Dune: Awakening preview: OK I was wrong, this game looks incredible

MMO set in an alternate Dune universe is way better than I thought.

Dune: Awakening / Funcom

In my first preview for Dune: Awakening I was unconvinced. Now, after going hands-on with the game, developer Funcom has me believing the hype. 

Over the course of an hour I fly an ornithopter, levitate with Holtzman Suspensors, learn about land tax, and get swallowed by a sandworm. And still, I have questions. 

Like can you actually ride sandworms? How do you harvest spice? And does the game not break when one hundred players meet up and have a massive, multi-vehicle skirmish? Thankfully, Dune: Awakening creative director Joel Bylos is on hand with the answers. 

In this MMO set in an alternate Dune universe, the premise is Paul Atreides’ mother gives birth to a daughter instead, just as instructed by the Bene Gesserit. This changes the timeline. The Atreides survive the attack by the Harkonnen on Arrakis, and now two factions vie for control of the planet. You pick who to join. 

But enough about that; can you ride sandworms? “We will probably do something with it later,” says Bylos. “There’s not a good purpose for riding worms right now, because we have the ground vehicles. Then, when you get a flying vehicle, it’s really good. So I want to make sure the worms have a good purpose when we let them be ridden.”

Dune: Awakening / Funcom

Apparently, there are around ten worms in the starting map, Hagga Basin, and a staggering 50 in the endgame area, Deep Desert. Each worm has its own territory, and if you stray into it, you’ve got around a minute before one bursts out of the ground and eats you. To avoid that, you have to pay attention to a vibration meter in the form of a frequency wave at the bottom of the screen.

After a certain amount of time, they’re unavoidable. You’ll see great clouds of sand kick up on the horizon signaling their location. It’s an impressive sight. At one point I attempt to outrun one on my speeder bike but it barrels straight into me and swallows me whole, bike and all. 

Theoretically, you can use them to your advantage against other players by deploying a thumper device and baiting it to the surface, just like in the source material. I say ‘theoretically’ because my demo is, unhelpfully, single-player. But it shows at least you don’t have to form a party to have fun here.

There are different models of sandworm. Currently, there’s a ‘small’ type, and then there’s the daddy, the biggest, oldest Shai-Hulud, who’s got a more weathered texture. You’ll have to watch out for both when harvesting spice, the endgame activity in Dune: Awakening.

There are three ways you can harvest: manually, by picking up the substance straight from the ground, as Paul does in the first movie (warning: too much of it leads to hallucinatory effects); by feeding it into a static compactor that sifts and refines the spice; and with a large-scale operation. 

Dune; Awakening / Funcom

“The last way is, of course, we have the sand roller,” says Bylos. “So you pick them up, fly them out, drop them down, and then let them start harvesting. And then you keep the ornithopter nearby so you can pick them up again, because when the sandworm comes - and it always comes - you just have to keep an eye out.”

Funcom treats spice harvesting like raids. Each person has a job, whether you’re dropping off the sand roller, driving it, planting thumpers to draw the sandworm’s attention elsewhere, or flying an ornithopter on the lookout for wormsign.

My next question is directly related to the massive piece of wall-spanning concept art Bylos is sitting in front of. It shows a panoramic combined arms battle raging across the sands of Arrakis. “So, this is possible?” I ask, pointing at it. “Yes, theoretically. It would be a bit chaotic but yeah.”

There’s that word again, theoretical. But there’s a difference between a feature not being ready for public view and it not existing at all. On the largest map, Deep Desert, there’s room for 900 concurrent players. “That’s the aim, and then of those 900, like 100 in one specific area at a time. So I’d say that’ll be close to what we get maximum.” 

I don’t see this in action, but Bylos says Funcom is putting everything through its paces with an army of testers. “In the beta, we had people craft 20 ornithopters and then go out and do a big dogfight,” he says. 

