Dune (video game)

Cover of the Mega-CD version of the game

Dune, by Cryo Interactive, is one of the Dune computer games. It was the first attempt of making a commercial game based on Frank Herbert's Dune universe.

Dune blended adventure with economic and military strategy, and is considered by many the most immersive Dune computer game. Loosely following the story of the novel, the game casts the player as Paul Atreides, with the ultimate goal of driving the Harkonnen from Dune, while managing spice extraction, military, and later, ecology through the native Fremen tribes. As the player progresses, his troops are equipped with weapons from "crysknives" to atomics, tap into Paul's latent psychic powers, and get acquainted with such characters from the book as Chani and Liet Kynes. Available for the Amiga and IBM PC compatibles, it was one of the first floppy games to be converted to CD format, which included footage of the David Lynch movie, voice-acting for all speaking roles, and highly improved, 3D-rendered travelling and location screens. This version (a mix of the Amiga graphics and the extras of the PC-CD version) was also released on Sega's Mega CD format. Also worthy of mention is the audio track created by Stéphane Picq and Philip Ulrich, released by Cryo (formerly Exxos) on the now extremely rare album Dune: Spice Opera.

Overview

Spoiler warning! Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story is mostly based on the novel's story:

The player is Paul Atreides, son of Duke Leto Atreides and Lady Jessica. The House Atreides was given an unrefusable offer by the Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV - mine the Spice Melange from the desert planet Arrakis, occupied by their long-time enemies: the House Harkonnen. Duke Leto accepts the offer not only because of the wealth provided by Spice trading, but also to defeat the Harkonnen.

The game, seen always through the eyes of Paul, is a mix between Real Time Strategy and adventure gaming. While the basis of the game is the strategy component, dialog between characters and a linear plotline give the game more depth than most strategy games. The player is also required to do some miniquests involving talking to characters and traveling to locations, which adds a small adventure game element. After arriving on Arrakis, the story itself becomes entirely different. The only Atreides character to canonically die is Duke Leto and Arrakeen is never attacked by the Harkonnen. In fact, Arrakeen already belongs to them, the Atreides Palace is located in Carthag. Most of the game is spent looking for sietches and eventually directing the whole planet.

There must be a balance between military and spice mining power. While having a strong military force will provide fast response to the Harkonnen, if Spice isn't mined fast enough to keep up with the Emperor's demands, the game will be lost. However, if there is too much focus on spice mining, Harkonnen troops can ambush a sietch, capturing all troops inside. They can only be rescued if the sietch is liberated. Since the game is as much resource managing as military conquest, balancing both is the key for successful completion.

Units and items

Buying from smugglers

The Atreides House has no military or spice mining units. Soon in the game, Paul must meet the closest Fremen leaders and convince to work for him. In the beginning, they will only agree to work as spice miners. After Paul is introduced to Stilgar, the tribes will agree to work as either spice miners or military soldiers as Paul chooses. After he is introduced to Liet Kynes, the tribes can also take ecology as their occupation.

All tribes will increase their ability in their chosen occupation. Spice prospectors do so by spice prospecting in many sietches. Spice miners do so by mining spice. Military troops do so by training in their sietches (if Gurney Halleck is in the same sietch they increase their ability at a faster rate) or successfully completing military missions.

All tribes except the spice prospector tribe can change their occupations, although it is better to keep a tribe in the same occupation. Experienced spice prospectors can prospect spice faster. Experienced spice miners can mine more spice. Experienced military troops are more effective in military missions. However, there may be situations where changing a tribe's occupation is required. For example, if a large number of military troops training in a sietch is captured by Harkonnen forces, more military troops need to be raised from the spice or ecology troops to liberate the sietch and rescue the captured troops.

Although the Fremen agree to work for the Atreides in order to depose the Harkonnen, if there are tribes from both hemispheres in the same sietch, they will quarrel and refuse to work (this seems to happen frequently with the spice miners). Morale (affected by contacts with Paul, Atreides advancement in Arrakis, the progress of ecologists, and whether Chani is captured or free) also affects the speed and capabilities of the tribes.

The Ornithopter (Orni) is the default transport method for Paul until he's able to ride sandworms. With the Fremen, they are used for either moving from one sietch to another quickly or as an early warning against sandworms attacking spice miners and prevent Harvesters from being swallowed. Harvesters increase spice mining speed, and can be either bought from smugglers or found in sietches. Weaponry ranges from crysknives, laser guns, Weirding Modules and the powerful atomics, and are usually found on sietches or conquered Harkonnen fortresses.

