‘Dune: Awakening’ Might Finally Get Me to Try a Survival MMO
Arrakis has never looked better. Dune: Awakening opens up the desert planet, will you survive, or end up as food for Shai-Hulud?
Dune is the kind of movie that, when you watch it, you end up grappling with those lingering questions like, “yeah but what would *I* do if that happened to me”. We’ve all wondered if we would end up chewed up in the metaphorical teeth of Arrakis’ sandstorms, or the literal teeth of its sandworms. And while the real answer is almost certainly, “yeah you’d die in like ten minutes, tops,” a new trailer for a Dune video game, Dune: Awakening, dangles the tempting fantasy that you’d actually survive long enough to be a cool guy.
It’s also the first trailer I’ve seen in a while that’s got me interested in venturing once more into the MMO shores for anything more than killing bugs and bots and spreading Managed Democracy. Because in Dune Awakening, you can be almost anything, if you can survive.
Dune: Awakening – Survive Arrakis
Rise from survival to dominance on the most dangerous planet in the universe. Dune: Awakening combines the grit and creativity of sandbox survival games with the social interactivity of a large, persistent multiplayer game to create a unique and ambitious Open World Survival MMO.
Your journey begins on Arrakis, with its vast deserts and colossal sandworms. Meet characters from the movies and books as you follow your story across Dune. Discover new allies and enemies and exploit your relationships to uncover the mystery that lies just beneath the surface of the sands.
In a nutshell, this game is an open-world survival MMO. Those are a particularly dangerous combo of genres because they demand your attention and more importantly your time. If you’ve never played one before, congratulations, and also welcome to 2024, hope you enjoyed your time in that cryostasis pod.
But survival MMOs all tend to follow this basic formula. You start as someone in dire straits, needing to harvest even the most basic of resources and craft the most basic of needs, like shelter and pants. You won’t have much in the way of tools, at first. And, depending on how hard into the survival aspect of the game it goes, you might even have to punch rocks or trees to chop them down.
Probably not, considering this game looks extremely atmospheric and sci-fi from the jump. But, even if you’re not punching trees, you suck big time at the start, and if you scavenge and scrounge you can build your way up to having vehicles and weapons and all sorts of amazing things. Dune: Awakening sounds particularly exciting because layered in among all of the normal survival game stuff is a deep sense of mystery and power:
Craft your identity and build your prowess, from deep character creation to skills and abilities taught by specialists like Mentats and Bene Gesserit. Declare your loyalties by what you wear and become known by what you do, whether you are a specialized master or multi-talented adept.
Dune: Awakening brings the epic landscapes of Arrakis to vivid life. Explore boundless rolling dunes, ancient underground Ecology Labs, and deep canyons pockmarked with caves, where bandits seek easy prey. Wander the bustling villages before braving the lawless and ever-changing deep desert.
There’ll be a lot of crafting. And sandworms. Live long enough, though, and you’ll be engaging in Ornithopter battles and maybe even transforming all of Arrakis.
Get more info about Dune: Awakening
You know the litany against fear, but what’s the litany against grinding low drop-rate resources?
