How Dune: Awakening Utilizes Environmental Storytelling

Although it hasn't been out for very long, Funcom's survival MMO Dune: Awakening has already been labeled more of an MMO that pretends to be a survival game than a survival game in the traditional sense. This is largely due to the fact that progression isn't necessarily tied to the survival aspects of Dune: Awakening as it is in most other games in the genre. Instead, Dune: Awakening takes a classic MMO approach to progression, which sees players primarily moving forward through MMO-style exploration, reputation building, and player-driven world events.

However, in most MMOs, players are funneled through a linear sequence of quests and dialogue-heavy hubs that explicitly guide them through a story and their exploration and events. While that is somewhat true of Dune: Awakening, it could easily be argued that Arrakis, not dialogue and quests, is the primary storyteller and the true motivator behind every action players take in the game. Within that space, it becomes more of a survival game and effectively breaks genre expectations as a result.

Dune: Awakening Review

Dune: Awakening thrives in atmosphere, worldbuilding, and survival depth, even if its combat and grind somewhat drag behind its setting and systems.

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By Josh Cotts

Dune: Awakening Tells Its Story Without Saying a Word

The Silence of Arrakis

Perhaps more than anything else, Arrakis is the one thing Dune: Awakening needed to get right, as it is better as a Dune game than a survival game with a Dune skin. The expansive desert is arguably the star of the show in Funcom's survival MMO, and that design philosophy is really what makes the game's MMO label so interesting. By and large, Dune: Awakening breaks MMO genre expectations by decentralizing the role of NPCs and quests and instead treating Arrakis as the main narrative driver.

While the game begins with plenty of dialogue from a seemingly friendly NPC who is merely there to initiate the player into the unforgiving world of Dune: Awakening, that dialogue-heavy progression eventually tapers off and leaves players with nothing but the open sands in front of them, lessons learned from the brief experiences behind them, and a cryptic clue about where to go next. In this moment, Arrakis is silent but for the occasional wind and storms, and the player is alone, with no one but Dune: Awakening's sandworms beneath their feet to accompany them.

Perhaps more than anything else, Arrakis is the one thing Dune: Awakening needed to get right, as it is better as a Dune game than a survival game with a Dune skin.

The world at large is relatively quiet, and much of Dune: Awakening's lore isn't told but discovered. Players uncover narrative through things like Shigawire reels, audio logs in abandoned ecology labs, and scattered filmbooks that can only be found through extensive exploration and insatiable curiosity. These bits and pieces help the world itself to be the story, and players have to engage with their environment to understand it.

A Planet That Pushes Back

Even so, within this silence is a call to push forward and survive, thereby making Dune: Awakening's survival elements more like underpinnings that close the gap between its take on Arrakis and that of its source material. The planet itself is a hostile force that reinforces the lore through gameplay. Sunstroke, dehydration, and Coriolis storms all tell players that Dune: Awakening's Arrakis is unforgiving, and it always has been.

Caves offer shade, not safety. Spice haulers lay wrecked across the dunes, suggesting failed operations and constant struggle. Even player bases in Dune: Awakening help serve the story, as they are built into rocks and shielded from the wind, but only serve as temporary answers to a more permanent, untamable problem. The architecture, hazards, and even the silence between storms make the world feel alive and indifferent, and yet that same silence tells more of a story than most of the game's NPCs.

By embedding much of its story into the landscape rather than the dialogue, Dune: Awakening turns exploration into interpretation. Sure, it offers players a neatly wrapped original narrative, but Arrakis is still more of a storyteller in its hidden lore and harshness. That shift in perspective subverts what players might expect from an MMO, but it's all the better for it.

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