"Dune": Set on the harsh desert planet of Arrakis, Funcom's upcoming survival MMO "Dune: Awakening" allows players to build their own homes, form an alliance with one of the Great Houses, escape from giant sandworms, and battle others with both ranged weapons and melee combat. You can also fight other players with both ranged weapons and melee combat. This gameplay constraint can be better understood by reading this description on the Dune wiki: [The shield is generated by the Holtzman generator and the field originates from Phase 1 of the Suspenser Nullification effect. The shield can be adjusted to allow the passage of material below a given velocity... However, if the laser gun beam hits the Holtzmann field, it causes a fusion of elementary particles and a nuclear explosion. The center of this explosion was determined by random chance, sometimes occurring within the shield, sometimes within the laser weapon, and sometimes both"

This actually appears in a scene in Denis Villeneuve's "Dune": a group of Harkonen soldiers refrain from turning on their shields for fear of being wiped out by a single massive explosion. But in a game, having dozens of players shooting lasers at each other and almost incessant nuclear explosions is ...... in terms of combat balance. You can imagine how difficult it would be.

But Dune: But Joel Byros, the creative director of Dune: Awakening, is deeply committed to the lore of Dune, and having players fire laser guns randomly was not an option. There was only one option left: to get permission from the Herbert lore and make an in-universe exception.

"In our story, an incident occurred regarding laser guns and shields, and from that point on, all CHOAM laser guns imported to this planet have built-in safeties that prevent them from targeting shields. So if you point a laser gun at the shields in our game, it just automatically turns off the laser gun," he said.

Last year, Byros said that Dune: Awakening takes place in an "alternate" timeline to Frank Herbert's original story, something that changes the course of history. For example, Paul's father, Duke Leto Atreides, is still alive in this alternate world of Dune. We also learn that in this alternate universe, the trade guild that controls imports and exports throughout the galaxy thought it would be a bad idea for soldiers to constantly nuke each other with laser guns. [They said, "We can't have nuclear explosions, because we can't have nuclear explosions. I mean, you might be able to cause a nuclear explosion all the time, but it wouldn't be much fun for anyone but the person who caused it. We discussed this with our partners at Legendary and with the Harberts, and they agreed to let us do it this way. We had a prototype that was a bit like Ghostbusters, where you cross a creek and everything becomes unstable, the laser gun starts shaking, and the two players go nuclear, but unfortunately we felt it was a bit lame. So you can't do laser guns + shields, but the lore explains why you can't."

Another dune element not in Awakening, at least at launch, is the freemen's sandwalk.