I've slowly been coming around to Dune: Awakening. Survival crafting is something I go back and forth on as a rule, and I've never cared for MMOs, but once I started getting a healthy mix of anti-gravity powers, spacefaring mopeds and bloodbag juiceboxes, I found myself enjoying Funcom's take on Arrakis. But as somebody who really likes the Dune books and both of Villeneuve's masterpiece movies, I'm still yet to be truly convinced that Awakening has much to contribute to Herbert's harsh sci-fi mythology – so far it still seems more like the canon is serving the game than the game is serving the canon.
But despite having a lot of love for the two most recent Dune movies, I can't deny that there's one thing that Awakening inarguably does better than either of them, something loyal to the book and so mind-blowingly obvious that those I've spoken to seem startled that they never noticed it before.
Feel the burn
"The sand surface often reached temperatures of 344° to 350° (absolute). A foot below ground it might be 55° cooler; a foot above ground, 25° cooler. Leaves or black shade could provide another 18° of cooling." This quote comes from the first Appendix of Dune, detailing the climate of Arrakis. For those who need translation, 350° kelvin equates to a shade over 75° Celsius, or 170° Fahrenheit. To add some context, the highest temperatures ever recorded in Death Valley (and thus planet Earth) that I could find were 57°C, or 134°F.
So it's real fuckin' hot, in other words. Arrakis is a planet so blisteringly blazing that the Fremen probably cool themselves down by setting themselves on fire. The open desert plains aren't just warm, they'll roast exposed skin and scorch the liquid out of your body. The books are explicit about this; the climate is so lethal that pretty much all of the indigenous culture is founded on the challenge of managing it day-to-day, and that unending test of endurance has made the Fremen into the hardiest survivors in all of the Imperium.
And as much as I genuinely love Villeneuve's movies and am very excited for his adaptation of Dune Messiah… Well, they don't exactly feel hot, do they? Timothée Chalamet spends most of the time acting like he's meandering through a gentle spring morning rather than enduring more heat than any creature on Earth has ever experienced. Oh sure, lots of lip service is paid to the ideas of warmth and of water conservation, but for films that are normally so good at showing over telling, it's the one blind spot they seem to have.
Let him cook
Think back to it. Heat haze? Infrequent at best. Sand or sun burns? Never happens once to my memory. Paul Atreides is a pasty brat from a drizzling world of overcast highlands (i.e., Space Scotland), and yet he somehow manages not to tan or shed a single bead of sweat across five hours of desert wandering. He first shows up on Arrakis wearing a black suit, for Christ's sake! And later on he's casually sitting in the open sun chatting with Chani like it's no biggie, despite the fact that both of them should be baking like hams. In fact, most of the Fremen do that at some point.
You might counter that the Stillsuits are processing sweat and cooling them down, but if that's the case then they're clearly so effective that Maub'dib could probably sleep in a large pizza oven without issue. In both Dune and Dune Part 2 the perils of heat and thirst are talked about – but never seen. The biggest concession I can think of is Thuthir Hawat's cheeky parasol, but that feels like an affectation of the character more than anything.
Contrarily, Dune Awakening feels hot in a way that the movies just don't seem to try for. In Awakening, standing in direct sunlight begins to build a little "overheat" meter, and you have to sprint back to the shade to cool down, leaping between shadows that act like stepping stones until blessed night falls and the world becomes a little safer. Overheating itself causes you to become physically diminished, your moisture levels plummeting until you can find respite.
As a result, temperature and moisture aren't just aesthetics, they're integral elements. Sucking drops of dew out of flowers can mean the difference between life or death. The oppressive heat is constantly at the back of your mind, and while various types of stillsuits will mitigate the threat, it's never entirely gone.
While I'm still not wholly convinced on the necessity of Awakening just yet, I can't deny the very simple fact that the game sizzles in a way that Villeneuve's masterpieces never did. Maybe Dune 3 will finally find the thermostat?
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