Dune: Awakening Needs To Take The Training Wheels Off The Sandbike

By 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Jack Filsinger

Published May 7, 2025

Followed

The opening hours of a video game are the most important. When you first download a brand new game, you may have already said goodbye to $60 to $70. But the opening hours will determine if you’re🐓 prepared to say goodbye to 60 to 70 hours of your life. When I first start a new game, I often ask myself, ‘Is this going to be something worth spending that much time on?’

The opening hours of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dune: Awakening leave something to be desired in this regard. It’s not because the beginning of the game doesn’t do a good job showcasing what’s to come, but rather that the opening tut🐽orial missions of the game force training wheels on the player that are, for the most part, unnecessary.

You’ve Never Been On Arrakis?

Of course, any game as complex as Dune: Awakening is going to need tutorials of some kind, but eventually, you have to let theꦛ player figure things out on their own; Dune: Awakening would highly benefit from this approach.

When you first arrive on Arrakis, after having selected a home planet and starting skillset for your character, you’re thrust into a movement and combat tutorial, followed by an introduction to the basic mechanics of survival in the world of Dune. I would argue that these are necessary. After all, any action-adventure game of this scope still needs to have basic tutorials on h🎃ow to move, how controls work, and how to fight.

Beyond the introductory mission, players are then guided through various game-specific tutorials, including how to traverse Arrakis, how to construct shelters, and how to sta𒈔y hydrated 🌄in the unforgiving desert. These are all well-designed and helpful, but, in progressing past what I thought were the final few tutorials the game would offer me, I discovered a whole new set of tutorials that seemed to be guiding me through even more gameplay mechanics in a hand-holding fashion.

Our Tutorials Are Measured In Centuries

A view of Arrakis from a spaceship in Dune: Awakening.

This abundance of tutorials creates two effects, one positive and one negative. First, the ▨intricacies of these tutorials and missions hint at an incredibly deep gameplay experience, full of complex systems and mechanics that all speak to each other beautifully; something I find to be the hallmark of any great crafting and survival game.

But, secondly, and more urgently, these tutorials create a stifling and restrictive gameplay environment. In some ways, it feels as though there’s no ⭕opportunity for organic discovery. What’s more, these tutorials often don’t elabora♕te on each individual system, but merely provide the player with a simple checklist to cross off.

For example, an early tutorialꦑ shows players exactly how to unlock and craft a certain set of armor by gathering specific material🍌s. However, what I wasn’t taught was how to unlock unique research schematics for new sets of armor.

I later had to figure out how to researc🤪h other types of armor on my own. While this was fun to disco𒅌ver, I couldn’t help but feel as though I would’ve rather been taught the way unlocking gear works rather than how to unlock one specific piece of armor, and why that armor is useful. Teach me the system, and let me discover how to use it.

But, There Is A Narrow Way Through

A player character in Dune: Awakening trapped in a cave.

Waypoints, guided tutorials, and environmental design ar🦂e the main approaches most open-world games take these days. You are guided to one specific objective, and shown exactly how to accomplish this one goal, rather than the grander system at play. In man🌸y ways, I feel that this has proven overly reductive to the genre.

Particularly in a game like Dune: Awakening, which is meant to emul♛ate the sense of relying on your wits and resourcefulness to survive a planet as harsh as Arrakis, overly guided tutor✅ials that last well over ten hours in some cases can prove highly tedious.

W𓄧hat’s most disappointing about this effect is that these tutorials, as much as they are restrictive, are also a good omen of what’s to come in Dune: Awakening. From each of these tutorials, I learned so much about how these systems communicate with one another♐ and how they might synergize together to grant me more traversal or combat prowess.

I began to feel excited about what a full campai𒁏gn across Arrakis might look🌌 like. And yet, a part of me wishes I had discovered that organically, rather than had it spoon-fed over Awakening’s opening hours. If Dune: Awakening is to succeed in the long term, players need the opportunity to discover some of the secrets of Arrakis for themselves.

Yes, in a game as complex as this one, there needs to be some onboarding, otherwise, players could find themselves lost for hours, which can prove tedious in its own right. However, I worry that, based on my first 20 hours in Dune: Awakening, I may be stuck on an endless loop of quests that feel more like tutorials than actual gameplay. At ♚the end of my time with Awakening, I was longing for the training wheels to come off the sandbike. Let me get eaten by the sandworm, let me die of dehydration; at least then, I’ll awaken something new for myself.