The stock of worms, sand and knife fights has never been higher, which is great news for the youngsters in Margate and the developers of Dune Awakening, who now find themselves having The golden goose of an IP. This should get the good folks at Funcom excited, but conveniently their upcoming survival MMO looks particularly hot, even without the theatrical context.
Let’s start at the developer level. The creatives behind Conan Exiles and Anarchy Online have brought their talents to the Dune IP, a pairing that those of you who are particularly nerdy may have met in a bar a few years ago. The authenticity of it is a joy to watch as we get to see the dedication to the lore they brought to Arrakis with genuine passion and stunning detail.
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This means giant worms can chase you and eat you. This means ornithopters look, fly and sound just like they should. It also means that Dune Awakens’ setting—a vast desert and the mountain ridges that run along its surface—looks like the Funcom gang hoarded original novel illustrations and Ocean’s Eleven movies from Villeneuve’s home. film.
In short: Dune Awakening looks exactly like I hoped it would, and that’s all thanks to Unreal Engine 5. Aesthetically speaking, I’m disappointed. Five stars. Of course, there’s more to a game than just how it looks. We know that the game will have both PvE and PvP aspects. Players can build their own settlement and try to survive on Arrakis without some fancy prophecies and genocidal guys coming to help them. From there, you expand, eventually reaching deeper into the desert where other players will try to suck you dry.
Harshness is one of the hallmarks of Dune. While the entire game isn’t a free-to-play PvP extravaganza like Rust, which is fine purely for accessibility reasons, it probably shouldn’t be a piece of cake either. It seems like players will be strongly encouraged to venture into the depths of the desert later in the game to get all kinds of goodies, but I sincerely hope Funcom puts the pressure on that throughout the experience. It’s going to be a tough balance, but an important one considering the source material.
We also know that Dune Awakens will feature plenty of weapons, including snipers, shotguns, melee weapons, lasers, and, of course, sound. I can only imagine the difficulty of balancing it all in the Dune universe, with its shields and selection of vehicles that you can mess around with. It sounds like hell. Making it all feel good and true to the source material is hard enough, but making it all feel feasible in a multiplayer survival MMO? I’m crossing my fingers that the Funcom team can provide as many high fives, drinks, and back massages as possible to the game leaders responsible for this critical mission. This thing can literally make or break a game like Dune Awakening.
The same is true for political alliance systems. Finally in Dune Awakening you can ally yourself with either House Atreides or House Harkonnen. This affects the decoration of your base, as well as the political ways in which you entertain Randerslade through sweet violence. Still, I’m curious how your political representation and achievements will be rewarded: Is it just an elaborate coat of paint on your home? Or are there unique skins, titles, and other prizes depending on which tyrannical mansion you set the license for?
In Landslade missions, one faction can outcompete another, but what does one faction gain from being part of the winning team? Coin Flip – How do you prevent World of Warcraft-style faction imbalance if the rewards are huge? This is another difficult challenge for the Funcom team.
You may be sensing a trend here. While Dune Awakening looks great (and is definitely the kind of thing I’d be invested in), its longevity and overall quality relies on getting over some challenging obstacles. The studio’s previous experience with Conan Exiles should help, but there’s no guarantee that Funcom will be able to figure it out in all of Dune’s intricacies and obstacles.
Do I think Funcom will have a hard time getting people through the door when it launches? Not really. As mentioned at the beginning, it’s in prime position with the Dune IP, especially now, so unless it announces the game will be available for $100, or somehow delays the release for so long that we Still sitting back and watching promotional trailers in 2030 or people will be keen.
The game’s legacy will come from the appeal of Dune Awakening’s hands-on survival gameplay and the brutality of the final game’s political war. Do we have another Eve on our hands? This is a strange dilemma. For what it’s worth, Conan Exiles has great endgame content, but the survival aspect often feels a bit boring. Hopefully Funcom can retain the former elements of its sandblasted MMO while enhancing the latter.
Of course, we’ll be losing Conan Exiles’ famous cock slider this time around, but the developers are replacing it with a completely different type of worm that I think will be more popular with a wider audience. I do think being chased by Shai-Halud is the kind of thing that would get people hyped for its solitude, even if it lacks the virality of vulgarity or the kingly power of Conan.
From what I’ve seen so far, I’m excited to keep an eye on Dune Awakening to see if Funcom can actually live up to the high standards expected by the new wave of Dune fans, or if it’s just another MMO experiment , consumed by Dune fans. desert. Seeing the game is one thing, how it plays and launches (bugs, server issues, balance issues, etc.) is an entirely different thing. It’s a tall order, but I hope Funcom can pull it off.
This preview was written during a press and influencer preview event organized by Funcom with travel assistance.