Polygon.com / 17.06.25

Dune: Awakening's busted respawn left me naked and alone in the middle of nowhere

Dune: Awakening is a lot like real life in that two things are guaranteed: Youll pay taxes, and youll die. The nice thing about dying in Dune: Awakening is you pop back up with almost everything intact and can carry on with whatever you were doing before unless a sandworm gets you. If one of these Jaws-like monsters catches you, you lose more than just a bit of progress. Even if you havent seen a sandworm in Dune: Awakening, youre likely familiar with it in some capacity (whether through movie posters or questionable popcorn buckets). Sandworms are effectively shorthand for Dune imagery. In Awakening, they also pose a huge environmental challenge: When they eat you, sandworms will strip you of everything except your underpants. Its a clever way to make you build your plans around an environment you can never master, but it also created a perfect storm of Terrible Situations that almost made me hang up my cutteray for good, all thanks to one little thing a respawn toggle. I became clos...
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