From the first moment the player-controlled Prisoner steps out onto the baking sands of Arrakis, there is a real sense of awe in the world Funcom has built in Dune: Awakening. It’s helped by a vast visual draw distance and a grand display of action set pieces when the Prinsoner’s transport ship crashes into the Hagga Basin.
After a short but rather thorough tutorial, players are guided step by step down the research tree for several hours as they get comfortable fighting off scavengers and recycling their own fluids for drinking water. Water is the name of the game, but blood will also do in a pinch. Whether that means extracting it from the hostile NPC scavengers tossed about in the desert or choosing a side in the late-game PvP faction war is up to you. Before that PvP endgame can be reached, however, survival must be learned via Zantara, a mysterious wanderer with initially perplexing motivations until much later on.
Zantara is wounded in the opening tutorial sequence, and most of the early hours are framed as him teaching the Prisoner how to survive and guiding them to his constantly moving location. Through this, players work their way down the research tree, dodge appropriately enormous and threatening sandworms, and explore the Dune: Awakening‘s first open region.
The way Funcom goes about ushering players forward can shift between overly aggressive handholding and an “I don’t know, man; figure it out” sentiment rather quickly. A large portion of this comes through in the initial bouts of exploration before unlocking the speeding sandbike or flying ornithopter.
Early exploration involves using a chain of adjoining rock formations to avoid Dune: Awakening’s ever-present sandworm while hustling to the next destination, only to realise that those rock formations have formed one giant loop that then asks to be repeated as the Prisoner is sent back to their home base to fabricate new items. Those home bases, or “sub-fiefs,” can only later be stored and moved undisrupted using a “base reconstruction tool” once the “iron tier” has been reached several hours in, making the need to constantly go back and forth ever present in the early game.
Navigating the same area can get tedious, as the game asks for the same there-and-back cycle to be repeated time and time again, out of fear of the sandworm. This feels appropriately “Dune,” but as a video game mechanic, it is mixed. On one hand it’s a solid way of forcing more intentional traversal, adding detours, etc., while on the other it reheats the same encounter at a handful of different but eerily similar scavenger camps – and each of these camps respawns quickly, filling them with fresh enemies not worth the loot they drop, further slowing overall progression without much reward.
After making it back to said base, players are free to decorate a little with various foundations, walls, stairs, etc. The actual base building itself is excellent. There is a lot of variety to what can be built, and placements easily snap into view and can be flipped around, allowing for a lot of stylistic expression in base design. Unfortunately numerous POIs lack the same level of variety. Most locations, crashed ships, and research towers use the same basic geometric patterns, looping corridors, and tucked-against-the-wall loot crates over and over again.
There are five NPC mentors scattered about the different settlements of Arrakis, each of which issues a quest or “contract,” which upon completion unlocks a three-part skill tree divided into active abilities and passive perks known as techniques. One of four of these five mentors can be chosen during character creation to begin with the skill tree of one’s choice, but the Prisoner will have to find the rest and complete their contract.
In combat, active abilities are much more powerful than weapons and on relatively short cooldowns. Some, such as the Swordmaster’s starting “Knee Charge,” can even one-shot most early-game scavenger enemies. Combat itself has its pros and cons. While gunplay is fluid and the integration of shield combat is true to the game’s sandy roots, enemy AI is simplistic and at times downright clumsy.
Enemies will, most of the time, gang up on and charge the Prisoner when out in the open. However, the second enemies are bunched in a long hallway, they slow down and come in to attack one or two at a time, allowing for even the hairiest combat scenarios to be handled like a checklist of enemies rather than a dangerous encounter. Enemies wielding blades or “kindjal” occasionally block close-range attacks while ranged enemies often hide behind cover, which makes combat feel more responsive, but that’s where their design ends.
Beyond the rank and file, there are also a number of bosses introduced slowly through the chapter-by-chapter story. These bosses are, by comparison, worse than their counterparts. They are essentially bullet sponges that either summon hordes of additional enemies or spam area-of-effect attacks without any method to their madness. Some of these encounters are more complex than the next due to environmental hazards and shifting phases, but not by much.
Between exploration and combat is crafting. Funcom has streamlined the crafting system from their previous title, Conan Exiles. New crafting recipes are unlocked from the research tree alongside narrative progression in Locked mode, while Unlocked mode allows players to choose when and how to spend their earned “intel” on the research tree. Overall the system is similar to Conan Exiles in that players gather resources from the environment, place them into the necessary refiners, and craft their next goal on the research tree.
All of the progression methods in Dune: Awakening eventually lead to the addition of the boost-granting Spice Melange. What would a game set in the Dune universe be without spice? Not much of a Dune game. By consuming this valuable substance as Melange Spiced Foods, the Prisoner builds up a purple meter to use the Prescience ability, which activates wall-hacks and restores lost HP among a few other positive effects.
The most valuable resource in the known universe can be found as raw “Spice Sand,” which is practically useless until processed with a specific refinery. Consuming spice comes with a trade-off, as spice withdrawal is one of the game’s more lore-accurate features and can result in hallucinations and a rising tolerance level.
In terms of optimisation, Dune: Awakening runs smoothly on the base PS5 with a steady 60fps in performance mode. There is also a day-one patch available on September 17th to iron out any known issues for the five-day headstart period.
Paul is NOT the messiah. He’s a very naughty boy.