Frank Herbert’s Dune saga has always revolved around the sci-fi universe’s opposing families and factions. And after getting an in-depth look at Dune: Awakening from developer Funcom, it looks like the upcoming action MMO will let players replicate the human and factional drama at the center of these seminal books, creating endless possibilities for new stories on Arrakis.
In the five-minute gameplay reveal trailer, players got their first look at the Dune: Awakening’s core gameplay loop. It gamifies many aspects of the iconic Dune universe. In the early going, players are surviving in the desert, scrounging for tools that will help them survive the dry heat of Arrakis, conserving moisture where they can, and forming alliances with others they bring themselves to trust.
Much of what was shown echoed what gamers have come to expect as standard elements of modern survival games. Like Minecraft or Sons Of The Forest, you start with nothing in Dune: Awakening, and slowly amass the power and resources to fight the good fight.
But the added wrinkle of taking place in an alternate version of the Dune timeline, one where Lady Jessica gives birth to a girl (as ordered by the Bene Gesserit sisterhood) instead of the Paul Atriedes we’re more familiar with, things take an intriguing turn that allows Dune: Awakening to be the narrative sandbox I never knew I needed.
Without Jessica’s pivotal betrayal, the political landscape presented in Dune: Awakening is completely different. There’s no need for Paul to lead the remnants of his honorable family into battle with the help of the powerful Fremen. And without a religious battle driving events forward, Dune: Awakening gives the player agency to fight over Arrakis for their fair share of the universe’s most powerful resource.
It’s a fun setup that lets players create their factions with friends and other players. As their factions grow strong and capable enough to handle themselves in a battle, vying for profit through spice production, the power struggles they get into are essentially their own versions of the Dune saga. It’s a creative use of the license and an imaginative way to translate one of the best parts of the source material into something worth playing.
There are of course some liberties taken to make the game more fun. Running across the desert rhythmically doesn’t seem to draw the ire of the powerful sandworms. Sand walking would be a nice addition for nitpicky fans like myself. And the projectile-focused combat looks like the hand-to-hand combat of the books will take a back seat to something more aligned with today’s third-person shooters.
But these deviations are negligible if developer Funcom can create the incubator for the emergent political intrigue that the books and movie adaptations are known for. If done correctly, Dune: Awakening can mix the best parts of popular role-playing mods that have made Grand Theft Auto Online such a hit, with the meditative crafting of games like Minecraft. The game incentivizing control over resources also incorporates an element from Dune’s many strategy games from the past.
It was hard to imagine how Dune: Awakening could properly adapt the source material into something that was both interesting to play and faithful to the feel and drama of the books. And yet, just a few months before its February 2025 release, it looks like Funcom found a Golden Path leading toward something I’m ready to jump into on day one.
