For the most part,Dune: Awakeninghas had a perfect start to life. It’s captivated fans of both Dune and the survival genre, with the game’s concurrent player countreaching new heightsover the weekend. There have been somecomplaints about the game’s endgameand its viability for solo players, but for the most part, they are enjoying the ride,especially when they can get onto the Sandworms.
But, while much of Awakening’s world feels expertly crafted for the game at hand, players have taken issue with one of its core locations, the Deep Desert.
“They Managed To Take Something Described As A Lifeless Desert And Truly Deliver On That”
Dune: Awakening’s Deep Desert is the game’s endgame, PVP area, and given the complaints that have surrounded the mechanics of that portion of the game, it was only natural that things soon turned to the environments.
In anew postin the Awakening subreddit, AlphaAron1014 was full of praise for the Hagga Basin, saying it makes the game their favorite in the survival genre. Sadly, they didn’t feel the same about the Deep Desert. “The only thing pushing you forward is your research tree telling you that you now need two types of materials, and the spice addiction has truly set in. The sprawling Eco Labs are history and replaced with a wave defence mode that drags on. The movement is reduced to gliding for minutes at a time in a Thopter, to simply land, gather what you need, and then glide for minutes back,” they said. “It’s like we regressed 10 years in terms of game design, in the same game. There are no interesting landmarks. There’s nothing really. They managed to take something described as a lifeless desert and truly deliver on that, scarily well…”
It’s, for the most part, completely devoid of any meaningful content.
Many in the thread shared this opinion. DocJokin3Csaid, “Dry Desert feels like a different game entirely. They absolutely cooked with the Basin, and then you get to DD, and it’s, for the most part, completely devoid of any meaningful content,” with Colonel_Chowadding, “This is the problem with places and maps that are procedurally/randomly generated. They feel lifeless and limp. Hagga Basin is lovingly crafted. Deep Desert is…”
Our very own Harry Alston, who is deep into Dune: Awakening, felt similarly to many in the Reddit thread. He called the Dry Desert a “flight simulator”, where he said he’d “never encountered another player on foot”, proving just how barren that area of the game really is.
With complaints about the endgame’s viability for solo players, and now its environment, it seems like Funcom has a lot of work to do to keep players engaged for the long haul.
