As one of the most anticipated releases of 2025, Dune: Awakening aims to take players to Frank Herbert’s sci-fi universe. Funcom, the studio behind Conan Exiles, is developing this survival MMO. The game will hit Early Access on PC in early 2025, followed by a later release for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. As the MMO progresses through its closed beta, the information that has been shared states that it will mix survival mechanics with massively multiplayer elements.
Arrakis
Dune: Awakening’s introduction take the form of a conversation with the reverend mother, during which the character’s appearance and characteristics are defined. She then explains that you will be sent to Arrakis, in search of the Fremen people. On Arrakis, you discover an open world with dynamic events, that adapt to changing weather conditions. For instance, you will have to deal with sandstorms and extreme temperature. Dune: Awakening also has a day and night cycle, as well as giant sandworms. The constantly changing landscape requires you to be on your toes while desperately craving water.
According to Joel Bylos, Creative Director of Dune: Awakening, the survival mechanics of the MMO will keep players immersed in the hostility of the environment. Bylos explained in an interview with PC Gamer, “We want them to be continually thinking.” From taking refuge from a sandstorm inside a shelter to avoiding sandworms with the right traversal paths, it indeed looks like players need to think ahead of their actions. If you’re not familiar with the Dune universe, movements can draw the attention of sandworms, as they are sensitive to vibrations. Thus, what may start off as a stroll in the desert can quickly become an intense fight to the death.
Hagga Basin
Dune: Awakening’s plot starts with an exploration of the Hagga Basin, which is a kind of “safe” area. This region teaches you the basics of the game, like gathering resources, crafting, and dealing with the local dangers. Moreover, it acts as a rendezvous point for meeting other players in the early adventure. Hagga Basin is not quite as harsh as the open desert (the endgame zone and pretty much the rest of the map). While many challenges are present, things behave a little differently to allow you to discover the survival mechanics.
Survival mechanics
Survival on Arrakis mainly rely on three systems: shelter, water, and movement. Shelters are the structures that protect against sandstorms and spice emanations. Stillsuits are a full-body suit to filter and conserve bodily moisture. Improving these stillsuits can make a big difference in water saving. These mechanics are complemented by the need to make strategic moves around rocky ground to avoid the constant threat of sandworms.
The desired outcome is to create a layer of tension that governs each of your desert outing. Moreover, sandworms and sandstorms aren’t the only threats. You must remain adaptable, as there are other dangers, too, such as extreme heat and quicksand. These systems ensure that Arrakis’ harshness never leave you.
Construction
As we just mentioned, you can build shelters that also act as bases, to protect yourself from the dangers of Arrakis. These structures can be customized to create a defense, production, or aesthetic that meets your needs. Bases offer various crafting possibilities, including refining enemy’s blood (that you gathered on their corpses) in order to get water or build yourself a vehicle, from a sand bike to an ornithopter.
In addition, construction can be undertaken collaboratively by several players. Also, Dune: Awakening lets you save your constructions as blueprints, letting you redeploy them easily. We also know that another system allows to share or sell these blueprints.
Spice and player progression
Spice is the most important resource in Dune: Awakening. In the MMO, spice confers the possibility to boost your character. You can consume spice to unlock abilities – help in fights, exploration or crafting. Throughout the adventure, spice is a great incentive to go further, establish with a faction and socialize with guilds or groups of players. In the endgame, you will be able to compete for spice blooms, deploy harvesters, and defend them from other players or opportunistic raiders.
Besides, Funcom introduced great crafting and customization systems. You will have the opportunity to customize everything about your character, including weapons, abilities, and crafting specialties. These traits, such as the ability to construct robust fortresses or forge unique items, could turn a player either a valued ally or a fierce adversary in the desert of Arrakis.
Combat gameplay
Dune: Awakening is described as a TPS at heart. The aiming system is fully action-oriented. Nevertheless, the combat takes up ranged weapons, melee, and abilities. This translates into several equipped weapons (firearms, melee weapons, or other – such as the flamethrower) between which you can likely switch freely, three active abilities, and three techniques that I assume are the passives.
One of the cool details is the integration of spice in battle. Using spice grants a character a temporary boost that can be used while fighting. It might increase his reflex to dodge or strengthen his attacks to overpower an opponent. Nevertheless, spice use can be dangerous, as becoming too dependent could be harmful, which reflects a recurring theme in the Dune’s universe. The environment also affects all opposing forces of a conflict. Sandstorms may limit visibility and create chances for surprise attacks, and sandworms will threaten any prolonged battle. When it comes to combat, you are encouraged to adjust quickly and think outside the box.
Classes
In Dune: Awakening, you can choose among five different classes. Classes work in a particular way since picking an orientation will give you some starting points and skills related to your choice, but you are not at all obligated to stay within a defined archetype, and you can mix different talent trees as you progress.
As of today, we know about five classes in Dune Awakening. The first is the Trooper, who will focus on attack and firearms, with very effective combat skills for demolishing terrain or enemies. Trooper starting skills allow you to throw a cable, either at surfaces or enemies, to respectively jump toward this surface or grab this target to you. Thanks to its jetpack and numerous jumps, this class will be revolving a lot around verticality.
The second available class, called Mentat, is kinds of a spy, specialized in reconnaissance. Its starting ability notably allows it to scan all nearby enemies and objects. So it will be very useful to explore and survive easily. With a sniper and gadgets to prevent others from approaching it, it’s a class that will most likely be played at range.
