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Comment by SamBam | Hacker News Reader

I'm assuming this is a movie tie-in, so it's odd that the depiction of the worms is closer to the three-lobed mouth of the original novel cover art and 1984 movie than the round mouth of the new movie.

Anyway, I do think that 4X RTS is a bit of a tired genre for Dune, and probably won't live up to the original.

I also think it's a waste. Why just another story of exploiting a land's natural resources, mining, subjugating villages, and sending spice off to a distant empire. Sure, it fits so well into the 4X genre it's an easy, thoughtless adaptation. But what about a game told from the Freman's perspective? How about a game of repelling the imperialist invaders? Or a naturalist tale of trying to turn the desert green?

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This doesn't seem to be a movie tie in. The character and vehicle design look different. It's likely a "well-timed" adaptation of the novel, similar to the recent graphic novel that was released in 2020, which emphasized completely different parts from the movie and had very different visions for things like the ornithopters and even the race of the cast.

[Legendary][1] is listed on the game's site footer. Since it's the production company behind Denis Villeneuve's Dune adaptation, it's at least blessed if not co-produced, albeit not seemingly with any canonical story relationships or obvious

The same game publisher, Funcom, is working on an open world game per Polygon: https://www.polygon.com/2019/2/27/18243384/dune-funcom-video...

[1]: https://www.legendary.com

This doesn't necessarily mean it's a tie-in. Just that who-ever current owns the adaptation rights wants bang for their buck. Typically that does mean a tie-in, but I think the Dune universe doesn't really need it to sell it, any more than Lego Batman need be canon.

It seems at least inspired by the movie in certain ways. For example, Baron Harkonnen is hairless as seen in the movie, not red-haired as described in the books.

There hasn't been any 4X RTS games in Dune setting? Dune 2/Dune 2000/Emperor Battle for Dune weren't 4X. 4X means more games like Master of Orion and Civilization rather than Starcraft.

When I said "the original" I simply meant the original RTS game from '92.

“the original” isn’t even an RTS, you’re thinking of Dune 2

I always disagree with opinions that 10+ year old games shouldn't be remade or have a successor because they're "tired" or have "been done".

It's just a viewpoint that's incredibly out of touch with the actual game playing audience. The vast, vast majority of players don't know about and will not touch something that old. A game like Dune II that's nearly 30 years old might as well be buried in an ancient tomb, from a standpoint of its accessibility and likelihood to be discovered.

As to the other criticism, against "rally local villages or force them into submission"... this just sounds like you could play as either an Atreides (woke good guys, joining up with locals to fight imperials) or Harkonnen (evil colonialist) archetype. You know, choosing sides and having agency, the thing games exist for. You could shift the theme more, but this is presumably trying to somewhat follow the story of Dune.

The Dune PS2 game was first-person and played from Paul Atreides' perspective, if that's the style you're after.

Oof what a mess https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMlQCOQDCrQ

Oh yeah it's definitely a game of its time haha

It was something of a catastrophe in the gameplay/technicals but captures the spirit fairly well.

The original Dune was also played from Paul's perspective.

> Or a naturalist tale of trying to turn the desert green?

That's an interesting premise, and a nice third way between the obvious and tired approaches of Imperialist Exploiter 2000 and Mujahideen Simulator.

>> Or a naturalist tale of trying to turn the desert green?

What about a naturalist tale of keeping the desert as it is, and resisting the urge to destroy it for the supposed benefit of the humans? I recently read Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey (highly recommended), and I'm reminded of the start of the ninth chapter:

  "This would be good country," a tourist says to me, "if only you had some water."
  He's from Cleveland, Ohio.
  "If we had water here," I reply, "this country wound not be what it is. It would be like Ohio, wet and humid and hydrological, all covered with cabbage farms and golf courses. Instead of this lovely barren desert we would have only another blooming garden state, like New Jersey. You see what I mean?"
  "If you had more water more people could live here."
  "Yes sir. And where then would people go when they wanted to see something besides people?"
  "I see what you mean. Still, I wouldn't want to live here. So dry and desolate. Nice for pictures but my God I'm glad I don't have to live here."
  "I'm glad too, sir. We're in perfect agreement. You wouldn't want to live here, I wouldn't want to live in Cleveland. We're both satisfied with the arrangement as it is. Why change it?"
  "Agreed."
  We shake hands and the tourist from Ohio goes away pleased, as I am pleased, each of us thinking he has taught the other something new.

What about a naturalist tale about restricting the spread of development and conserving nature as it is?

What about a naturalist tale that doesn't indulge in either sort of fetishism, the sort of fetishism that observes an artificial distinction drawn between "nature" and "development" and assumes uncritically that must be all there is? You've just inverted the sign, without noticing that the figures don't add up in the first place.

Like all life, we modify our environment in accord with our needs, and by itself there's no more harm in that than when beavers or wasps or crows or spiders or any other animals do it. The problem isn't that we're so good at improving our environment for ourselves, but that we suck so bad at avoiding damage to the ecologies we so modify. We can improve upon the latter without forswearing the former, which is good, because we might as well try to forswear breathing.

My point was not so much about the distinction between nature and development, although I think the distinction is far from artifictial (depending perhaps on what one means by "nature" and "development"). Rather, I was reacting to the seemingly common view that deserts are somehow worse than e.g. forests and that a naturalist would want to turn a desert green.

