Here’s Why Dune: Awakening Won’t Constantly Kill You With Nuclear Explosions
Survival MMO Dune: Awakening means to put you on the sands of Arrakis, fighting to keep your water in your body–fending off both the harsh arid climate and the weapons of other players in some of its PvP gameplay. Developer Funcom is including a whole bunch of different weapons and technologies for you to use in combat, including shields and the knives and swords that can penetrate them, vehicles like ornithopters, and projectile weapons.
Dune: Awakening will also include “lasguns,” powerful laser-like weapons that are depicted in the recent Dune movies to be devastatingly powerful. Good news, though: As creative director Joel Bylos confirmed at a Dune: Awakening hands-off preview event last week, using lasguns in the game won’t get you annihilated by a nuclear blast.
If you’re not familiar with Dune lore, that might sound like a weird thing to be worried about. It’s something the characters of Frank Herbert’s novels are very worried about, however. In the story, the interaction between the laser-like rays and forcefield-like defensive shields–which are used on everything from ships and buildings to individual people–creates a massive nuclear explosion. Use a lasgun to shoot somebody wearing a shield and you’ll take out yourself and everyone in the vicinity.