Dune: Awakening / Funcom

In total, there are seven archetypes of vehicles: a single-seater buggy, sand bike, four-person ground car, armored ground car, tank, ornithopter, and sand roller. The endgame really begins when you get the capabilities to craft them, which takes about 50 hours.

Once you have access to an ornithopter, you can fly to different maps, and here’s when the game morphs from a survival experience to a grand political strategy. You’ll join a faction and have overarching goals to get involved with each week. Win, and you’ll be able to establish your own laws, called ‘resolutions’, on the planet of Arrakis.

One of them permits access to a special vendor, who lands in their spaceship and only interacts with one faction. They sell exotic items from different planets, and these have unique effects. “Like, there is this gun that can fire poison darts, and no one else has access to that gun. It’s the only gun in the game that can do that.” Another example lies in a sword with massively reduced stamina drain so you can launch a flurry of strikes.

Other resolutions include increasing the efficiency of crafting so machines produce faster, giving an experience boost to the whole faction, and raising the spice tax on the other faction so they have to pay more tax for their land.

That last one is going to come in handy, because every time you expand the size of your base, you have to pay more tax to the emperor. It’s essentially a mortgage. 

Dune: Awakening / Funcom

This, in turn, drives you out to harvest more and more spice, the core loop of Dune: Awakening. “We go out, we harvest together, we bring back, we pay our spice tax, but you use spice for crafting everything. You also use it to bribe people in the political system.”

It’s a while before you get to this point of the game, however. For the first 20 hours or so, you’re just trying to survive the dangers of Arrakis. You’ll pluck desert weeds and suck the moisture, flee from the burning sun by darting between patches of shade, and scavenge scrap metal to build a machine that lets you turn blood from defeated enemies to drinking water. 

Meanwhile, Sardukar ships scour the map, their searchlights trained on the ground. Huge capital craft pass overhead, blocking the sun. Above them lies a Heighliner, the vast horn-like vessel enabling interstellar travel. There’s really not that much difference between you and the desert mouse Paul takes his name from, Muad’Dib. You feel absolutely tiny.

Developing from a weaponless runt to planet-ruler provides a compelling hook. That said, early-stage combat still feels very MMO. Entering an enemy base and taking on its inhabitants is unsatisfying, with little strategy to deploy since you’ve only got access to a blade and a pistol. 

Shooting isn’t heavy enough, and hand-to-hand is weak, with ropey animations and unsophisticated AI lacking any real strategy. Hopefully, this improves when you upgrade your skills and get access to better weapons. 

Dune: Awakening / Funcom

I look through the crafting menu and see a beautiful armored stillsuit, shigawire for all your garotting needs, Karpov38 battle rifle, and Jabal spit dart rifle. There’s a Breath of the Wild-style climbing meter, too, so you can amble up any vertical surface in the game for a better vantage point, providing you’ve got the stamina.

Clearly, a lot of love went into realizing the world. Take the three radio stations: Harvester Radio, the Atreides station, and the Harkonnen station. Each broadcasts its own songs, radio dramas, and propaganda, with 200 hours of audio per radio station.

“There’s a radio drama called Five Days in Old Carthag,” says Bylos, “and it’s about how the city got destroyed by nukes. It covers the politics. Each episode is maybe 15 minutes long and they count as one day of this story, and over the story you hear different perspectives of how the city came to be blown up by nukes.” Funcom isn’t just following the books, but filling in the gaps. 

There are even references to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unrealized Dune movie. Salvador Dali was going to be the emperor, but ever the surrealist, he suggested he’d only do the scenes if he could act alongside a flaming giraffe. “You should keep your eye out for that in the game,” teases Bylos.

Dune: Awakening / Funcom

I was suspicious of the bold claims made by Funcom during my first, hands-off demo a few months back. But now, after playing it and chatting with its developers, Dune: Awakening looks absolutely epic.

Still, I have loads more questions. Can you raid other players’ bases? What happens when you run out of money to pay the emperor’s land tax? Are sandworms killable if you drive a tank into one? Appropriately for a game all about harvesting and mining, there’s so much to dig into.