We’ve heard loads concerning the survival side of Dune: Awakening–such as the best way you will have to preserve water, keep out of the baking Arrakis solar, and thoroughly keep away from ever-present sandworms. Whereas it appears that evidently staying alive on the least hospitable planet within the universe will take up quite a lot of your consideration, the opposite a part of Dune: Awakening is a slate of MMO components, together with the best way you will tangle with different gamers who’re additionally doing their greatest to outlive.
Developer Fancom gave a hands-off demonstration of Dune: Awakening throughout Summer time Sport Fest 2024’s Play Days occasion, giving a fast new take a look at the survival MMO and notably displaying off a little bit of its moment-to-moment gameplay. Whereas we did not get to play the sport ourselves, we did see it being performed, which gave a way of the truth that whilst you’re finishing quests and preserving your self alive, there might be occasions when you have to deal with different gamers who may need what you have got.
The demo picked up proper after the participant had cleared out an underground ecology lab, one of many places that serves as Dune: Awakening’s equal to a dungeon. We had been advised that this character was in concerning the midgame, round 60 hours in, having gone past primary survival to assemble and craft components like a suspensor belt–a particular little bit of levitation expertise that allowed them to make very excessive jumps and to drift down from excessive places unscathed–and an ornithopter, a flying automobile for getting round. Leaving the dungeon, the participant jumped proper into their ornithopter, lifted it up, and transitioned out of the dungeon and out into the desert at massive.
That is the Hagga Basin, which appears to be like prefer it’ll be a primary focus of a lot of Dune: Awakening, a minimum of early on. As social and financial director Matt Woodward defined through the demo, the placement helps round 40 gamers in an occasion, and is made up of a wide range of totally different places. There are locations just like the lab, expanses of desert, and villages or outposts you may go to. The ornithopter did a cross over just a few totally different elements of the placement, together with the open desert, the place we landed for a fast go searching.
In Frank Herbert’s novel, the desert is not uniform–the sand can typically compress to conduct sound extraordinarily effectively, often known as drum sand, and we additionally noticed a effervescent space the place subsurface liquid created quicksand. The participant used the suspensor belt to leap freed from the quicksand earlier than sinking, however as all Dune followers know, messing round with that expertise attracts the worm–which confirmed up just a few seconds later. It was again to the ornithopter to keep away from being eaten. Sandworms are an enormous hazard in Dune: Awakening, as a result of whilst you retain your gear if you happen to’re killed by different means, something on you whenever you’re eaten by a sandworm (together with automobiles or anything that will get consumed) is gone perpetually.
Subsequent, the demo took us to a non-combat zone: a Harkonnen base. On this playthrough, the participant had sided with the Harkonnen faction, making them allies to the nice home however enemies with anybody loyal to the Atreides, the home of Dune’s standard protagonists. The bottom, Woodward stated, was created utilizing the identical constructing system that Dune: Awakening makes obtainable to characters, with just a few developer-specific items. The gist is that you can assemble your personal bases and dwellings on the similar degree of high quality because the builders, if you’d like.
The Harkonnen base was a spot the place the participant may choose up quests or discuss to NPCs in the event that they needed to. That is additionally the type of place the place you may discuss to coach characters who can unlock new talents to your character. You select a job at first of the sport, like being a human pc known as a Mentat, a swordmaster, or a Bene Gesserit who can deploy particular talents just like the mind-controlling Voice. However you are not restricted to only the skills and ability bushes you get whenever you select your beginning situations. Within the Harkonnen base, the demo confirmed us the Mentat coach, who may also help you begin unlocking Mentat talents to your character so you may combine and match the way you play.
Leaving the Harkonnen base by grabbing one other automobile, a land-based buggy, we headed to a brand new location: a crashed spaceship. The ship had smashed by the floor of Arrakis and was situated deep in a gorge. It was stuffed with worthwhile stuff, so the Harkonnens and the Atreides had every arrange a base at one finish of the gorge, hoping to guard the wreck itself from the opposite faction. That had resulted in one thing of a stalemate between the 2.
The gorge was a very good demonstration of the best way places are specified by Dune: Awakening. The Harkonnen base is a non-combat space, primarily a social location. Outdoors of it, within the gorge, is a “Restricted Warfare” space, which consists of PvE gameplay, the place you will take down enemy troopers and NPCs. The shipwreck itself, nonetheless, is a “Struggle of Assassins” space, named after the bigger battle between the Atreides and the Harkonnen–a full PvP zone.
The rationale for that’s as a result of the shipwreck incorporates worthwhile, one-of-a-kind schematics you need to use to create new gear. Venturing into the ship, your objective is to seek out that schematic and go away with it. On this case, it allowed the crafting of a brand new, highly effective rifle, however since there’s just one schematic within the shipwreck at a time, to be able to liberate it for your self, you will should take care of anybody else who’s additionally attempting to take it. The demo clearly did not have anybody else contending for that schematic, however within the dwell recreation, heading into places like this might be a threat.
Woodward defined that, whenever you get the schematic out of the ship and may craft the merchandise, you will get exactly one among them. If you need one other rifle, you will should repeat the method of discovering the schematic and getting it residence safely. That provides you some financial energy, although, permitting you to promote the schematic or the rifle to different gamers and charging the type of value {that a} tough-to-get merchandise like that ought to command.
The playthrough of the demo ended after leaving the crashed ship, however Woodward gave somewhat extra context of simply how massive we will count on Dune: Awakening to be. The Hagga Basin, he stated, is corresponding to the dimensions of Conan: Exile’s map, about 64 sq. kilometers. Dune: Awakening may also have social places just like the capital metropolis of Arrakeen, and the Harkonnen city Harko Village. Leaving the Hagga Basin by ornithopter takes you to an overworld map that allows you to journey between main locales.
And then there’s the deep desert–the high-level PvP space the place you are seemingly going to place quite a lot of effort. Forming teams and guilds, you will head into the deep desert to reap spice, search labs, and discover wrecked ships, amongst different issues. Identical to within the wrecked ship, you will probably combat different gamers as you attempt to declare distinctive schematics within the deep desert every week. Woodward stated that the deep desert is the dimensions of three of the 8-kilometer by 8-kilometer Hagga Basin map. Every week, a Coriolis Storm will reset the entire space, so not solely are you going to be revisiting it time and again, however it should be an enormous space that may take some time to discover after every sweep.
Although the demo solely lasted a couple of minutes, it nonetheless gave an attention-grabbing new tackle Dune: Awakening, and particularly, how the sport’s survival and MMO components are going to work and meld collectively. There’s nonetheless quite a lot of the sport we have to see in motion, and the demo solely gave fast appears to be like at issues like truly exploring and interacting with the desert, or participating in combat–which looks as if it may be fairly totally different from one participant to the following, relying on what path you resolve to take. However the concepts of questing, surviving, and preventing different gamers for cool, finite assets all sound like intense and enjoyable additions to Dune: Awakening and nice makes use of of the Dune setting. We’ll should preserve ready to see much more, however what Funcom has proven thus far appears to be like promising.