In making a survival MMO, Funcom has welded two concepts together in a way we rarely see. We’ve survived on worlds with other people on them, but usually only in small numbers; rarely have we played with this many people on worlds this big. Similarly, while we’ve played large online worlds with many other people, rarely have they granted the kind of sandbox build-your-own-adventure freedom Dune: Awakening does. It feels quietly, profoundly, new.
Dune: Awakening previewDeveloper: FuncomPublisher: FuncomPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Early 2025 on PC (Steam), which is more likely to mean the first-half of 2025. Console versions to follow at unspecified later date
But I was concerned before I played it. I’d watched videos from a handful of months ago and seen a game that looked stiff in action and lacking in visual impact – certainly compared to the spectacle of the recent Denis Villeneuve Dune films. An impossible bar, I know, but a comparison I’m sure I won’t be the only one making. I was unconvinced. But after spending a day playing it, my mind has changed.
The essence of Dune: Awakening – its Spice, perhaps – is found in the middle of what it does, not its constituent parts. It’s not in the survival side of the game or the massively multiplayer aspect of it, or even in the relatively cinematic third-person role-playing side of it either. It’s where all of these parts come together – in running across the open sand with a friend while knowing the colossal danger that burrows beneath, and sharing in that nervousness. It’s in establishing a sustainable existence in one of the most inhospitable environments possible. It’s driving friends around on desert bikes or flying them in an ornithopter. It’s teaming up for Destiny-like three-player dungeons or joining guilds to go to the Deep Desert and fight other guilds there. It’s swaying the Landsraad council to grant laws in favour of whatever storied faction you join – Harkonnen or Atreides. It’s all of that mushed together, and where it all meets.
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It begins like a single-player role-playing game. I am a prisoner standing before a powerful and intimidating Bene Gesserit – a kind of magic user in the world – and I need to decide who I am. What do I look like (cue character creation), where was I born (a role-playing choice offering dialogue traits and emotes), and who was a mentor to me (a character archetype or class choice)? Then I’m forced forward by unseen magic onto my knees, to thrust my hand inside a box of truth and eventually pledge to perform a mission that will set me free: find the elusive Fremen hiding in the desert of Arrakis. The Dune music blares. It’s an atmospheric start.