Dune: Awakening, the survival MMO set in Frank Herbert’s iconic sci-fi world, looks huge. Developer Funcom, the team behind Conan Exiles, showed up at Gamescom with a hefty amount of new gameplay footage to pour over. In addition to giving a release window of early 2025, the footage highlights seemingly every major system you’ll be dealing with in the sandy survival MMO.
Here are the biggest things we saw during Dune: Awakening’s massive gameplay look.
Character creation gives you lots of sliders
The first thing the new gameplay footage showed off was Awakening’s character creation process. It begins with your protagonist’s appearance which you can finetune or choose from a series of presets. The preset characters feel like they would fit right at home in the Denis Villeneuve movies, and the developers say that is intentional. But if you want your hero to be your own then you will have a ton of sliders to customize to your heart’s content. That includes age, height, and more granular features like neck length.
Character creation really gets into the larger Dune lore in its second part, which tasks you with choosing your history. The biggest choice will be who your mentor is as this will determine your starting stats when you finally enter the world. While the mentors were quickly cycled through, it appears that there will be one for every potential playstyle you might want to try out, like the melee-focused sword master that gets up close and personal with enemies.
The world wants to kill you
After character creation we see what will be our first steps onto Arrakis. Awakening (pun intended) in a cave, you’ll get a chance to adjust to the game’s movement and basic crafting before getting pushed out into the dangerous desert. Once you do venture out into the sun you’ll be faced with a series of environmental challenges to constantly juggle. Heat, sun exposure, and hydration are all going to affect how you move and fight in the world.
Navigating in the shadows of the desert is a necessity, as the longer you are in the sun the closer you are to getting one of many debuffs the game can inflict on you. You’ll also have to look out for ways to scavenge water from plants and even the blood of your enemies to stay alive. Dune: Awakening is a survival game at its core so you should be ready for the world to fight back against you at all times. That includes giant sandworms that can show up while you walk around the desert. Like in established lore, it looks like there isn’t much to do when these giant beasts show up (not at first), so you simply need to rush to safety as fast as you can.
The spice will flow
One status effect that Dune: Awakening teased is related to spice. You can get overexposed to the drug of Arrakis and succumb to some mysterious effect that the developers only teased in the preview. Due to how spice is connected with the more mystical side of the Dune lore, I would theorize that spice might unlock special powers or narrative secrets, though there will likely be some price you have to pay for such forbidden knowledge.
Movement mechanics let you zoom all over the place
One of the coolest parts of the gameplay showcase was seeing all the movement tech Awakening has both in and out of combat. There is freeform climbing that lets you scale any surface you see, grappling hook-like tools that let you zip up and across large spaces, and the suspensor belt that lets you hover over gaps.
Dune: Awakening looks to be an extremely fluid game with a surprising amount of verticality. That extends to combat, which lets you zip around arenas to get the jump on enemies. Even out in the desert, which you might expect to be flat as far as the eye can see, you can use movement tech to scale the rocky outcroppings scattered across the map.
Combat is all about customization
When fighting enemies (NPCs or other players, as this is an online game) you’ll have a wealth of different ways to approach combat. There various classes focus on melee, firearms, or mystical skills that give you special insight into your opponents’ abilities. There are some extensive skill trees and it looks like you can pick and choose abilities on the fly to tackle any situation..
For example, shields are a big part of combat. Traditional firearms that use bullets aren’t effective against shields so you’ll need to craft dart weapons or focus on up-close melee combat. Some enemies will be shielded so you’ll need to constantly be aware of changing out your skills and arsenal of weapons.
Build for yourself or for friends
Once you get the hang of surviving you’ll want to stake your claim in the land in order to build a base of operations. First you need to craft a special item that lets you build on a plot of land, a plot that you will then need to pay taxes to the emperor for. Building can be visualized with holographic 3D plans and can be built by either you or an online friend. Your favorite designs can be saved and used anywhere else you decide to build, or you can sell them to other players.
Once you have a base you’ll start crafting machines that allow you to purify blood into drinkable water or build vehicles. Land vehicles make traversing the desert faster and flying vehicles will unlock even more of Arrakis.
The wider world of Dune
Once you have a flying vehicle you’ll get access to player hubs. These are larger social spaces in the cities of Arrakis. Player hubs let you connect with other players to trade or form guilds with. There are also vendors to buy from and story-oriented quests to pursue in these hub areas.
Hubs are also the home of the game’s main two factions: the Harkonnens and the Atreides. You’ll be able to pledge allegiance to either faction in order to shape the future of Arrakis.
While grouped up with friends you can tackle testing stations. These are Awakening’s version of dungeons and offer a challenge to tackle with friends. In addition to some of the best loot and resources, each testing station also has its own story to unravel as you take down enemies.
This is the endgame
The final part of the gameplay showcase teased Awakening’s tough as nails endgame. This will center around large explosions of spice in the deep desert. As spice is a sought-after resource, these explosions will call every player around to come collect, turning the race for the resource into massive high level battles against players and the environment. If things go south for you and you want to throw a wrench into the fight for spice you’ll even be able to call in one of the game’s massive sandworms to put a timer on how long players can stay around before getting eaten. These large scale events look to be the highlight of Dune: Awakening.
You’ll be able to conquer the deserts of Arrakis for yourself when Dune: Awakening launches early next year on PC.
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