Worming its way to completion
Image credit: Funcom
Lo, a ripple in the release date sands. Stand still a moment while we study this phenomenon. Yes, yes, it is the unmistakable rumble of a large survival MMO pondering its release date. Dune: Awakening is having a think and has decided “early 2025” is a good non-specific time period to come out in early access. That could mean January or February. Or March, I guess. April? Now don’t be silly, that’s spring. Not April, surely. This beast seems hungry. It will eat before then. I have foreseen it. Mostly by watching the trailer that dropped at Gamescom.
The trailer aired during Gamescom’s advertising bonanza, Opening Night Live. It takes us swiftly through a new player’s idealised opening experience, during which they’re dumped in the desert but find another player to team up with. “Working with others will always increase your chances of staying alive,” say developers Funcom (they’ve never played Chained Together with Edwin and Nic). There’s a fair bit of ornithopter flying, which looks like quite a buzz.
As expected, much else of what we see is in keeping with Dune’s lore. There are body shields and sand worms and those wibbly hoverpacks I don’t know the name of. You even suck up all the blood from your enemies and put it in a machine to extract drinking water. (Mostly, I like that you can sell the blueprints of your finished buildings to other players for cash, but this feels like the least Dune-y thing in the whole trailer). You’ll also get to meet known characters from the fiction such as famous protagonist Duniel Baggins Paul Atreides.
We’ve previously heard from developers Funcom that it plays fast and loose with the source material in some important ways, though. Paul’s father is alive and well, for example, counter to the canon. Even the environment will see some changes. “The Dune in the movie shows no natural vegetation whatsoever,” said Tech Art Director Richard Cawte in a blog update, “which is not the case for our Dune.” Plants!? On Arrakis!? My outrage better be coming across as fake!! Because it is!!! I like plants!!!!
Edwin got an early look at the crafty survival game and came away “surprisingly enthused”. Funcom have previously made similar multiplayer survive-o-crafts with Conan Exiles and have been in the sci-fi MMO business since Anarchy Online, so it makes sense that they were chosen to grip the reins of this particularly large franchiseworm.
There’s an ongoing beta that you can still sign up for on the game’s website if you’re so inclined. For everyone else, time to squat in the sand and look at the horizon thoughtfully for 5-6 months.
