As exhibited during Summer Game Fest 2024, Dune : Awakening almost chooses political fiction by imagining a world without Paul Atreides, where his mother Jessica consciously chooses to have a little girl (yes, that makes sense in context). An act far from trivial since without a direct heir for the noble house Atreides and without a messiah for the Fremen, history takes a different turn, bogging down Arrakis and its spice reserves in an endless Assassin War. It is in this context that we will create an avatar to forge a future in the desert.
Fun in the sea of sand
And Funcom insists precisely on giving us character creation. In addition to the usual facial and body modeling, we will also be able to choose a planet of origin, which will influence our dialogue options: growing up on the Imperial Oasis Kaitain opens up political choices while being raised on Giedi Prime, an industrial lair of the awful Harkonnen, teaches us to deceive our interlocutor. We can also determine our social caste (nobleman, civil servant or serf). Finally, we will have to opt for a specific mentor influencing our skills: a Mentat, a veteran soldier, a skilled swordsman like Duncan Idaho or a Bene Gesserit. Yes, we can learn the Voice to give orders to NPCs. No, Dune : Awakening will not be restrictive and a Mentat can learn soldier techniques if you feel like it.
Once our avatar has been determined, the Bene Gesserit order will send us to find the Fremen, supposedly missing from the surface of Arrakis. According to creative director Joel Bylos, Dune : Awakening will distinguish itself from other survival games with a “clear story” to follow for those interested despite a certain freedom of action. Among the narrative threads put forward, we will necessarily have the conflict between Atréides and Harkonnen but also the engagement of Ariste Atréides, daughter of Jessica and Leto, to the barony on the order of the Bene Gesserit, as well as the emergence of small groups in the abandoned camps of the Fremen Our exploration of the secret sietchs will not be without clashes. We will also have to follow the lessons left by the Fremen to learn to live in the. desert through a series of trials.
Finally, Joel Bylos addresses the question of the MMO / survival mix. The creative director specifies that different “worlds”, different Arrakis will be available, each bringing together several servers corresponding to playable locations with a more or less high ceiling of active players. For example, everyone will start in Hagga Basin, a tutorial location where we will have to build our first ornithopter. This will open the world map where we can connect to other locations, other servers, like the safe zone of the Harko village or the deep desert, PvPvE zone with several hundred simultaneous players. Bylos specifies that the deep desert will be restructured by a giant storm every week to offer new points of interest and stimulate our curiosity.
Dune : Awakening does not yet have a release date. However, Funcom is meeting us at Gamescom 2024 to discover the gameplay.
