Everything We Learned At The Dune Awakening Event

Anyone who has watched the Dune movies is likely aware of Arrakis' depiction: endless sands, few civilizations, and lots of ways to die. It is a standard depiction of sand through and through, but Dune: Awakening adds some variety thanks to the books. The sand's color changes depending on the minerals in the region, while things like Drum Sand (noise-emitting sand) and quicksand are also prevalent throughout the space. It's all sand at the end of the day, but it features more variety and more hazards than the recently-released movies. Of course, the greatest wildlife threat in Dune is the sandwo


As the world opens up, traversal also gets easier. I was only given a brief chance to test out the Ornithopter and Sandbike, both of which were a lot of fun, and they also make exploration less stressful. When the full game is released, I’m going to be using the Ornithopter at every opportunity instead of trawling through the sands on my own two feet. It’ll keep me safe from patrolling sandworms


Thankfully, Awakening’s Arrakis itself is great fun to explore. Not because of any unique visual choices - it’s a lot of rocks and sand dunes as you’d expect - but because of what you need to think about as you go from waypoint to waypo


These wild animals make menial survival busywork a lot more exciting, and spotting a sandworm diving above the surface in the distance is an incredible sight to behold. You’re torn between a desire to see what it’s found and also avoiding near-certain death. Get killed by a bandit and you can head back to the location of your demise to retrieve your stuff. Get eaten by a sandworm, though, and your gear is gone forever. It’s a constant treat that’s much more literal than the hunger and thirst meters survival games normally rely

Arguably the most definitive real-time strategy game , Dune Awakening Secrets 2 is an old-school masterpiece that may be showing its age, but it laid the foundations for the entire RTS genre. It could also be argued that Dune 2's innovative combination of base building, resource gathering, and unit production paved the way for the boom of RTS games in the late-90s .


An overall leveling system is a core component of Dune Awakening , coming up several times throughout the showcase. A technology skill tree will need to be consistently progressed if players want any hope of survival, providing access to upgrades for things like vehicles and weapons. Unlocking technology is done by spending Intel Points, though it's not clear just yet how players earn t


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


Even small steps forward, like the ability to build a basic water extraction gun, carry more weight when it took so much effort to get there. The aforementioned ornithopter that can take players to new regions requires a huge amount of work to build, with one of the demo workers mentioning it could take around 40 hours to achieve. The area players begin in can sometimes feel repetitive - it’s difficult for a desert that is large swathes of brown in every direction to feel very diverse - so I do have a few reservations about this hur


At the beginning of the game, the Mother Reverend will ask where you were born and who your mentor is, which are important decisions that will shape your entire experience in Arrakis , so take your time choos


As part of character creation, players will select a character to be their mentor. This will determine their starting abilities, though they won't be forced to completely adhere to that chosen archetype permanently. As players level up over time, they'll be able to further tailor their character to a certain playstyle by learning new techniques from the Great Schools of the Imperium, but mentor choice can still greatly impact overall gameplay by setting the tone at the beginn


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