Comments - kengou

Awesome progress, keep it up!

I have one concern though. At any location except for the open sand of arrakis, soldiers in the Dune universe use shields, the result of which is that all projectile weapons, lasguns, tanks and other military vehicles are useless. Warfare between the great houses, with the ONLY exception being the open desert of Arrakis, is fought by swordsmen with shields. I kind of take issue with seeing a soldier on the grass plains of Caladan using a gun. I guess an accurate Dune battle would be harder to make into a good multiplayer action game though.

(part 2)

My ideal Dune game would be a mix of 4X and real-time, almost like Star Wars Empire at War or perhaps the Total War games. Each planet, and perhaps even different regions of a planet, would have environments that dictate the sort of resource gathering and troop recruitment available, and the actual strength and abilities of those troops. Frank Herbert really focused on the environment shaping cultures and people in all of his works, and perhaps the most in Dune, and I'd make environment play a very large role in any Dune game. I think the real-time strategy portion of the game would be more in common with Dawn of War or Company of Heroes, rather than Command & Conquer, as well. I imagine that, due to the lack of effectiveness of combat vehicles, and the heavy focus on infantry and swords (perhaps spears and other melee weapons as well), there would be smaller squad-based battles centered around capturing strategic map areas. The bashirs and mentats and Dukes and so forth that command battles would not focus on making massive numbers of troops to destroy the enemy's HQ; instead I believe they would be more concerned with capturing strategic points of interest. I also can't picture a large-scale melee battle as you'd find in Total War, because the shields and the high level of training for most swordsmen in Dune armies means fewer but more valuable soldiers.

But I don't make games. You guys do, and I hope you make the game you want to make. I really hope it ends up a great game too!

I'm very pleased to see more Dune mods/games coming about. Best of luck with this!

I do have a complaint, but it regards Dune games in general, not yours specifically. I understand everybody wants to set their game on Arrakis, but for an RTS I feel it just doesn't work the way most games utilize it. Every Dune RTS has had battles take place on the open sand, with soldiers using guns, and tanks and mechs. When I think of an epic battle in Dune, I think of legions of soldiers with swords and body-shields. No projectile weapons, no lasguns. In the Dune universe, this is the prevalent form of warfare. Ornithopters, tanks, mechs, any form of armored combat vehicle is rendered useless because of shield technology, and therefore they aren't used in combat. I'd love to see a Dune RTS with battles like this, with battles taking place on other planets.

If a game insists on having the war take place ON Arrakis (as they are wont to do), then developers need to realize that a battle taking place on Arrakis won't take place on open sand. There's nothing important there. Armies battle over cities, and perhaps Sietches. No one but Fremen can even walk on the open sand without attracting an immediate worm. And the worm implementation in Emperor wasn't even close to accurate. A full-sized worm would make fighting on open sand to be at best, not worth the risk, and at worst a death sentence for every single troop. I don't see any reason a Dune game can't set battles in Arrakeen or Carthag, or the area around/in a Sietch, so long as they make the actual sand to be pretty much impassible to anyone but Fremen (maybe as a map shortcut).

In a strict sense you're absolutely right. Emperor Paul-Muad'Dib Atreides ruled that the Harkonnen title had passed to the Lady Jessica, but she renounced the title, letting it fall to the next heir: Paul Atreides himself. In so doing, the Harkonnen family and Atreides family were combined once and for all.

However, according to the Dune Encyclopedia (which is not strictly canon, I'll admit), the family Harkonnen-Rabban did survive as a separate House Minor. It is my interpretation that it is this family that ruled Geidi Prime, and that they maintained the same culture as the Harkonnens. For practical purposes they were the Harkonnens, if not strictly by title.

I didn't know that, I read House Atreides and couldn't stand to read any more of Brian's drivel. Still, even if Brian Herbert wrote those inconsistencies, they are still inconsistencies - and part of the reason I don't really consider any of his books to be canon, because there were loads of them even in House Atreides. Brian does not seem to have a good grasp of the Duniverse at all; the themes, the societies, the cultures, anything really. He just writes up a very literal and shallow story and shoves it onto Arrakis or Geidi Prime and calls it a Dune book.

As to the matter of Khadal having an alternate means of space travel to the Guild...he would also have to have a rogue Guild Navigator. I suppose that is possible though.

The claims that House Harkonnen died when the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen died, I cannot dispute. However, the Dune Encyclopedia (which I consider more canon than Brian's work, and which Frank Herbert himself approved of) claims that the house lived on as a House Minor under the leadership of the Rabban family (Glossu "Beast" Rabban was not the last of his side of the family). I found it a pretty clear implication that the contents of the no-globe in Heretics of Dune featured a lot of trademark Harkonnen material - sexualized and brutal imagery for example. To me, this suggests that the Harkonnens existed in some form when they acquired their no-globe, during the reign of Leto II or perhaps during the famine times. I believe, if I recall correctly, that Duncan Idaho suggested this in Heretics of Dune. However the interpretation that House Harkonnen was effectively destroyed by Paul Muad'Dib Atreides isn't impossible.

Please note I love what this mod is doing, Dune needs more exposure and definitely more games. Also love the artwork! I guess I take issue more with Brian Herbert than with the specific work of this mod team regarding this storyline.

As a big fan of Dune, I had to comment on this story:

The first recorded no-room technology came about around 3000 years into Leto II's reign. Sometime around or after then, the Harkonnen's also acquired a no-globe. A major component of Leto II's golden path was to oppress humanity with his prescience, so that they would develop technology to counter it (no-technology) and so they would evolve the capability to escape prescience. The latter was the purpose of his breeding program which ended with Siona Ibn Faud Al-Seyefa Atreides.

It's ludicrous to think that no-technology would have been developed BEFORE Paul-Muad'Dib Atreides, who was the first recorded human with prescience (the result of the Bene Gesserit millenia-long breeding program). The only known way around his prescience was guild navigators, as with the assassination plot in Dune Messiah.

The story also mentions "their ships", as if a Great House, let alone a single person, could own and operate a space ship themselves. The Guild had all rights on intersteller transport with their monopoly. The Guild would transport people and things from planet to planet. In the original Dune it's mentioned that during transit all ships were anonymous. An transport full of Atreides could be right alongside one carrying Harkonnen and neither would know. It wasn't until the Scattering after Leto II's death, when the Ixians developed their artificial Navigation machines and artificial Melange, that the Guild lost absolute control of space travel.