In what is probably one of the hottest properties on the market today, legendary sci-fi author Frank Herbert’s magnum opus Dune has had a bit of a resurgence as of late. While Dune has always been a bit of a sacred cow among science fiction fans, it’s lately stepped back into the limelight of mainstream media as the result of Dennis Villeneuve’s Dune films (or D U N C, as fans affectionately call them), so it’s only logical that with this revival of a classic a video game is to follow, as video game adaptations followed Dune’s movies in the past, a video game will follow the movies of the present. This time, it will be an MMO developed by Funcom, dubbed Dune: Awakening. Normally, this would be cause for celebration, but unfortunately some news recently has Dune fans worried about the nature of the game.
As reported by Eurogamer, it seems that Funcom is going to tiptoe around the religious messages and iconography of the Dune series for their MMO, as Joel Bylos, chief creative officer of Dune: Awakening said in the Eurogamer interview:
Things are slightly different in our universe. Many events are still the same, so it’s not like we’ve gone all ‘thousands of years ago, a rock slid in the wrong place and changed everything’. It’s just a few years back. But the significant thing – it’s really close to spoiler territory, which I can’t really go through – but let’s just say that for the large part, we sort of sidestep religion.
Needless to say, this excerpt from the interview has been… concerning for fans of Dune. Many fans believe that the religious aspects of the series are part and parcel with the IP, and that to “sidestep” it is to essentially take out what makes Dune Dune. It seems that this admittance has hampered the enthusiasm many felt towards the game, and now spirits seem to be low.
Adapting an existing IP, especially one as revered as Dune, is always going to be a challenging task, and fans of those classic stories will never be satisfied in some cases, but one has to wonder how many liberties a property can take with an adaptation before it loses the core message of what it’s adapting? In any event, we can only wait until Dune: Awakening releases for Playstation 4 and 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.