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The rebooted Dune movies have been massive. Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi classic has been enjoyed by a brand new audience but now it’s time to focus on Funcom’s re-imagined Dune world, where religion is less prominent and where Paul Atreides was never born. Can Dune: Awakening find its place among gamers while straying from the lore of the original?
Funcom’s new MMO veers off from Herbert’s storyline when the alternate timeline that Jessica Atreides creates by choosing to give birth to a daughter instead of Paul, begins a cascading chain of events. Paul’s absence leads to a huge power vacuum into which players will venture, creating their own story.
So immediately that is going to be disliked by those loyal to the book, but it does let the devs create a war-torn version of Arrakis where you can forge your own path and become a major player in the control of Spice.
Funcom has been here before of course, with the hugely popular Conan MMO and we have a feeling it will put a lot of what it has learned there into action with Dune: Awakening many of its plans were spoken about in a 30-minute showcase which you can read all about on the website.
“Making the world feel seamless and connected has always been one of our goals on Dune: Awakening,” said Joel Bylos, Dune Awakening’s Creative Director. “We built this structure with the idea of making the game expandable, which is difficult with a single map. The idea with the overland map is that it allows us to just keep building the world and giving players new spaces to explore. Who knows what it will look like 5 years from now?”
Dune: Awakening has now entered a persistent Closed Beta phase ahead of its epic gameplay review at Gamescom in August.
