Dune: Awakening review: an MMO as dense as its source material

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The first lesson I learned in Dune: Awakening was that I couldn’t take Arrakis lightly.

I was still learning the ways of the desert when I attempted to cross a vast open stretch of sand toward my next quest objective. I hadn’t even trekked halfway across the dunes before my heat meter was over half full, threatening sunstroke, and my hydration levels were empty. I didn’t have time to notice when the vibration waves at the bottom of my screen turned red and a Sandworm was bearing down on me. I diverted course to a closer rocky outcropping and sprinted as fast as my legs could carry me, reaching salvation mere moments before the worm’s jaws could swallow me whole.

I had but a moment of respite before a desert storm rolled in and drained what little health I had after my dehydration penalty. Such is life on Arrakis.

As an MMO that has the daunting task of adapting a once unadaptable book, Dune: Awakening impresses by fully investing in its world and lore. It expects the same of its players too, and that’s where things can get rocky. You’ll need to fully commit to the demanding journey to get the most out of it, appreciating the way it uses its rich source material to inform almost all the lore and systems. Those who can’t quite navigate its tricky onboarding process may find themselves lost in the sand.

Welcome to Arrakis

The first dozen or two hours of Dune: Awakening are a crawl. After creating a character and picking my background that determines my starting class, the MMO rushes to get my boots in the sand. As someone who has a surface-level knowledge of the Dune universe, whatever story setup the game was attempting to present went completely over my head. I imagine anyone fluent in the terms, cultures, and politics of Dune would appreciate how faithful Awakening is, but for an outsider, it was all but incomprehensible beyond the big picture. That might pose a challenge to those more casual fans who have only come to the series recently through its blockbuster movies.

Once arriving on Arrakis, a prolonged tutorial section showed me the ropes. The survival mechanics aren’t just for background flavor you interact with here and there. They are core to how you engage with the world. The threat of sunstroke means I have to plot my path to make sure I hit patches of shade along the way, and thirst is an ever-present concern. We’ve seen versions of those plenty of times, but what is unique to Awakening are the Sandworms. Attempting to cross any open expanse of desert will begin to draw the attention of these gargantuan predators. Getting swallowed isn’t just an instant death; it’s also the only way you can die that makes it impossible to reclaim any of your lost inventory.

The act of seeking out water, shade, and also charting my path between safe spots while crossing the map like playing a giant game of the floor is lava keeps even basic traversal engrossing. The only issue is that I was asked to do so much traveling back and forth across the tutorial area before getting access to any other form of transportation that it started to feel like a chore.

A similar strategy is attempted with mining and crafting, though not as successfully. Materials can be scooped up from the ground or mined from large deposits using a scanning tool. Again, Awakening doesn’t want to let my attention go during the process. Scanning a rock or hunk of metal I can mine highlights a short blue line that I need to trace with my tool. The more precise I am with my tracing, the more yield I receive from that resource. It’s simple and doesn’t slow the process down, though I wonder if I would feel different after a hundred hours.

Dune: Awakening is all about delayed gratification.

Base building also feels at odds with my instincts. Rather than establishing and investing my time into one robust base to call home, Dune: Awakening frequently makes me abandon my previous settlements to make new ones as I reach later areas. Eventually, I stopped putting any creativity or personality into my base knowing I’d have to start over again in a few hours.

Crafting is the main path to progression outside of class skills, so you need to be filling your pockets with all those rocks and bits of metal, as well as invest in a base or two. Awakening is all about delayed gratification. Instead of getting loot at the end of a quest or dungeon, I’m almost always rewarded with a schematic. This needs to be researched before I can craft and use it, which itself can be a multi-step process depending on what types of materials or tools I need to make it. It’s a lot to manage, and the UI gets unwieldy fast as you build up a catalogue of recipes and craftables, but there is a certain satisfaction to going through all the steps to make that new weapon or vehicle. And there’s always something on the horizon drawing your attention to strive for.

This isn’t a game you can expect to make meaningful progress in playing casually. Dune: Awakening wants to dominate your time. As soon as you break free of the tutorial area the long-term goals reveal themselves. The road from digging scrap metal and copper ore out of the sand to building sand crawlers to harvest spice in the PvP zone and joining in on the intimidatingly deep political struggle between the two major factions (Atreides and Harkonnen) that all guilds must align with that has ramifications on the entire game world promises more than enough to keep even the most passionate players busy for months.

Nothing to fear

As threatening as the environment is in Dune: Awakening, the same cannot be said for the NPCs. In all my hours with it, I encountered roughly three types of enemies: one melee attacker and two ranged. These types pose no strategic threat and only become a problem if I was underleveled or outnumbered and taken by surprise. Melee attackers always rush me head-on, and ranged units stand out in the open with very little sense of self-preservation or tactics.

The special Dune flavoring to combat is in shields, which work just like they do in the source material and completely negate any projectile or fast melee strike. The only counter is to use a dedicated slow knife attack to pierce it, which keeps combat from becoming totally mindless and dull. Otherwise, the shooting is serviceable at best and melee feels weightless and unreliable. If you’re here for exciting battles, you won’t find them here. That’s ultimately what cuts any desire to run dungeons or grind for end-game weapons and armor down at the knees — it isn’t fun to get, nor is it fun to use compared to all the more unique ways I can engage with Awakening.

The MMO aspect of it all doesn’t feel necessary until I got close to the end game. There were no quests or dungeons I encountered during my natural progression that inspired me to ask around town for some help, much less required it. There are easy ways to form temporary groups with other players milling around the main towns to run small dungeons together, harvest spice, or engage in PvP faction fights, but the game will never push you to do so until the end game. I can see it being a much more enjoyable experience as a co-op title with a group of friends than anything else. There are tons of systems in place for small groups to share resources, collaborate on bases, and help one another survive and advance much faster, but only once Guilds and the large-scale political mechanics come into play does the massive shared world feel earned.

PvP naturally avoids all the issues I had with PvE combat, but introduces its own headaches. Other players are far more capable and unpredictable than AI, plus have access to any weapons and abilities you might, but the core mechanics of Awakening just don’t feel built for how two or more players fighting turns out. Between shields, carried items, and mobility options, the time to kill can be agonizing. My first PvP fight was a one-on-one duel that lasted upwards of 15 minutes because neither one could manage to drop the other’s defenses and land enough damage before they could retreat, recharge, and then return to the fight. In the end, I let myself lose just to escape an endless loop.

The slow pace and harsh survival systems could be too big a barrier …

Large-scale PvP in the Deep Desert is more intriguing compared to the smaller PvP areas within the main map. This is where the best loot in the game is, but also the most deadly environmental hazards. The chaos of multiple threats and targeted objectives to encourage aggression doesn’t allow for the same prolonged battle as individual engagements.

There’s an undeniable appeal to living in the world of Dune. Spotting a giant sandworm breach the surface on the horizon while zipping across the dunes on my makeshift sandbike never fails to create a sense of awe and dread. However, Dune: Awakening expects its players to be fully committed to its world to get the most out of it. If you’re willing to invest yourself for the long haul and don’t mind the barebones combat, this could be your dream Dune experience. For everyone else, the slow pace and harsh survival systems could be too big a barrier to get to the meat of the experience.

Dune: Awakening was tested on PC.