Awakening’s Solo Struggle Reinforces Its Harshest Lesson

Dune: Awakening may technically be an MMO filled with a considerable population of human players, but it frequently goes out of its way to ensure they feel alone as they brave the desert land of Arrakis. Here, the game’s survival elements come into play, which see players practicing water discipline to stay hydrated, staying off the open sands where Dune: Awakening‘s dreaded sandworms lurk below, and ensuring they’re adequately prepared before setting off on an expedition. All of this culminates to reinforce the game’s harshest lesson: on Arrakis, nothing is promised, especially survival.

While Dune: Awakening can certainly be played with friends (and it might even be encouraged), the reality is that players will often find themselves alone in Arrakis. However, despite the game’s MMO label, loneliness is the point. This reality is especially witnessed in those who attempt to go it alone in the desert, as Dune: Awakening‘s solo game is designed to feel like a constant uphill battle. Yet, many players are still likely to walk that path, even knowing that if they choose to do so, they will find no allies in the sand and a world that is constantly out to get them by any means possible.

Dune: Awakening’s Silence Speaks Louder Than Words

Dune: Awakening turns quiet into a weapon, using sparse dialogue and haunting stillness to reinforce its world’s danger, loneliness, and weight.

Dune: Awakening’s Arrakis Offers Nothing, and That’s the Point

No Allies in the Sand

Dune: Awakening rarely holds the player’s hand. Even when it attempts to during its early “tutorial” stage, it quickly becomes apparent that the game doesn’t really care at all about whether players live or die in the game. This is ultimately because Dune: Awakening cares more about creating a version of Dune‘s Arrakis that feels as true to the source material as possible, and it’s all the better for it.

Unfortunately, for those looking for a casual MMO grind set in Frank Herbert’s iconic sci-fi world, they’ll find nothing casual about Dune: Awakening. Just as it refuses to hold their hand in a figurative sense, it also neglects to in a more literal sense. Players will never be accompanied by more than their online friends or a random player who’s willing to take time out of their own schedule to help. However, this isn’t Dune: Awakening holding any hands, but rather giving its community an opportunity to help those in need, should they find it in them to risk their necks for someone they’ve never met and have no emotional investment in.

Dune: Awakening does feature the resource scarcity of traditional survival games, which is one of the main ways it resists solo players.

Other MMOs like World of Warcraft are obviously built around multiplayer gameplay and the idea of players teaming up to accomplish otherwise impossible tasks. But the difference with Dune: Awakening is that these partnerships are never guaranteed. There is no dungeon finder, no AI substitute, and no fallback. If help comes, it comes from another real person, and even then, only if they decide it’s worth the effort. Even so, that uncertainty is what makes Dune: Awakening the survival game that it is.

Loneliness Is a Design Choice

In other words, Dune: Awakening‘s loneliness and solo struggle are both intentional design choices made to ensure Arrakis is the unforgiving land it’s supposed to be. World design, not gameplay, is arguably the main thing Funcom’s survival MMO needed to get right, as it had the impossible task of honoring the legacy of a beloved franchise that is now around six decades old.

Unfortunately, for those looking for a casual MMO grind set in Frank Herbert’s iconic sci-fi world, they’ll find nothing casual about Dune: Awakening.

With an emphasis on the unfortunate result of being alone in Arrakis, Dune: Awakening didn’t even need to feature traditional survival gameplay or progression in order to be considered as much. Instead, survival would be less mechanical and more psychological in Dune: Awakening, where it’s less about overcoming a game’s systems and more about conquering its world.