The series needs to move away from real-time strategy

Dec 13, 2014 08:45 GMT  ·  By

When December rolls around, a long-ingrained routine pushes me to at least consider picking up the "Dune" series of books from Frank Herbert in order to read at least some of them again, like I did almost every year between the ages of 11, when my father bought me the first entry in the franchise, until 18, when I left for university.

I have since read every book officially created for the Dune universe, including those from Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, and I often wondered why no developer is willing to take a chance and create a video game experience focused on the melange and its effects on human life.

Such an experience will certainly find a solid audience, especially given how popular other long-term complex sagas like "A Song of Ice and Fire" have become lately.

"Dune" does not benefit from an HBO series and is older, but arguably the universe created by Frank Herbert has more depth when it comes to politics, strategy and plotting and its portrayal of how humanity changes based on external pressures is second to none.

Travel to Arrakis using something other than a real-time strategy title

The best known Dune video games were created by Westwood, a now defunct company, under the name of Dune II and Emperor Battle for Dune.

Both of them allow gamers to travel to the planet of Arrakis and pick between the Atreides, the Harkonnen or the Ordos in order to try and conquer the melange producing world using classic real-time strategy mechanics and units loosely inspired by the books.

The best of the bunch remains the oldest of them, the Dune title from 1992, created by Cryo Interactive.

It allows players to become Paul Atreides and largely follows the book’s plot, delivering a mix of adventure, role playing and tactics.

I played the experience about two years ago and it holds up from a mechanical point of view, even if the graphics and the story have their limits.

Waiting for the MMO and the free-to-play developers to notice "Dune"

Maybe the best way to create a video game which does justice to the universe portrayed in "Dune" is to create a classic MMO or a modern free-to-play experience linked to it.

Gamers could become figures on the periphery of the main story, swear allegiance to one house and then try to become more powerful using military, diplomatic or espionage actions.

Something like Game of Thrones Ascent would be a good template, although solid changes would be required to fit the Dune theme.

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