Tony's Review of Dune Awakening

Dune Awakening

I have been reading Dune for decades. The original novels, the expansions, the missteps, the reinterpretations. Frank Herbert’s work, particularly the early books, helped shaped how I think about science fiction, about systems, myth, power, and consequence. Dune Awakening is one of the most ambitious attempts yet to translate that world into an interactive form, and ambition on this scale deserves a serious, long form response. While you will find much, I say critical. I want to say I do like the game and still play it even now, but less so.

Lore and the Alternate Timeline

Dune Awakening places itself in an alternate Dune timeline, and readers of Frank Herbert will immediately recognize the logic behind the divergence. This is not a careless rewrite. It is a deliberate shift rooted in Bene Gesserit design.

In this version of events, Lady Jessica was always on a mission and carried it out exactly as the Bene Gesserit intended. There is no defiance, no emotional fracture, and no disruption of the Sisterhood’s long term plan. That single success is enough to alter the course of history. Without Jessica’s deviation, the familiar path that leads to Paul Atreides never fully forms, and the political, religious, and ecological consequences that define classic Dune never ignite in the same way.

Because the divergence is grounded in established lore, the alternate universe remains immediately recognizable. Arrakis still feels like Arrakis. The power structures, cultural pressure, and ideological weight of the setting remain intact. Longtime readers will recognize this as a logical “what if,” not a rejection of canon.

Where the game struggles is in how it handles the most fundamental truth of Arrakis: water is life. Early on, water management matters. Stillsuits feel essential. Survival feels earned. Over time, however, water becomes increasingly abundant, and with that abundance comes a steady erosion of tension and meaning.

As water becomes easier to acquire, the stillsuit does not simply lose efficiency, it loses relevance. It shifts from being a defining survival technology to something many players abandon entirely in favor of heavier armor types with clearer mechanical advantages. With carried water replacing conservation, characters begin to feel less like desert survivors and more like standard RPG adventurers.

This undermines both immersion and theme. Even in an alternate timeline shaped by Bene Gesserit success, Arrakis should remain unforgiving. When water stops being scarce, the planet itself loses its narrative edge.

The alternate timeline works. The lore foundation is strong. But by softening water scarcity and diminishing the long term importance of stillsuits, the game weakens the very identity it claims to honor.

Gameplay and Content Depth

There is no shortage of content. Roughly five hundred hours of total quest and activity gameplay is nothing to dismiss. The trials stand out in particular, offering some of the most focused and rewarding experiences in the game. They feel deliberate rather than padded, moments where the game briefly aligns mechanics, setting, and challenge.

The newest DLC is solid, but ultimately lacking in depth. It adds content without meaningfully expanding systems or narrative. What is there is enjoyable, but it feels like an extension rather than an evolution.

Progression pacing is another problem. Players level out of the phases too quickly, which weakens the sense of struggle that should define life on Arrakis. Survival should linger. Here, it rushes past.

Quest design is inconsistent. Many objectives are confusingly communicated or poorly structured, leading to frustration rather than discovery. Too often, difficulty comes from unclear direction rather than meaningful challenge.

Mechanics and Immersion Breaks

Movement and traversal are among the game’s weakest elements. Being forced to physically collide with a barrier to exit Hagga Basin is immersion breaking in the most literal sense. It feels artificial, a reminder that the player is navigating systems rather than inhabiting a world.

Combat is functional but clunky.

Ground combat works well enough to remain enjoyable, but it lacks fluidity. Air combat fares worse. Maneuverability is limited, and encounters lack the tension and improvisation of true dogfighting.

These mechanical shortcomings compound the lore problems. When movement and combat feel rigid, the illusion of Arrakis as a living, hostile environment begins to fracture.

End Game and Long Term Play

The end game is where Dune Awakening’s limitations become most visible. While the deep desert does change, it does so within recognizable patterns. Over time, repetition sets in, and exploration loses its sense of discovery.

Deep desert testing stations offer moments of real difficulty, but there are not enough of them, nor enough variation, to sustain long term play. Once mastered, they become routine rather than evolving challenges.

There are early warning signs of power creep. While not fully realized yet, it is easy to see how future gear additions could outpace combat depth if progression continues vertically instead of laterally. Without expanding combat systems alongside equipment, balance issues feel inevitable.

Spice harvesting with a sand crawler stands out as one of the few end game activities that genuinely demands cooperation. It is difficult, risky, and one of the rare moments where players truly need help from others.

Unfortunately, it stands largely alone, underscoring how little end game content actively enforces group play in a game positioning itself as an MMO.

The Landsraad system is another major end game pillar and, conceptually, one of the game’s strongest ideas. Large scale faction buffs tied to House Atreides or House Harkonnen make sense both mechanically and thematically. In theory, this should be the backbone of sustained faction play.

In practice, it falls short. Landsraad objectives can be completed cooperatively but function just as easily as solo activities. Item requirements remain largely static, turning participation into routine rather than strategy. Buff balance is uneven, and while options rotate, there is almost always a clearly superior choice.

The associated PvP mode, structured as a capture the flag style activity, gestures toward large scale conflict but never commits to it. Players are not meaningfully incentivized to coordinate, either because rewards are too easily obtained or because they are not worth the effort required.

Even reward delivery undermines immersion. House representatives are permanently stationed in fixed, often illogical locations. High ranking faction figures hidden in cliffs or buried in rifts make little sense, and because they never move, even the act of discovery loses relevance after the first encounter.

Sandworms still deliver unforgettable moments when they appear, but those moments are too few and far between. Given how central worms are to the identity of Dune, they should shape end game play more consistently rather than appearing as occasional spectacle.

PvP as a whole is intentionally not evaluated here. Based on time spent on the servers played, there has not been enough exposure to comment responsibly.

Systems, Additions, and What’s Still Missing

Several upcoming features are necessities rather than optional improvements. The carrier container and base saver systems are needed, and while their arrival is welcome, they highlight gaps that should have been addressed earlier.

Allowing players to cross barriers with a sand crawler is an excellent addition and meaningfully improves exploration. However, it feels like a feature that should have launched with the game rather than arriving later.

These changes point in the right direction, but they also underline how incomplete some core systems still feel.

Final Thoughts

Dune Awakening is an ambitious game with genuine strengths and equally real weaknesses. It understands the shape of Dune, and at times it captures the danger, scale, and tension of Arrakis remarkably well. When it succeeds, it does so by trusting its setting and letting the world impose its will on the player.

Its flaws are clear. Water scarcity softens too much over time. End game content lacks variety and meaningful cooperation. Several systems feel unfinished or overly convenient. Yet none of these problems feel irreparable.

If the developers continue iterating, expanding content, and focusing particularly on end game systems, this game can have a bright future. The foundation is solid. What it needs now is growth with intent, deeper cooperative play, and a willingness to let Arrakis remain harsh rather than comfortable.

Dune has always been about consequences.Dune Awakening has not fully embraced that yet.

But it still can.