Dune: Awakening dev says the survival MMO's goofy new dragon flamethrower makes sense if you play the game, actually: "You'll (potentially) be more understanding of its place once you see the context"

Dune: Awakening has a free update and some DLC coming September 10, 2025, but a lot of players seem to be unhappy with a specific weapon skin: a flamethrower head that looks like a fiery dragon.

"Frank Herbert didn’t die for this dragon flamethrower" reads one annoyed Reddit post.

"Funcom be like: 'Sorry guys, we can’t add more animals to Arrakis… it would break the lore.'" Bold words considering Heretics of Dune, written by Herbert, contains chairdogs – bioengineered, shapeshifting, sentient massage chairs. The universe of Dune is weird, okay?

Still, a developer at Funcom has responded to criticisms of the dragon flamethrower skin. "The flamethrower in question has context in the game and is earned by doing a very specific questline. It's not just a thing that shows up with zero context and you'll (potentially) be more understanding of its place once you see the context."

Personally, I think it looks pretty cool. It's exactly the kind of thing an absurdly rich noble house would have commissioned, or something a Fremen who'd spent too much time in the sun would make.

"It's been interesting reading all the 'expert' comments from people that have never even picked up any of the books," reads one response to the dev comment shared on Reddit. "I've been impressed with the game lore so far, I would trust Funcom over a random Redditor any day."

"The funny thing is, with noble houses there's going to be elaborate insignia and decorated arms," agrees another. "We only need to look at past weapons and armor to see how crazy people could get when dressing for battle. It's not in the realm of impossibility that somebody would design a flamethrower and add a dragon figurehead to the mouth of the weapon."

The developer actually notes that fantastical creatures like dragons are explicitly mentioned in the books, and another commenter notes the Harkonnen house seal is a griffin. And let's be honest, what's more strange, a giant worm that produces a powder that makes people omniscient and is allergic to water, or a fire-breathing lizard that can fly?

The dev also explains that "we're reserving our efforts with animals for bigger things from the universe - adding the desert fox is cool, but won't have high gameplay value for players compared to something like a Laza Tiger." These are the beasties that were trained to hunt and kill Paul Atreides' heirs in Children of Dune.

It's important to remember that development time is limited, so not everything can be added to a live-service game all at once. Dune: Awakening is a living, evolving thing, much like Arrakis itself.

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