Areas

Exploring Arrakis

Arrakis is split into numerous areas, each with a single structure which Paul may visit, and other characters may be sent to. Each area has a unique name, comprised of two parts. The first part of the name represents a large section of the globe (for example, in the part of the world directly surrounding the Atreides Palace, all areas are called "Carthag-"). The structures may be any of the following:

• Palace - Both the Atreides and Harkonnen have a palace which serves as their base of operations.
• Sietch - Caves where the Fremen make their homes. Much of the game is spent uncovering sietches hidden in the desert to meet new troops and find new equipment. Sietches which Paul has found represent Atreides-controlled territories.
• Fortress - Harkonnen bases, usually with Harkonnen troops stationed and occasionally, captured Fremen. These bases are the targets of the player's military attacks, and represent the Harkonnen-controlled territories. On rare occasions, Fortresses will contain Harkonnen generals that your troops can capture, allowing you to interrogate them and discover the locations of other Fortresses, their troop numbers, and their armaments.
• Village - Neutral territories where smugglers may be found, to sell equipment.

The vast majority of all areas are sietches and fortresses, where the battles take place. When one side wins a battle, their troops will transform the structure into their own side (Atreides/Fremen troops transform fortresses into sietches, Harkonnen troops transform sietches into fortresses).

Mining and economics

Ordering Fremen units

Each sietch/fortress area contains a quantity of spice. The large desert on the southern sietches provide the largest Spice reserves, but all new areas need to be probed by the prospection team. After the amount of spice is calculated, spice prospectors can move on to another sietch. However, in the game, Spice is not renewable. After all the reserves are mined, the area is barren, and can only be used for ecologics and military.

Spice (not the Solari) is the currency in the game, and serves two purposes: paying the Emperor to continue in Dune and purchase equipment from the smugglers. Duncan Idaho is the character in charge of the economics, and will call Paul's attention when there's a payment to be done, either to the Emperor or smugglers.

Military

Fremen specialised in military are the only troops capable of conquering a fortress or defending a sietch. They can also perform espionage on Harkonnen fortresses, reporting on the number of enemy troops and their type of armament. Fremen military troops can be ordered to attack the fortresses. A successful mission depends highly on morale, skill and armament, so early in the game espionage is much harder to achieve without the troops being captured by the Harkonnens.

Paul's presence during a battle increases the men's morale. He can boost their morale even more if he comes along on a worm and even further more he controls the battle personally (but then risks dying if the battle is lost). There are two ways for Paul to control the battle personally.

Self fighting modes

Massive Attack

Paul will order his troops to launch an immediate full scale war.

Fight for a day

Paul will order his troops to reserve their resources and fight for a whole day.

Ecology

As soon as Paul meets Liet Kynes and drinks the Water of Life, Arrakis can be terraformed by having Fremen troops specialise in ecology. Since it only happens late in the game, the northern sietches are usually barren (but any spice remaining will disappear), and by moving ecology troops there, they can assemble a windtrap, and provided they are equipped with bulbs, vegetation will always grow to the north.

Vegetation raises the morale of Fremen. In addition, planting the vegetation south to the Harkonnen controlled areas, so it will grow north and reaches them, will lower their spice production. Moreover, if enough vegetation grows north into Harkonnen fortresses, they will abandon them. A military unit must still be sent then to take over such fortresses, but there will be no one to fight with.

Nevertheless, it is generally agreed amongst players that ecology is of a lower priority than both spice mining and military, hence most players tend to deploy lesser amount of troops to ecology. However, by having enough vegetation growing north into the Harkonnen Palace, ecology is actually one of the ways to reach the end game.

Paul's abilities

Paul Atreides as appears in the game, based on the looks of Kyle MacLachlan

At the start, Paul is given the task of meeting the Fremen. As the game progresses, he learns the ways of telepathy (progressively, from short range to planet wide) and using sandworms as transport. His charisma also influences his ability to gather Fremen under the Atreides' flag, as some chiefs will not work for Paul or do military assignments if his charisma isn't high enough. His progress can be partially seen in the mirror at the Atreides' Palace - his eyes turn more "blue on blue" (Eyes of Ibad) as his abilities increase.

Characters

The game follows loosely in-off-between the book and the 1984 movie by David Lynch (Paul Atreides was designed to look like Kyle MacLachlan, who is actually credited as Paul Atreides). Only a few characters are removed from the movie, clearly the biggest visual inspiration for the game, such as Shadout Mapes, Piter de Vries and Reverend Mother Ramallo. Some characters' roles have changed, however, such as Harah who follows Paul about in the earlier stages of the game.

