However, the Dune world isn’t just the modern films. There’s the saga of books Funcom has primarly worked from, previous Dune Awakening Beginner Guide strategy games, and the movie directed by the late David Lynch. With so much lore, it’s been a challenge for Funcom to ensure no mistakes make their way into the game. Helpfully, “Joel [Bylos, Dune: Awakening’s Creative Director] knows everything,” Whelan says. “He knows the books inside and out, so you cannot get things past him because he sits right behind me, so he will catch thin
Funcom has chosen to forgo a traditional hunger meter, you must think about your thirst at all times instead. Being in the sun dehydrates you faster than standing in the shade, and water supplies are finite. You can consume particular flowers to fill the first bar of your hydration meter, or extract and drink the water of enemies you’ve defeated once you’ve built the means to do
Having experienced little more than the base level survival aspects, some tweaking during the ongoing closed beta periods will be needed. The majority of the objectives I was tasked with asked me to find specific resources, which were usually plentiful, and then return to my base to use it in crafting. Rinse and repeat. The sort of stuff has been the staple of this genre for years
Following the main quest will also help you quickly get a sandbike , which makes getting around the desert much, much faster. One of the biggest chokepoints for quick progression in Dune: Awakening is just how long it takes to walk from each point of interest, or to the trading p
The Imperial Testing Stations and wrecked ships are full of useful stuff, from blueprints of unique items to high-tier metals and processors used for machinery upgrades. While you might want to progress quickly to the next area to continue leveling, you can easily farm a few high-value PoIs as they resp
Base building is another big part of Dune: Awakening ’s overall gameplay, with a separate building mode reminiscent of other base building games like No Man’s Sky . Players can scroll through sections like basic components such as walls and roofs, crafting machinery, and assorted furniture and see an outline of what it would look like before placement. These also come in styled sets for Houses that fans will be familiar with, offering different aesthetics, from the sleeker House Harkonnnen to a more traditional-style Atrei
Our first look at Dune: Awakening was brief, but special. It taps into everything that makes the franchise great, explains it all well in its narrative and MMO underpinnings, and offers plenty of opportunities for players to engage with the world around them. The Dune franchise is only going to become increasingly popular, it would seem, and it looks like Dune: Awakening is prepared to ride that wave like the Fremen ride sandwo
Anyone who has watched the Dune movies is likely aware of Arrakis’ depiction: endless sands, few civilizations, and lots of ways to die. It is a standard depiction of sand through and through, but Dune: Awakening adds some variety thanks to the books. The sand’s color changes depending on the minerals in the region, while things like Drum Sand (noise-emitting sand) and quicksand are also prevalent throughout the space. It’s all sand at the end of the day, but it features more variety and more hazards than the recently-released movies. Of course, the greatest wildlife threat in Dune is the sandwo
A: A very lore-accurate representation of the world they’re in. When we were working on Conan Exiles, we made the Exiled Lands sort of like the greatest hits of Howard’s work, right? And in the areas you’re going to, we tried to cram in as much as possible. We’re doing something very similar with Dune, where it’s very lore-accurate to the setting, being on Dune, living on Dune. I think that’s one of the things we do best. We stick really closely with the IP – to the point, sometimes, where we have to make some risky design decisions. But that’s what I’d say that people can exp
Thankfully, Awakening’s Arrakis itself is great fun to explore. Not because of any unique visual choices – it’s a lot of rocks and sand dunes as you’d expect – but because of what you need to think about as you go from waypoint to waypo
Expanding on that, he said, “I know lots of people who love vehicles and vehicle sim games. Okay, it’s a lot easier and more straightforward, but it’s still fun. The base level, just getting on a sand bike and driving around, is fun. Flying Ornithopters is fun. Yeah, combat will come…It will be fun and engaging. These are the things which people will gravitate to and this is something we picked up on with Conan Exiles. People make it their o
It’s understandable, albeit unfortunate, why the newest preview didn’t give much of the more MMO elements of the title away simply due to the location of the demo. However, what was clear from my time with the game was that Funcom has deeply leaned into the harsher aspects of Arrakis, with an emphasis on players having to build their character up from nothing . Even basic traversal is difficult at first, and it really captures the feeling of being lost and struggling in the desert post-crash. Though it’s hard, this harshness contributes to future feelings of accomplishment as w
