Dunes: Despite the many bugs, the first 20 hours of awakening are impressive – closed beta impressions
Blog Andrew Joseph 26 Apr , 2025 0
When I first saw Dune’s demo: Awakening over a year ago, I went from being skeptical that the survival game in the famous Arrakis world could even work, to absolutely being hyped to master it. Now, after enduring nearly 20 hours of durable conditions and hostile life forms in a closed beta, I believe the foundation of the developer Funcom is an absolutely brilliant MMO that makes good use of one of the greatest sci-fi worlds of all time. Gather raw materials from the cruel wasteland, build bases, upgrade your characters and loads, and then bring all of this to the benefits of fighting raiders and competitors’ homes. That said, I still feel like I only have a small taste for larger games, as all the major social spaces, most PVPs, and especially all the important absolute gaming areas are out of reach. No wonder Dune's release date: Awakening was pushed back for a month as I entered Beta, as the build I played was absolutely full of bugs and performance issues that certainly need to be addressed. Even so, the vast majority of people I’ve seen have impressed me and are more optimistic than ever because they may be able to make this apart.
If you've only recently got the spit from Shai Hulud, Dune: Awakening is the upcoming massive multiplayer survival game from the team of developers who give us a fairly underrated Conan exile. The premise is simple: you find yourself on Arrakis and have to find an undead way, and if you even know something about the settings, you should know the height of your order. With a typical survival game, you have almost nothing, then turn a pile of rocks and metal debris harvested from the wild into tools to help you survive, building shelter along the way to protect yourself from harsh environments. While you might (and frankly, not blamed) wondering how to jog in a huge, featureless desert might be fun, Funcom is actually filling every area with the benefits of plundering, hidden caves and forts to explode and traverse your way, mountain range climbing. Despite enough empty space and only a pile of unremarkable sand to say hello, these spaces are actually used for great effect, as the obstacles get you out of the next area and have to browse quickly so that you don't find yourself on the business side of the huge sand worm.
For example, in the early days you would be limited to a small area that was cut off with higher levels of areas that contained better loot and materials and you needed to make better equipment. But the huge distance over the standing sand between walks is the death penalty, because you will undoubtedly draw the attention of angry worms in the process. To get to the other side, you have to go through the steps of structuring the first car, a scooter, and then cross the gap as quickly as possible. This clever use of space skillfully turns what I think is the weakness of the environment into strength and finds a way to travel through completely barren areas, and Shai Hulud is actually some of my favorite moments.
Similarly, the oppressive nature of the sun forces you to dart from shadow areas to shadow areas, turning the entire planet into a high-risk game of “the floor is lava” that can make otherwise from one place to another a fun mini game. Refusing to take the sun seriously will cause you to waste changing water, eliminate your health, and kill you in a short time, which keeps me highly alert and since each area raises the calorie level, you don't have to invent new equipment on the base to get the best chance of survival. Of course, it can be a bit painful for you to blow up in the ruthless heat right now when you hit the head and come back to find where the sun is transferred, but hey, it's just the price you're paying on Arrakis, my friend, I mostly love this little mini game that makes survival even more tricky.
Of course, besides crossing the arid desert and hiding from the sun, you will also fight the bloodthirsty Raiders and explore forgotten places with your gun or sword. Third-person gunfights aren't anything groundbreaking, as you'll be hiding on the cover, throwing away grenades, and recovering fires in a nice debris encounter, but for MMOs with a large number of players on the server, they're still very admirable and they managed to get that feeling, which makes people feel very active. And, there are plenty of skill trees to pick and build from, such as tricky, sneaky characters or expert survivalist planetologists – there are many ways to differentiate your character from the rest of the guild. As for myself, I focused most of my skill points on the tried-and-tested soldiers, which I expected might be a little boring, but was surprised to find myself happy to be able to grab the hook and throw it to the deadly gadget and back and forth.
Running and shooting with friends around you is particularly fun, and there are a few moments, like my partner using her Bene Gesserit skill to force the enemy out of the public, and then I threw a grenade to bring them out and the battle did glow. In beta builds, PVP is also minimal sampling, focusing on several crash sites that allow players to violently, but since the server population is quite low in closed betas, it is difficult to get a sense of motivation in this area. Anyway, the vast majority of PVP hot zones are in the last game zone where I don't allow progress, so it seems we may have to wait for the full game to feel good about PVP.
As a long-time fan of Dunes, it also feels good to explore and further understand the world I really like, although by putting awakening in parallel reality and canon, Funcom has obviously put a lot of effort into world building and knowledge, despite the help of a lot of creative freedom. Few details have a huge impact on gameplay, such as how to treat valuable water as the ultimate resource – you will run out of blood from every fallen enemy, put your own body fluids on stills, and then fall down the base just to plunder every drop of liquid gold, which are hidden. Moreover, as water is needed to make high-level materials for making higher-level equipment, as much harvest and storage as possible besides drinking alcohol. I won't get into the Breaker, but this attention to detail touches almost every aspect of the world, including the factions and characters you encounter along the way, which should be a treat for any ambient fans.
If there is anything to focus on this otherwise fascinating beta, it is that I've had a lot of bugs and performance issues during this period, including everything from crashes to frame dip, characters and objects, strangely sticking out, and so on. With the final version set to debut soon, I felt very relieved when Funcom announced a month-long delay, presumably to fix these issues. As always, it's hard to gauge when Beta is designed to help highlight and patch these issues, but the huge issues my friends and I have when playing games will definitely cause alarms because the release date is so close.
