Gamescom 2022 revealed a trailer for Dune: Awakening, a new game set in the world of Frank Herbert's Dune novels. Since this is the first look players have gotten, there isn't much information about the game yet. However, making Dune: Awakening an MMO might not be the right choice to do justice to the source material.
Dune: Awakening will take place on the unforgiving desert planet of Arrakis, where players will need to craft and fight in order to survive. Dune: Awakening is an open-world survival MMO made by Funcom, the same studio that developed Conan Exiles. This means that Dune: Awakening might include the hunger and thirst gauges, which could prove to be difficult to manage on a desert planet.
Funcom's experience in creating a survival MMO will help it avoid the mistakes of Conan Exiles in Dune: Awakening. While the trailer shows a game with the potential to be good, that doesn't necessarily mean that this style will make for a good Dune game. Since Dune is often considered one of the best science fiction series of all time, a game set in its universe needs to allow players to feel the depth of Frank Herbert's world.
Dune Deserves A Single-Player Experience Instead Of An MMO
Dune: Spice Wars is an RTS game, and Dune: Awakening will be an MMO. Of course, there are pros and cons to any genre choice for a video game adaptation of a book series. The first Dune: Awakening trailer shows survival won't be easy, but that's expected when Arrakis is a notoriously harsh environment for its inhabitants. The primary concern for this game is how it will handle its storyline, not necessarily its gameplay. MMOs often have a hard time with storylines, with many of them feeling more bland than anything. Then, MMOs also have a tendency to end up including a lot of tedious quests and NPCs that aren't important or interesting. There are a lot of risks in making an intricate world like Dune fit with the limitations of an MMO.
Not every MMO makes it to release, such as EA's canceled Harry Potter MMO. However, an MMO isn't always the best genre for video game adaptations, and a series like Dune would benefit more from genres that allow the developers to encom and expand upon the rich world Frank Herbert created rather than focusing on the survival and spice trade aspects. Without much known about Dune: Awakening, it's hard to tell if the risk of making it an MMO will pay off. Still, the most potential for a work loyal to the original world is for a dedicated single-player experience, where a game can properly dive into the complex interpersonal web of the gigantic Dune universe.
