The third and final (at least at launch) faction of Dune: Spice Wars has been revealed, and they won’t be exactly what we expected…

Last year’s Dune was one of the most massive critical and box office hits of the year. A multimillion-dollar production that broke international records, it was not unreasonable to see its footprint in video games after 21 years since the last title based on Frank Herbert’s literary saga was released.

While Dune: Spice Wars didn’t arrive at the same time as the film, the buzz around the theme is mainly due to the film starring Timothée Chalamet. Developed by Shiro Games, responsible for the recently released WarTales, the title will arrive in early access during 2022, and after the announcement at The Game Awards 2021, we will finally know which the third faction will be available to play with after its release on Steam.

For those familiar with the story from the books, although it’s also clear from the movie, one of the critical factions is the Fremen, inhabitants of the desert planet Arrakis. In the game, however, it is not the Fremen, but…

…the Smugglers, an opportunistic and guerrilla group that will appear alongside House Atreides and House Harkonnen.

This new faction, who did not play a role in the movie version, will control their part of the territory near the Arrakis Arctic, and their playstyle will be pretty different, with much faster movement and more excellent infiltration skills. The smugglers are not very good at large-scale combat, but they will benefit from black market deals and attacks from the shadows.

Contrary to what it seems, Dune: Spice Wars will not be a “grand strategy” genre but will position itself as part of a sub-genre known as the 4X strategy. Its approach is very similar to that of Civilization, although French studio Shiro Games announced last year that they would be using procedurally-developed scenarios to add even more variety to their game.

Source: Steam