Dune Awakening Does An Excellent Job Of Bringing The Books To Life

The first time I played Dune Awakening, I was swallowed by a worm. I heard and saw it coming, of course, but once the Shai-Hulud knows where you are it’s pretty damn hard to escape it. I remember the absolute horror I felt when reading the original Dune, Frank Herbert’s seminal 1965 science fiction novel, as Paul Atreides undergoes his worm-riding test alongside Stilgar.

Giant worms that dive into oceans of sand and consume battleship-sized vehicles are easily translatable to the video game format – but Dune Awakening goes a lot further when capturing the magic of Herbert’s books.

Note: Spoilers for both Dune Awakening and the original Dune books ahead.

The Gom Jabbar

The opening scene of Dune Awakening is much like the first few scenes in the book. You are faced with the ultimate test: the Gom Jabbar, a needle tipped with cyanide that, when plunged into your neck, causes instant death. Much like Paul, you need to hold your hand in the box and face the pain. Remove the hand and you will die. While this is just a cutscene in Awakening, it’s an excellent point of introduction for newcomers to Dune’s world – what is the Gom Jabbar, who are the Bene Gesserit, what the hell is going on?

“When caught in a trap, an animal will gnaw off its own leg to escape.”

Every character starts out as a ragged survivor in Dune Awakening, and while this isn’t how the book unfolds to begin with, you are essentially reliving those first few moments with Paul after the fall of House Atreides. We skip much of the political intrigue and dive straight into survival. Much like Paul, you learn about the dunes, worms, and the mysterious Fremen through exploration and interactions with the magical Spice that lines the planet’s surface.

I’ve played through the entire first act now, and I’m really interested to see how the world changes as I begin to understand more about it. By this I mean, how do the gameplay mechanics accurately reflect the developing political intrigue and galaxy-wide schemes that are so present in the books? Will the endgame mechanics make me feel like a pawn in a greater game, a vast galactic war between feudal houses? If Dune Awakening can capture even a third of the scope of the books, I’ll be pleased.

A Survival Game, And Then Some

Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here. Dune Awakening is otherwise pretty much your standard survival game, especially during the first twenty or so hours. You build a base, collect resources, clear bandit camps, complete some simple quests, and slowly level up your character. You get to do all of this on Arrakis, an enormous desert planet, which means much of the environment looks pretty much exactly the same. In theory, this doesn’t sound all that exciting – but if you give the game a chance, there’s a lot more here than meets the eye.

I wasn’t expecting Dune Awakening to have so many quality cutscenes interspersed with its relatively mundane survival gameplay. It really elevates the game beyond the standard fare of the genre. It might be my own obsession with the worldbuilding of Dune that had me so tuned in as you discover more about your journey through a series of puzzle trials, but I was seriously impressed by the voice acting, character design, and storytelling.

Even some of the points of interest, like underground testing facilities and greenhouses, are laden with narrative. The game sends you there to collect items – like important bits of scrap metal – which is the sort of standard fetch quest I’m used to in survival games. But there’s a lot of lore to dig into here.

Note: For example, in one of the underground greenhouses, we learn about the specific scientific work done to understand – and ultimately terraform – the planet of Arrakis. There are some excellent chapters in the first book about this, and Frank Herbert himself was interested in the ecology of desert biomes. Obviously.

I love Dune, so hearing about the everyday machinations of a world that we usually only get to see on a grand scale is fascinating, and I’m really glad Funcom have leaned into some of the smaller details. I think the game definitely still has more room for lore – the universe of Dune is just rippling with bizarreness that I don’t think is quite captured in the game yet, but to be honest, I think we can skip the Tleilaxu – and I’m really willing to commit to the game based on what I’ve seen so far.