Sandworms play a major part in Dune: Awakening, the big survival MMO coming some time soon from Funcom, the developers behind Conan: Exiles – but the game won’t feature the novel’s famous sandworm-riding come launch. And, presumably much more importantly for Conan fans, there’ll be no penis sliders either.
There will be sand-walking, though, and there’s no ruling out of sandworm-riding down the line. We spoke with Dune: Awakening’s creative director Joel Bylos at some length in our preview, and he explained the decision like this:
“We actually looked into it. It’s just a very strong technical cost, and also a very – it needs a purpose. And we haven’t got what the movie has, which is like, ‘Go through the southern sandstorms, get to the southern part [of Arrakis]’. So yeah, we don’t have that yet.”
It’s worth contextualising that a bit. Dune: Awakening will have sandworms, for one, with them acting as a major mechanic in the game’s cycle of venturing out into the deep desert, gathering spice and returning to a safe haven behind the shield wall. Different worms of different sizes will appear in different areas – the deeper desert has the larger, ring-mouthed worms for instance, with smaller and more traditionally-jawed ones in other areas.