Early Access can seem like the prescience of Paul “Muad’Dib” Atreides, the saviour, prophet, and eventually emperor in Frank Herbert’s series of Dune novels. As a game releases into Early Access, you can see the possibilities ahead of it, the design decisions it might and might not incorporate, the vague outline of the finished work. As Early Access progresses, the possibility space narrows; the outline solidifies.
But if there is one theme to take away from Herbert’s work, it is that seeing the possibilities does not necessarily enable one to make the most of them. Paul rose to be the messianic leader of the Fremen, the indigenous people of Arrakis’ deserts living under the boot of House Harkonnen and the imperial House Corrino that licenced their occupation, but his rise was irrevocably tied to billions of deaths across thousands of planets.
The extremes aren’t quite so dramatic in the case of Dune: Spice Wars, but it’s hard not to wonder what it could have done differently. The Early Access release in April 2022 already offered a polished and intriguing foundation – a moreish 4X gameplay loop hooked around just enough of Herbert’s lore to suggest that in time Spice Wars could do justice to the depth and strangeness of his work. The full release maintains the compulsive gameplay and polish, but proves those grander hopes largely unrealised.
