For the last hour or so of our gameplay, Dune: Awakening devs spawned in an Ornithopter for us to play with. It was, by far, one of the safest and fastest forms of travel to this point, although how far into the base game players are required to advance before obtaining one legitimately is unknown. We could cross the entire basin in a fraction of the time it took us to run it. It also made finding scavenger camps, loots, and secrets on top of stone structures much easier. For example, we immediately flew for the tallest landmark we could see and found a downward spiraling cave just begging to be explo

Visually, **Dune: Awakening ** looks like it's set in the world of Denis Villeneuve's Dune movie adaptations, with the studio behind these films, Legendary, having shared assets with the development team at Funcom, as well as inviting them on set. Despite this, the game's story has made at least one massive change from the book and the movies that could have major consequences going forward.

Even in the starting zone, the sandworms can be deadly. The best way to avoid them is to stay off of the large dunes as much as possible - there's a vibration meter at the bottom of your screen which informs you if the worms are close or

Combat can go any number of ways in survival games, and Dune: Awakening finds itself somewhere right in the middle. It is fun and serviceable, even if it is not exactly groundbreaking for the genre. Players can acquire new skills throughout the skill trees, based on archetypes in Dune like the Bene Gesserit , and use those in various combat encounters. Because of my choices at the start of the game, I began with a deployable turret. Throughout my time with the game, it became my go-to skill because it would consistently kill all enemies in the area very quickly. I later acquired a deployable shield wall that would also let me protect myself and let the turret put in the work. The combination was fun, although there were times when I had (or wanted) to get involved myself. My third skill was effectively a poison grenade, but I only used it if my turret couldn't be deplo

Following the main quest will also help you quickly get a sandbike , which makes getting around the desert much, much faster. One of the biggest chokepoints for quick progression in Dune: Awakening is just how long it takes to walk from each point of interest, or to the trading p

Typically, six hours with a game is enough to really get a vibe for the title. That's not really the case with Dune: Awakening because there is so much to it that we couldn't experience in this timeframe. Dune: Awakening has a lot of unique mechanical elements, and that's probably what stood out the most. The mechanics are fully Dune and can be fun to play with. However, having just played six hours of a game that Funcom hopes keeps players immersed for hundreds of hours, it's hard to say how much we really experienced the game. If anything, it felt like a few grains of sand in the otherwise endless dunes of Arra

As Frank Herbert wrote in the first Dune novel, "Beginnings are such delicate times," and players who are dumped on Arrakis and forced to survive are, indeed, living through delicate times. At a surface level, Dune: Awakening 's gameplay is as demanding as the sands of Arrakis. It has a clear audience, targeting hardcore survival players and lifelong Dune fans who appreciate its more hard sci-fi approach, and the game's various features and mechanics would fit right into a Dune novel. I was recently invited to Oslo, Norway to play Dune: Awakening , and after six hours with it, it's clear there's a lot of depth in its mechan

You will need to use your Cutteray to scan the ship and then slice open the side, which will be marked by a blue line. Try each side of the ship, as the panel you need to cut away can be on any side of

Traversing across the sands can attract sandworms that will devour the player, taking all their gear, items, and - if nearby - their vehicles. Dune: Awakening 's sandworms devour and destroy everything, while standard deaths in conventional combat lead to minor losses. It not only helps realize the dangers of Arrakis, but ensures players are mindful of what they are carrying where. The demoist showed us a couple of vehicles players could use, all derived from the dune awakening secrets franchise obviously, and losing them in such a vast world is no doubt a serious loss, alongside any high-level gear. Players could craft that gear again, but it requires finding the schematic, necessary materials, and so forth. Gaining anything in Dune: Awakening is an investment, and the sandworm can just wipe that all cl

We were supposed to use the sandbike to navigate to the second Trial of Aql, but it was far to the north of our location. While all movement to this point involved us crossing the open sands as little as possible, out of appropriate fear of sandworms, we needed to use the sandbike to cross a large open area. We knew it was a risk, but we did not leave anything behind in the base. Attempting to make that crossing led to our sandbike and us being devoured by one of Dune: Awakening 's sandwor