As far as your second point, that it is possible to improve our environment in ways that are reasonably ecologically-friendly, I generally agree. What constitutes environmental improvement vs damage will vary considerably from person to person however, and some things we may collectively view as improvements are much easier to implement than to reverse, so in fragile ecosystems (e.g. much of the desert in southwest US) we should think very carefully about whether our improvements are really a good idea.

The literal origin of Dune was managing the ecologically destructive propagative nature of desertification.

Sure! And how great if a game could explore those kinds of tensions. We could have moral, social, and political questions as well. But in terms of novel adaptation, at least in the first book, turning parts of Arrakis green was one of the Freman dreams.

In the context of the source material (the books by Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson), the 'greening' of Dune/Arrakis is a very broad plot theme. So, the comment is not one of 'green washing' but in keeping with themes of the series.

Full disclosure: Haven't read all the books, nor am I looking to after reading a bunch during the pandemic.

For this particular topic you should definitely read more of the books before commenting on the theme of the series. The GP is more thematically correct.

I've only read the first of the Dune books, and I do (somehat vaugely) recall the Freemen project to green Arrakis. My comment was intended less as a comment on the greening project in the context of Dune and more as a challenge to the idea that turning a desert green is a 'naturalist tale'. To me it sounds more like the tale of a property developer or industrial agriculturalist.

While true, it's also of course true that much of the desert in the world right now is man-made, a result of desertification due to human activity. The Sahara has virtually wiped out the Sahel. Some of this is natural (though, of course, it's debatable whether we want to simply allow "natural" processes) but a lot of it human driven. The Gobi is even worse. Even processes that take place at a breakneck pace are still barely noticeable in a human life, so most people are the prototypical boiled frogs.

And indeed, we learn that Herbert's inspiration for Dune was encroaching desertification in Oregon (largely caused by humans) and the geoengineering efforts to create a green belt to stem the tide.

Good point! I was mainly thinking of the desert of southern Utah and neighboring states, the subject of the book I quoted, and with which I have personal experience. That region is not free from its own human-caused environmental issues of course, but my understanding is that they are mainly different from the particular problems resulting in desertification in Oregon.

I guess a general point that may be worth making is that it's often useful to think in terms of protecting fragile ecosystems, be they desert or the victim of desertification.

> What about a naturalist tale of keeping the desert as it is, and resisting the urge to destroy it for the supposed benefit of the humans

This is a huge plot point of a bunch of the later dune books. Based on the comments here, almost no one has actually read them.

I must admit that I have only read the first book in the Dune series. I've heard that the first is by far the best of the series, and my reading list is long enough as it is, but I shall consider reading more of the series.

Anyway, my point was more about ecological conservation in general, and not much about Dune in particular.

I don't think the first book is notably better than the sequels. They're all quite interesting if you're into the wide-ranging categories of thought Herbert pursued (and was generally ahead of his time on).

> What about a naturalist tale of keeping the desert as it is, and resisting the urge to destroy it for the supposed benefit of the humans?

Well, in the Dune source material it was terraformed into desert from a green planet. So, you know, returning it to green is perfectly fine.

They licensed the IP from Herbert Properties LLC, it would have been a waste to not use it in games, Duke Leto and Paul action figures, Dune Lego series etc. At least from a business perspective.

on your second point, love this! story/mission would be so much more fulfilling and have a positive impact on younger minds

that was the original dune 3 game. Or 1?

I recall planting green plants all over the planet, in one of the original games.

Your sentiment put words to my feelings as I watched the gameplay trailer. As soon as the narrator shifted to the theme of exploitation and politics, with no reference to the indigenous population, I recoiled from the whole idea of it. The sorts of motivations these games ask you to align yourself with feel foreign and unwelcome compared to how I felt about them 25 years ago.

I had the same uneasy reation when the trailer showed how you can "rally local villages or force them into submission." Hopefully roleplaying colonialism will eventually feel as gross as roleplaying something like racism.

Why?

Part of the appeal of games is harmlessly doing things that shouldn't/can't be done in real life. I think the millions of 'people' I've 'killed' across various bloodsport-themed FPSes over the last couple decades is a greater evil if we're talking about shoehorning IRL morals into consequence-free virtual spaces. And if you disagree, why? Is mass murder not worse?

Maybe I'm just oversensitive to moralizing in video games, but this line of argument was no less tired over a decade ago.

https://i.imgur.com/3e1obaF.jpeg

I think it’s because we all know murder is wrong and the FPS genre wouldn’t exist as we know it without that factor. In contrast, colonialism and racism, unfortunately, still garners support.

There is no support for video games glorifying rape. There shouldn’t be support for video games glorifying colonialism or racism.

Let me ask you the converse: would you be comfortable playing a game that roleplays racism? If not, why?

It's a strategy game. Do you really find this more offensive than say GTA?

And how far do you stretch this notion, can we still play games about ancient Rome for example?

The Fremen were also human colonists, not indigenous.

I consider them indigenous, though you’re correct that they weren’t always there. They were, to the best of my knowledge, the first people to inhabit that place. Much as, where I’m from, Native Americans weren’t always here, but are accepted as the first people.

The Dune wiki, for what it’s worth, describes them as a Native people:

https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Fremen/DE

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