Dune: Awakening, an MMO, showed off its massive desert maps and gave players a glimpse of game elements and what they can look forward to seeing when the game launches.
Developer Funcom released its second Dune: Awakening Direct, which had game director Joel Bylos revealing more details about the upcoming survival MMO.
One of the first things that people learned was that the game recently entered the persistent Closed Beta phase following previous limited Closed Beta events.
New Dune MMO Showcase
(Photo : Funcom / Screenshot taken from Steam)
This is obviously evidence that Dune: Awakening is moving a step forward toward its full release and allows testers to check out the entire game.
While there is still no official confirmation of a release date, Funcom promised an "epic" gameplay reveal at Gamescom and could be where such an announcement will be made.
Throughout the presentation, the studio showcased the game's character creation tool that lets players choose not only how their character looks, but also their background. This would include their mentor's specialization such as Mentat, Bene Gesserit, Trooper, and Swordmaster, according to WCCFTech.
But probably the most significant part of the footage was the overview of the game's world structure and the developer explained that there is a top-down Overland map. This connects the various regions, one of which is able to support hundreds of players in any given instance.
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This particular choice allows the studio to expand Dune: Awakening much more easily in the future with additional playable spaces compared to if it had a single map. Bylos noted that when you first play the upcoming MMO, you choose a world.
He explained that this is similar to choosing a server in other MMO titles but said that this one is a large infrastructure of connected servers.
The idea was that as a player, people would choose, join, start on a map, and from there have a relatively seamless experience of how to explore and feel the world inside the game.
An Expansive Interconnected World
On top of letting players choose a world, they will also choose between the factions that are at War for Arrakis. They will then build up rep and increase their status as they journey through the massive desert lands, said PCGamer.
Dune: Awakening features several PvE survival areas that did not seem to be overly complicated to do. Players will have to watch out for their engine temperature and health but other than that, traversal feels very much like riding a mount in World of Warcraft.
But as the game is a survival MMO game, with emphasis on the survival part, you will have to gather resources in order to craft, among other things. The world, Arrakis, is teeming with useful bits and bobs that you can use to make gear and structures.
The survival aspect of Dune: Awakening was also revealed to make you need to conserve water, stay out of the heat, and be cautious of ever-present sandworms.
On the other hand, the game's MMO elements will let you interact with other players who are also doing what they can to survive, according to GameSpot.
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