Blogs
on April 20, 2026
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, Observatorioedu.com and it looks like Dune: Awakening is prepared to ride that wave like the Fremen ride sandwo
Spice plays a major role in Dune , so it logically does in Dune: Awakening as well. Players will be able to enter entire Deep Desert regions dedicated to acquiring Spice, but both factions obviously want this resource. Players will need to construct bases, acquire Spice, get it safely, and otherwise face others in PvP over this valuable resource. There will be environmental conditions, story elements, and plenty of gameplay tied to acquiring Spice, but it's also where Dune: Awakening truly comes into its own as an MMO. Once a week or so, a Coriolis Storm will sweep through these areas - destroying everything both sides have constructed and acquired. A new location will open up, and the fight for the Spice begins a
Were Dune: Awakening a narrative-driven game, I would be more confident that some of my concerns would be meaningfully addressed. Traditional RPGs can present players with a variety of choices, which would perhaps have allowed for a route where I wouldn’t have to work with Harkonnens or colonize Arrakis. Even if it was more action-oriented, Dune: Awakening could have done what Spec Ops: The Line did and challenged players by having them examine their morally dubious actions. However, I worry that an MMO is ill-suited to properly address these topi
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
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
It's one of the things we started with, coming from Conan Exiles, so that put a pretty big constraint on us. How do you make a game with shooting that works with Dune, that's lore accurate, when you can't have guns? You need to have guns to make a shooter, so we worked with Legendary Entertainment and the Herbert estate to come up with the dart system that we use. These are low-velocity projectiles that we sh
"Working on movie licenses is problematic. I've worked with movie licenses in the past, and it's always hard to get information from the production team," Whelan told me. However, he said that Legendary has been "very good at keeping a connection with us. Feeding us information, giving us concepts, giving us production designs, all the way through to talking to the cinematographer, Greg Fraser. He’s a fantastic guy, really easy to talk to once I got past my fear of who he is, a double Oscar winn
Thankfully, Dune: Awakening has enough to attract even survival game sceptics. "I think so. I hope so," Whelan said when I asked if the third-person shooting and multiplayer aspects are enough to entice fans of those gen
Dune Awakening contains a lot of the natural ebb and flow of the survival space, and Funcom still needs to tweak the core loop a bit if they want to nab more non-genre fans . As someone who has explored Dune since childhood and has been there since the dawn of the survival genre, Awakening can be tough to recommend at times. Some sessions, it felt like I was going through the motions of a standard desert survival romp, playing a completely different game. Then, a sandworm would pop up and remind me that I was on Arra
As you go to the next phase, water turns from a survival pressure into a resource, and you're using it in crafting and making vehicles and making higher-tier materials, similarly to Spice. Spice, at the beginning, starts as just this thing that makes you do really cool abilities and become prescient and see the future. But, as you go into the mid-game, again, it becomes a crafting resource. Then, at the endgame, it becomes like a currency that you're using to spend and get political favors and influence the Landsraad . So, that's one way the game chan
When I first heard that Dune: Awakening wouldn’t include Paul Atreides, that made sense to me. By removing Paul, the main thrust of Dune ’s narrative is taken away. This allows for an Arrakis that likely won’t see any major political upheaval for an indefinite amount of time, keeping the setting of the game more consistent. However, I’m now a bit concerned that this isn’t why Dune: Awakening took out P