End Game

Paths to The End Game

The only way to win the game is to launch an attack on the Harkonnen Palace. While technically it could be done at any given time (as long as Paul has military troops to order around), Paul's troops can't win this battle unless he launches it only after Thufir Hawat advises him to do it. Then he must follow exactly the suggestions Thufir Hawat provides him on how to win.

However, there are two alternate paths to cause Thufir Hawat to give that advise.

The military path to the end game

Thufir Hawat will advise Paul he's ready to take over Harkonnen Palace, if enough Harkonnen fortresses are taken over by Paul. Harkonnen fortresses are discovered either through espionage or when the Harkonnen manage to take over sietches.

The ecology path to the end game

Thufir Hawat will advise Paul he's ready to take over Harkonnen Palace, if so much vegetation grows north into the Harkonnen Palace, that they are forced to abandon it. Just as it is with abandoned Harkonnen Fortresses, Paul must still send troops to the Harkonnen Palace for an official takeover. However, unlike the abandoned fortresses that pose no fight, the abandoned Harkonnen Palace still can't be taken over without following Thufir Hawat's suggestions on how to beat it.

The final battle

Once Paul is advised by Thufir Hawat to take over the Harkonnen Palace, he must follow his exact suggestions on how to accomplish it. Thufir Hawat's suggestions to Paul are to prepare a large number of troops in a sietch around the Harkonnen Palace, and to also carry over there most of Paul's colleagues. When the troops and colleagues are there with Paul, Thufir Hawat suggests him to launch the attack on the Harkonnen Palace.

In order to win the battle, all of the troops need to be in Expert level in fighting and carry all of the weapons available in the game to troops. As usual, it also boosts the troops' morale if Paul comes along on a worm and especially if he joins his troops in the fighting (in either of the two self fighting modes).

If Paul's troops win, Paul gets a vision that suggests him to enter the taken over palace. Once he does so, the player gets to watch an automated end game sequence, which features Paul's prisoners, including the Emperor of the Galaxy, and ends up with Paul turning into the new Emperor of the Galaxy.

Avoiding the automated end game sequence

There is a way to avoid the automated end game sequence and keep on playing forever as the (supposedly - see below) Emperor of the Galaxy (without being able to leave Dune though). To accomplish this, as soon as Paul orders his troops to launch the final battle, he must quickly ride a worm into the battle before it could be won without him. If timed correctly and the battle is still in progress, Paul must quickly choose Massive Attack (it must be this fighting mode). The battle is then won without Paul getting a vision.

Paul must then avoid entering the taken over palace and instead go back a screen and wait for two days to pass - the standard time it takes for a taken over Harkonnen fortress to be be turned into a sietch.

Paul can then enter the palace turned sietch at any time and talk to his new prisoners - The Baron, Feyd Rautha and the Emperor of The Galaxy.

From then on, the player can keep playing. There will be no one to fight with, no need to send spice to the Emperor (which, supposedly - as there was no official sequence that determined that, is now Paul) and no new sietches to discover. At last, Paul can finally get Liet Kynes to walk around with him.

Game technology

The game was one of the first floppy disk games to be ported to the new Compact Disc format. The Sega Mega CD version had graphics close to the Amiga Version, but offering the extras of the CD IBM compatible version. Those extras are snippets from Lynch's film, voiceovers and new travelling screens.
The game is considered to be one of the most complete of its time.

The quality of the full motion video in the Sega CD or Mega CD version was considered to be some of the best that was ever shown on the system.

Soundtrack

Virgin also released Dune: Spice Opera, a music CD from the tunes composed by Stéphane Picq. It was originally only shipped with a special version of the game, and is one of the most sought-after video game related music CDs, only surpassed by some only released in Japan.

Sequel

What is erroneously considered as a sequel to this game, Dune II - The Battle for Arrakis was not made by Cryo, but by the newest acquisition by Virgin Entertainment, software company Westwood Studios, in 1992. Given the success of the game, Westwood produced two more sequels, in 1998 and 2001. However, Cryo returned to the Dune universe with Frank Herbert's Dune in 2001, which was one of the final titles by the French company. The game failed on both markets and reviews, and was one of the final nails in Cryo's coffin.

External links

• Detailed information about Dune (french only)
• Dune at Home of the Underdogs