How do you adapt a giant sci-fi series into a massively-multiplayer game? We flew to Norway to learn more about Dune: Awakening.
The survival MMO will, appropriately for a game set on a desert planet, have what its creators call"sandbox combat."One of the things Denis Villeneuve's Dune film highlights is that warfare on Arrakis relies on some quite contrasting flavors of fighting. When the soldiers of House Atreides and House Harkonnen clash in the movie, aircraft are raining artillery fire from above while warriors protected by Holtzman shields duel with old-fashioned blades down below.
That's a scenario your bog-standard hotbar of abilities on cooldowns wouldn't be able to do justice. Which is why game director Viljar Sommerbakk says,"Combat in our game is much more second-to-second and intense than you would find in an MMO, for instance." Funcom is drawing on previous experience and expertise there: Sommerbakk was world designer for Anarchy Online while Bylos was creative director on Conan: Exiles, and both worked as designers on Age of Conan.
That kind of intense, overlapping combat is one of five pillars the developers describe Dune: Awakening as being built on. The five pillars are Survival, Politics and intrigue, Infinite exploration, Combined arms combat, Expression and customization. Yes, if you put them all together they spell out a cute acronym: SPICE.
Both Bylos and Sommerbakk are keen to emphasize the role of survival in particular, with thirst a significant consideration, and one that will scale up just like combat."Water discipline is an important part of survival," Sommerbakk says."In the beginning it might just be water for yourself, in the end you might need industrial levels of water because you have industrialized your base. And the storms are an important part of survival as well.
"In the end you might even be riding the storms of the desert to actually gain access to unique resources," he continues."But you always need to return and every time you go out you have to be careful of the worm. Because if you get caught by the worm there will be nothing left of you, and you will leave nothing behind."
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