Dune: Awakening Preview – Surrendering Yourself to the Sandworms

The Dune fandom is stronger than ever, with the second movie garnering huge success. The survival MMO Dune: Awakening was first announced at Gamescom 2022, not too long after Dune: Part One hit cinemas, and was probably in development before the team knew the huge impact the franchise would have. There are a number of risky elements about Dune: Awakening. It’s coming at a time when ‘games as a service’ have a bad reputation, and the survival game genre has become saturated. Despite these challenges our first look at Dune: Awakening at PAX East was a promising one, with a number of features we weren’t expecting.

The first thing that surprised me about Dune: Awakening is that it more closely resembles the world from the books rather than the movies. While the franchise is far better known for the latter, it makes things more interesting for both fandoms. People who love the books will be able to make a deeper connection, while fans of the films will have something slightly different to enjoy. It also tries to make the story unique for players, explaining the plot in the intro and allowing you to choose traits and skills which will tailor your future options.

Related: Dune: Awakening Gameplay Shows the Gorgeous Open World of Arrakis

Despite the intricacies that come with any survival MMO, Dune: Awakening tries to introduce you to the mechanics slowly, heavily tutorializing the open sections of the game. You will learn to balance your water usage, how to collect it from the sparse plant life, and how to gather materials for crafting. You’ll also be taught to stick to the shade, as there are more dangers in the open desert than just the worms. This is a smart decision. Fans of the genre are able to enjoy the hardcore game mechanics, while fans of the franchise get gently eased in.

Aside from the world looking beautiful, there are a number of interesting traversal options. You can unlock a grappling hook, which, when paired with the jetpack, gives a number of fun ways to move about the map. These are just your options on foot, as you’ll also be able to craft sand bikes, ornithopters and transporters for travelling larger distances. You can even sell schematics for the things you design on the in-game marketplace, or if you have the materials, you can sell your finished products. A lot of effort went into the traversal, which makes up for a complete lack of fast travel.

Instead of zipping around the map, Dune: Awakening hopes to keep people involved by having dynamic events happen all over the world. Ships will crash on the planet, allowing you to scavenge for resources, sandworms will breach the desert before giving chase, and spice will blow from the surface, making you race against time to gather it, which brings us to the multiplayer aspects of the game. Dune: Awakening is an online-only game with no local multiplayer, and you will both rely on and fight against others if you want to get ahead. There are ‘safe’ sections where fighting will be PvE only, but the best rewards will have you fighting against others to claim them.

The main story will play out over four stages: survive, expand, protect and control, with a political system in play to push your faction to become the strongest. Each server will hold between 40 and 80 players, but there will also be multi-server areas that can hold players in the hundreds. This feeds into the live-service system, where new updates will drop periodically, though the team isn’t willing to talk about the monetisation aspect at this point. Games like this rely on a strong player base, and while first impressions are promising, it will be how fans react to this that will decide how good the game is overall.

Related: Funcom Says Dune Awakening Isn’t ‘Sexy’ Enough For Endowment Sliders