You can also specialize as a Bene Gesserit Acolyte, who is a master of manipulation. Typically, one of its starting abilities allow it to use the Voice to force someone to approach. Note that you won’t necessarily need to make a female character to be able to take a Bene Gesserit, as is normally the case in Dune’s lore. In short, this class can turn your character invisible, perform superhuman dashes, etc. Also, as you can imagine, the more spice you take with this class, the more powerful your character will become
We’ll also have the Swordmaster who specialize in close combat, this class dominate melee thanks to its agility and precision, without neglecting defense. For instance, its starting ability allows it to deflect ranged attacks. So it’s a class that can approach without too much risk thanks to its numerous dashes as well, and might be acting as the game’s tank.
The latest known class is the Planetologist, who will focus on resource gathering. Knowing that the Planetologist loots more and consumes fewer resources, this is a class who will be ideal for gathering sessions. The counterpart is, not benefiting from other classes more offensives starting points and skills, it therefore appears to be a primarily PvE class.
Dune: Awakening features firearms, shields, and melee. It seems that shields will get stronger against bullets but weaker in close combat, with close combat itself being at a disadvantage against firearms, etc. Classic rock-paper-scissor mechanics.
The open desert
The open desert is the wild area of Arrakis, where survival becomes further difficult. This part of the map is about the risks and rewards of going beyond the established area of Hagga Basin. Exploration in the open desert requires careful preparation. Due to the various dangers, this location can pretty much only be crossed using ornithopters (which are flying machines that transport players over great distances with relative safety).
Water is a scarce resource, and there are very few sources. As you navigate uncharted regions and encounter dynamic events, you have to rely on your stillsuits and plan your routes carefully, weighing risk and reward. Due to sandstorms, the environment is always changing, so you should not feel like you are going through the same journey every time. If a sandstorm hits, you might find a new structure you’ve never seen, or you may completely lose a landmark that was already known.
Important treasures can be found out in the open desert. Spice blooms, ancient ruins and strange artifacts lie buried in its vastness — but so do dangers. Opponents groups and raiders would often be attracted to such wealth too, which causes PvP fights. Furthermore, there are also bigger and more dangerous sandworms in this region.
Factions
Although little is yet known about them, factions seem to represent an important aspect of Dune: Awakening, adding depth to both player interactions and the game’s narrative. In principle, when you choose your world of origin during character creation, it is associated with a House (families in the Dune’s lore) – the Atreides or the Harkonnen for now, although a third yet-unknown faction is envisioned in the more distant future. On the face of it, this early choice should not represent a decisive element in the adventure.
Note that guilds that you join will be able to join later on will have to pledge allegiance to one of these two houses. In any case, these faction battles promise epic PvP moments in the open desert! I can’t wait to see what kind of influence the dominant guilds will have over the economy and the server as a whole.
Via the official website:
”Pledge your guild’s loyalty to the Atreides or Harkonnen and manipulate the decisions of the Landsraad, global policy and taxation mandates that affect all players.”
A massively multiplayer experience
At it’s core, Dune Awakening is a massively multiplayer experience, where thousands of players inhabit the landscape of Arrakis. As in Herbert’s books, political intrigue, alliances, and rivalries come to life through machinations between groups of players. Players can create guilds, work together to build bases, and fight for control of spice. Successfully maneuver the game’s social challenges may be just as important as learning the survival mechanics.
The developers emphasized that success in Dune: Awakening will come through collaboration. Working in guilds can make survival on Arrakis much easier, as players can band together to harvest resources, work with their faction and fight against the environment and other players. However, alliances are not always rock-solid, and the competitive nature of the spice harvest means that betrayal and conflict could be ever-present possibilities.
So far, we haven’t had too many insights as to the scale of the PvP battles we can expect to see. However, at the Game Developers Conference 2024 in San Francisco and its subsequent roundtable Q&A, we learned that the MMO will use server meshing. To this day, only Ashes of Creation and Star Citizen (both available in test phases) offer partial implementation of this technology. Personally, I’m (very) excited to see how it turns out!
An alternate timeline
Though Dune: Awakening borrows from Herbert’s rich world, it takes place in an alternate timeline within that universe. It gives the creative freedom to Funcom to introduce new things while still keeping the essence of the original work. The Herbert family involved in the project, ensuring that any deviations from the source material maintain authenticity.
The Shigawire Reels have been a series of teasers released by Funcom that gave glimpses into the game’s narrative framework. Through various reels, viewers are shown the mechanics of stillsuits, sandstorm dangers, social dynamics on Arrakis and other aspects of the world. They also take a look at some lesser-known lore, like the desert mice of Arrakis.
An early 2025 EA PC release
Dune: Awakening is marketed as a next-gen MMO with impressive visuals, dynamic environments and server meshing. The action-oriented gameplay combined with the survival mechanics offer greater depth to its ambitious scope. Nonetheless, the game’s lack of public or NDA-free test, so close to the release, has led some to cast doubt over its quality. The Early Access phase on Steam will be crucial as it will allow Funcom to receive feedback before expanding the MMO on consoles and ultimately to a full release at a later time. Currently, Dune: Awakening shows hopes to bring something fresh to the MMO genre.
