Now that Dune: Awakening's Beta has wrapped up and players have their first look at the vast open world of Arrakis, it's safe to say there's a lot of work to be done before its release in June. While I enjoyed the Beta and had an overall good time messing around with base building, escaping giant sand worms, and exploring the open desert, the Beta raises concerns that Awakening might be rushing its release. While I want to give the team at Funcom the benefit of the doubt, there's a big hill to climb before its full launch in June.

Dune: Awakening takes place in an alternate timeline from the beloved novels and films, and its premise will be compelling for anyone interested in exploring what would have been possible if Paul Atreides never existed in the first place. The Beta gave me a much better handle on how this alternative history would pan out in practice, and it successfully immerses the player in the world of Dune almost immediately, crash-landing on Arrakis as a Bene Gesserit prisoner in search of the lost Fremen people. Awakening's story and exploration elements are compelling, but it's severely lacking in other key areas.

Dune: Awakening Melee Combat Lacks Real Depth

Melee Combat Is Integral To The Dune Universe, But Awakening's Is Lackluster

One of the biggest areas of concern I had after playing in both PvP and PvE areas in Arrakis during Dune: Awakening's Beta is its lack of melee combat depth. Close-range knife and sword fighting are essential to anything Dune-combat-related due to the use of shield technology that makes long-range combat less viable, at least in the larger context of the Dune universe. In Awakening, the melee combat is extremely basic, with simple slow and fast attacks, and stun mechanics that can easily overcome any opponent.

"The lack of combo variety and the rudimentary sword and shield mechanics are way too basic for a game of otherwise great complexity."

You can more or less infinitely string your attacks after staggering an opponent in the current state of Awakening's Beta, and there are absolutely zero unique combo attacks, even for the Swordmaster class which has unique melee skills. Melee skills in the Swordmaster class lack balance as well, and are either completely useless or extremely overpowered. The lack of combo variety and the rudimentary sword and shield mechanics are way too basic for a game of otherwise great complexity.

A Target Lock Could Make Or Break Dune: Awakening Combat

PvE Target Lock Would Be An Easy Fix, But Players Might Be Divided

One feature that I really hope is implemented in some way is a target-lock mechanism, at least in PvE zones. The lack of a target-lock function makes combat much less immersive than it could be, and constantly shifting the camera angle and direction of your player character takes the excitement out of the fight. It's debatable whether this type of feature should be implemented in PvP areas, as it could easily give players an advantage based on the skills they have selected as opposed to their ability to outmaneuver an opponent.

On the one hand, losing track of a target in the middle of a fight is incredibly frustrating, especially when I'm just getting bum-rushed by PvE AI opponents. However, the lack of a target lock in PvP zones makes your skill-level more relevant and gives the combat a little bit of depth compared to how repetitive it is in the rest of the game. Because player is going to be so divided on this issue, I'm not certain we'll see a true target-lock feature by the time Awakening launches in June.

The Good News Is Dune: Awakening Has Easy Fixes Within Reach

Tools Need To Be Automatic At Some Level, & Inventory Should Be Less Restrictive

Luckily, there are many easy fixes for Dune: Awakening, the first of which has to deal with the abundance of tools and the lack of an automatic tool-switching mechanic. There are many different tools with a range of purposes, and each time you need to use a specific tool type, you have to toggle between them to find the correct one. For example, if you want to extract blood from a body, you have to toggle to the designated tool in order to fill up a blood bag as opposed to it simply extracting the blood.

While staying hydrated in the desert is obvious, it becomes a bit tedious to constantly stop for a sip, though there are better hydration upgrades available as you advance through your research.

Inventory management is among the other concerns I have with Dune: Awakening's Beta, but this can also easily be remedied. There are unnecessary restrictions on how much you can carry and how much you can store in containers, the latter being limited by both weight and number of available slots. One or the other would be sufficient, and allowing the player to exceed the weight limit in an overencumbered state would also make organizing chests and managing inventory much more player-friendly.

Overall, Awakening has a lot going for it, and the whole point of the Beta is to understand the above issues and more like it and try to address them before launch. The concern I have is that these are just a few of many QoL and bug fixes that are going to keep Funcom extremely busy over the coming weeks, and while I believe they will do their best to improve Dune: Awakening as much as possible before June 10th, I wouldn't be surprised if certain features such as combat depth are slightly underwhelming at launch.