First look: Frank Herbert's Dune

The PC game Dune, which is being developed by Cryo and Widescreen Games, is based on the popular sci-fi novel series by Frank Herbert. In the game you play as Paul Atreides, and the story takes place during the hero's integration into Fremen society. As in Frank Herbert's novels, Paul's introduction into this new society occurs over a period of time, and to gain the trust of the Fremen, he takes on mission after mission, endangering his life while at the same time earning the trust of a wary people.

In the brief demo we received from Sylvain Paris, we got a chance to try the controls and to run across a desert on Arrakis. We played Paul in the third-person perspective, and being dropped into the middle of the desert was an interesting experience because sand worms quickly detected our presence. One giant sand worm started to run after Paul, and at this point, the camera actually displayed all the action from in front of Paul with the sand worm following close behind. The sand worm was pretty impressive, and it looked just like sand worms previously shown in the original motion picture. In addition, the desert we were running across was full of quicksand traps. Running forward with the camera looking at you and what's behind you made escaping these traps tricky and almost impossible. We fell into a few traps but luckily, with a bit of persistence, we made our way out of them and continued to run away from the towering sand worm.

According to the developer, the game is only 20 percent complete at this time, so our first look at it focused mainly on this desert scene. The graphics, while not terribly cutting-edge, look fairly good at this early stage of development. The game's strong point lies more in its story and how well it will re-create the novels in an interactive environment. The PC version and Sony PlayStation 2 version of Frank Herbert's Dune are both scheduled for release this fall.