Tiffany Jager

As Frank Herbert wrote in the first Dune novel, "Beginnings are such delicate times," and players who are dumped on Arrakis and forced to survive are, indeed, living through delicate times. At a surface level, Dune: Awakening 's gameplay is as demanding as the sands of Arrakis. It has a clear audience, targeting hardcore survival players and lifelong Dune fans who appreciate its more hard sci-fi approach, and the game's various features and mechanics would fit right into a Dune novel. I was recently invited to Oslo, Norway to play Dune: Awakening , and after six hours with it, it's clear there's a lot of depth in its mechan For example, there are various random and world events set to trigger in the game. Our demoist was at a Harkonnen base, and we got to see some Harkonnen soldiers preparing to execute House Atreides POWs. While some MMOs can have lifeless worlds because of the emphasis on a player and their faction, that doesn't appear to be the case here - though that's not to say players won't have a huge impact on the game wo Paul, and thus the Kwisatz Haderach, has not come into the world in Dune: Awakening and that simple change drastically changes events on Arrakis. Leto Atreides' lives, for example, and a "War of Assassins" has broken out on Arrakis between the Atreides and the Harkonnen. The conflict creates the backdrop for Dune: Awakening, which Game Rant saw a brief presentation of during Summer Game Fest. The game's presentation focused more on the gameplay than the story, but what's clear is how much this world looks like Dune - but isn't. Thankfully, Dune: Awakening takes from both the books and movies to create a more involved game world that isn't just endless s The only customization caveat is that things like armor will need to at least maintain their core appearance for the benefit of other players in a PvP context - players can change the color of heavy armor, for example, but not make it look like light armor. In a broader sense, players will also have a lot of say in the composition and aesthetic of their home base and how they choose to traverse the land. Transportation like ornithopters and groundcars will be at their disposal, and designing elaborate bases to then sell the blueprints is highly encoura Typically, six hours with a game is enough to really get a vibe for the title. That's not really the case with Dune Awakening patch Notes: Awakening because there is so much to it that we couldn't experience in this timeframe. Dune: Awakening has a lot of unique mechanical elements, and that's probably what stood out the most. The mechanics are fully Dune and can be fun to play with. However, having just played six hours of a game that Funcom hopes keeps players immersed for hundreds of hours, it's hard to say how much we really experienced the game. If anything, it felt like a few grains of sand in the otherwise endless dunes of Arra In terms of both mechanical improvements and cosmetic changes, players will have a lot of options when it comes to customizing their game. This applies to armor, weapons, and vehicles - and potentially more things not mentioned in the presentation - with Bylos giving examples like attaching a booster or an inventory system to a vehicle or customizing the scope of a gun. There will also be a " dyeing system " in the game, though its specific mechanics weren't revea A desert open world always runs the risk of getting monotonous with endless stretches of sand, but Dune Awakening will combat this with unique experiences that players can find across the map. Bylos compared it to vault experiments in the Fallout series , where sort of self-contained stories dot the world, giving examples like stumbling across an in-progress faction war or a room of people affected by mushroom spores. Players may also discover wrecked aircraft in their exploration, which will serve as " public dungeon Because of the War of Assassins, House Atreides and the Harkonnen are both on Arrakis. Players can work with these factions, against these factions, or even play both sides for a time - alongside other factions like the Bene Gesserit. Factions can have mentors to teach players new skills and combat maneuvers, while allying with certain factions can unlock special buildables, weapons, and so forth. These factions all have a big role in Dune: Awakening 's story , as well as how players create and progress their own characters. And of course, this translates to gamep When it comes to the giant sandworms shown in the Dune Awakening trailer , players won't be able to tackle them head-on. Instead, surviving the worms is much more based around avoiding them entirely through things like where players place their base. It's possible that fights with the smaller sandworms that populate the world are still on the table, though that wasn't confirmed in the presentat Specializing in the Science tree will give you access to better yield improvements, improved resource optimization, and enhanced energy/power maintenance. The Explorer skill tree improves scanning and traversal tactics, while the Mechanic tree will improve your ability to maintain vehicles and utilize specialized mining abilities. No matter your playstyle, the Planetologist skills are going to improve your survival likelihood considerably and will be a difference-maker when you enter the deep des