Summary

• Dune: Awakening borrows a feature from Starfield but offers a unique open-world survival experience with large player interactions.
• Players can build custom Ornithopters for safe travel, explore Arrakis, and build bases with others for a strategic advantage.
• Disappointingly, Dune: Awakening's combat system is more conventional, deviating from the unique combat elements in the original novels.

Games in the same genre, like Starfield’s single-player experience.

Dune: Awakening drops players onto the hostile planet of Arrakis, where the events of the Dune novels largely take place. Players are tasked with evading sandworms, deserters, and unfriendly players to try and survive. One useful tool from the Dune series will be present to help players, and the game has taken some inspiration from Starfield for how it is handling its inclusion.

Dune: Awakening Features Custom Ship Building

Players Can Build Their Own Ornithopter

The safest mode of transport through the sands of Arrakis is an Ornithopter, a flying vehicle that resembles a large mechanical dragonfly. Once players have progressed far enough in the game, they will be able to build their own Ornithopters to explore the planet safely and more quickly. Like the ships in Starfield, players will have some options for creating their own customized Ornithopters.

Though the gameplay reveal shared by Dune: Awakening event that happened in March.

A quick shot near the beginning of the video also shows what appears to be a double-wide Ornithoper, which seems to have the ability to drop bombs. This would suggest that there are a few variants of the vehicle that players will be able to build. Another shot shows two characters sharing an Ornithopter, so players will likely be able to travel Arrakis together in a single vehicle.

Dune: Awakening Also Lets Players Build Bases

Bases Can Be Used To Create Safe Spaces On Arrakis

Ornithopters aren’t the only thing that players will be able to build in Dune: Awakening. The gameplay reveal also showed off the game’s base-building mechanics. It showed several players working together to turn a rock outcropping into their own base of operations. It was on this base’s landing pad where players were seen building an Ornithopter. The game will likely require that an Ornithopter is landed somewhere safe like this so as not to risk attracting a sandworm.

Allowing players to explore Arrakis and build their bases raises an interesting question about the game’s story. The native Fremen seem suspiciously absent from the gameplay reveal, and it has been said that finding them is part of the game’s story. However, it’s hard to believe the Fremen, as depicted in Dune, would be so accommodating of players colonizing their lands the way they are shown to be in the preview material. This isn’t the only big change from the Dune series that makes Dune: Awakening look a little disappointing for a fan of the novels.

Disappointingly, Dune’s Combat Is As Standard As Starfield’s

Dune: Awakening Abandons Elements That Made The Novels’ Combat Unique

One less exciting element Dune: Awakening shares with Starfield seems to be largely conventional combat. That wasn’t a big deal in Starfield, as it wasn’t really sold as having any sort of revolutionary combat system. The Dune series, however, typically has a very unique take on combat.

In the novels and film adaptations, characters have to be careful about what weapons they are using in a given circumstance. Shields protect them from typical projectile weapons, making normal guns useless much of the time. However, if a lasgun hits a shield, it creates a massive explosion comparable to a nuclear blast. This results in much of the combat having to be fought with melee weapons, and characters have to use special techniques to slip a sword through a shield.

Unfortunately, Dune: Awakening seems to have forsaken Dune’s unique take on fighting for a more generic third-person shooting style. There are shields and swords present in the game, but it seems like shields aren’t quite as effective as they should be. Lasguns also don’t interact with shields the way they should, removing a major piece of tension that could have made Dune: Awakening’s combat one of the most unique systems in gaming.

Source: Funcom/YouTube