Steam says I’ve been playing Dune: Awakening now for 114 hours.
That’s a lot of time — more time than I spend playing a lot of games, and I’m still probably fairly far from being “done”.
It’s not really easy to define that — “done” — for open world survival games like Dune. There is a plot that runs through the game, and there’s the run of progression through levels and skill trees, and high level zones to work toward. But, you can always build another base, run another dungeon (I mean, “research stations”), craft another ornithopter, explore the nooks and crannies.
The plot. I don’t know what the plot is; they reveal it only in bits and pieces.
All players know they were sent here by the Imperium to track down the remnants of the Fremen people, the desert nomads whose history included being kicked off many planets before finally settling down in the most inhospitable one of them all, Arrakis. Like the Arab peoples finding their lifeless landscape included unimaginable oil riches, in the Dune mythos, the Fremen discovered that their new home was the galaxy’s only source of “Spice”, the ridiculously addictive drug that provides long life, psychic powers, and the ability to fold space and time.
Everyone wants it, even though withdrawal is fatal. The Imperium doesn’t really care much for Fremen interference with the spice trade, and so in this timeline, without Paul Atreides, the white savior who leads the Fremen on a jihad against the Imperium in the books, the Emperor has no trouble wiping out all traces of the Fremen and mining spice without resistance. But there are troubling signs that the Fremen still remain, in some deep dark pocket of the planet. The underground reservoirs empty as soon as they are discovered. Installations are destroyed. Prisoners are sent to Dune with one mission: follow the footsteps of the Fremen, become one of them, find them, and destroy them.
The ones sent before you have gone insane with their spice powers. They’re yours to kill, and as you do, a glowing tattoo appears on their cheek — the same tattoo you were given when you were sent on the mission. It gradually becomes clear that you were not chosen randomly, and neither were the others. You have knowledge you shouldn’t have. What is easy for you is hard for others. You have secret skills nobody else can learn.
Parallel to this is the Valheim-style progression of biomes. You start in a crowded place of rocks and surprisingly easy access to water (via dew) and other resources. If there weren’t the tutorial quests pushing you to move, there’d be little reason not to just set up a little fiefdom of your own in the place where you spawned.
But the quests do make you move to the stomping grounds of Shai Hulud, the deadly, enormous sandworms that respond to any motion with deadly force, coming over the horizon, arrowing straight at you, at incredible speed. If the heat doesn’t get you, the drum sands will. It’s here you get your first vehicle, a sandbike.
Next up for vehicles is a sand buggy and introduction to the next level of zones — the multilevel Hagga Rift and the pillars of al-Jabib. These bring quicksand that will help the sandworm get to you as it holds you fast. Last comes the Eastern and Western shield walls that block access to the Deep Desert. The Deep Desert is where it all happens.
We play on a privately hosted server. There’s nobody on the server who is even slightly interested in killing anyone else. The Deep Desert is… different. It’s a shared zone, shared with a few dozen other servers, and you can kill anyone you see. As they say, the Laws of Kanly do not apply in the Deep Desert. The loot is better there. There’s resources there that can’t be found anywhere else. And, of course, there’s the spice. Spice explodes in a glorious indigo volcano and starts a race against time to harvest it before sandworms converge on the spice blow. They always come.
Tonight, Calrain and I were exploring the DD. We couldn’t zone to the overworld with both of us in his assault thopter, so I brought mine. I had my bike stored in my vehicle backup tool, which meant, when we got to the DD, that I couldn’t just land my thopter, store it, and have Calrain pick me up. I had to leave the bike behind. So I did, on a random base we found.
Not ten minutes later, someone asks, on broadcast, who it was that left their sandbike on the roof of their base?
Oops. Cal and I finished up the research facility we were looting and headed back. I’d just take my thopter; we could split up and cover more territory. We found a few shipwrecks and another research station, got some nice loot.
144 hours in, and I’m more or less at edge of the endgame. But there really isn’t much more. Finish the storyline, see where that goes, but there is no World vs World here; there’s no territory to hold. There is the Lansraad, a non-governmental entity that takes votes from all the Great Houses on boons and penalties to be applied for the next week. An endgame possibility is influencing the lesser Great Houses to vote your way on things, but there’s not really any huge benefit. Guilds are recognized for their Lansraad influence, but… who cares?
This, I think, is the point where Dune: Awakening falls short. The Deep Desert and the Lansraad is the endgame, but it’s a pretty weak endgame. Just as in Valheim, once you have killed the final boss and built your best base, there really isn’t a reason to continue.
I’m going to finish the storyline, play in the Deep Desert for awhile, but, I think, for me, the endgame will literally be the end of the game. Which is fine; there’s other games to play.
The reason I made it this far is the most important reason. I’m playing with friends. Getting in chat, dominating stuff with others — this is fun. If I were playing entirely solo, this would be my stopping point. But as long as there’s someone else who wants to go put themselves in extreme danger with me, hey, sign me up.
Header image was generated by Midjourney by a prompt written by ChatGPT. LLMs, working together! Below is the starting point. The header is the endpoint. There were lots of attempts between them.
Don’t forget the inevitable expansions
Are they scheduled?