeling a part of it.
They do a fantastic job of capturing the essence of Dune within its story. Even without the familiar characters/events, it feels like you’re experiencing a story set within the universe we already know and love. I was amazed at the depth of lore the story pulls from in certain moments, calling back to some ancient history only briefly touched on in the novels.
Just the little bit of the story I’ve played through in Awakening manages to capture the tone/dynamic of the original novels. There are so many neat things for diehard fans to stumble across and enjoy, all expertly woven together into something that feels fresh. The result is an all new story that will appeal to long time fans and those who’ve only watched the movies, while being completely accessible to those with no prior knowledge.
Dune: Awakening was already one of my most anticipated games of the year. After spending so much (maybe too much?) time with it during this beta, my hype is on another level. Even knowing I’ll be restarting from the beginning (the servers are wiped fresh), I’m greatly looking forward to my return to Arrakis. If it manages to retain all the things that made the beta so fun when the full game launches, along with some extra polish, we could be looking at an all-timer of an MMO.
Dune: Awakening launches for PCs on June 10, 2025 (with head-start access on June 5th).
