[Bowel-rattling noise] The noble Atreides. The insidious Ordos. The evil Harkonnen. Within their grasp, one desert planet, and the Spice to control the universe. Welcome to Arrakis. Dune was written by Frank Herbert, who was inspired by
the Oregon Dunes. It started life in the
monthly magazine Analog, later reworked into a single novel and published in 1965. Quickly accruing accolades and awards
for its rich world and very human conflicts, it cemented itself as
a science fiction classic, frequently cited as one of
the greatest exemplars of the genre. You may have heard a little
of Duneâs cinematic history. The license was first bought
by Apjac International in 1971, but the Producer passed away
before shooting could begin, and production was halted. The rights changed hands, with Alejandro Jodorowsky
set to direct. Having spent $2 million on
pre-production alone, and the script clocking in at
a projected fourteen hours long, the project collapsed. To say it was overly-ambitious would be an understatement. Dino De Laurentiis acquired
the rights in 1976. David Lynch was brought
on board as Director, and the infamous Dune adaptation
was finally released in 1984. The subsequent film was
an infamous flop, but into the valley of opportunity rode Virgin Games. Enter Martin Alper. You may not know the name, but you might recognise the voice. >>RED ALERT ANNOUNCER: Enemy approaching. Alper was the President of Virgin Games. He enjoyed Dune, and managed to license
the rights to make games based on the film. Specifically the film, interestingly. He didnât have much of a concept, other than the idea of
making adventure games, wanting Virgin to compete
with Sierra Online. The project was given
to Cryo Interactive, a small French development team. Virgin, however, was unimpressed with the infrequent and
âsketchyâ milestone submissions, and so the decision was made
to can the game. At this time, Westwood Studios was
developing Legend of Kyrandia. When a few of Virginâs staff
visited for a demo, they offered Westwood the Dune license. Brett Sperry, President and co-founder of Westwood. A fan of both the novels
and the Lynch film, Sperry took the reins. He was asked to take a look
at Herzog Zwei for ideas, a game the Virgin office
had been playing extensively. The title, by the way, is German. Duke II. Hmm. âHerzog Zwei was a lot of fun,â
recalled Sperry, âbut I have to say the other
inspiration for Dune II was the Mac software interface. The whole design [and] interface dynamics of mouse clicking and selecting
desktop items got me thinking; Inspiration was also sourced
from other venues; Populous, Civilisation, Military Madness, Westwoodâs own Eye of the Beholder, and an argument Sperry
once had with Chuck Kroegel, then-vice president
of Strategic Simulations, who felt that wargames
had passed their prime, mainly due to their roots in
turn-based tabletop boardgames, haemorrhaging players to newer,
more exciting genres. Sperry felt that the genre
had barely been explored, making it a personal
challenge to design a thrilling and fast-paced wargame. And so with Joe Bostic, Aaron Powell and the rest of Westwood
behind the project, development began. Westwoodâs Dune was released
on MS-DOS in 1992, but it didnât get to keep that name. Although Virgin had
cancelled Cryoâs Dune, it turned out; no one told Cryo. They kept at work on the project, getting much further into
development before Virgin found out, and managed to finish their game
earlier that same year. Despite not being a sequel, it was Westwoodâs title which
received the name change, becoming Dune II. Although there were strategy games with real-time elements
that came before, Dune II was the first RTS by virtue
of being the game which gave the genre its name. The term was chosen
by Sperry to distinguish the new style of play from
the contemporarily niche âwargameâ and âstrategyâ labels. Games like Herzog Zwei predated it, but it was Dune II that
codified the standards, becoming the basis upon which
future RTS titles would be built. You begin with a Construction Yard, which allows you to build
Wind Traps for power, and a Refinery
with an automated Harvester. The Spice it mines
is turned into Credits and used to fund your army. Itâs all there, albeit in a somewhat archaic package. Unlike later RTSs, it's not possible to select and command
more than one unit at once, a feature introduced by later games
such as WarCraft: Orcs & Humans, which allowed the
simultaneous control of up to a grand total four. The command system
is also rather basic. After selecting a unit, the player must choose
a command on the sidebar or press the associated key, and then click to issue it. The context-sensitive cursor
was added in the Genesis port only a year later, but it took another game to standardise these features. A ground-breaking game
for the time, but clunky to control
by the standards of today, a limitation also mentioned
by some contemporary reviews. This is why much of the footage
you have been seeing has been from Dune Dynasty, a faithful fan remake
based on the OpenDune project. Dune II was one of Frank Klepackiâs
earliest composition projects for Westwood. He drew inspiration
for the Dune sound from Totoâs music for the film, and the soundtrack of
the Cryo game by StĂŠphane Picq and Philippe Ulrich, but from there made it his own. The music would shift instruments
every few bars and was built to accommodate
dynamic tempo changes, allowing it to flow
from score to score in accordance with
the action on screen. [slow music] [dramatic music] Though of course for Frank, and indeed for Westwood, their finest work was yet to come. [gunshot] [the sound of power shifting
quickly in the Brotherhood] Right from the start, Sperry was not content
to be tied to a licensed property. >>SPERRY: What was interesting
about all that is that >>SPERRY: you know what,
and the end of the day, >>SPERRY: this is a prototype. >>SPERRY: I'm going to
create something else >>SPERRY: without anybody's license, >>SPERRY: and it's going
to be called Command & Conquer. [explosion] Even the name Command & Conquer
was tied to Dune II before the game that would
carry that name had even solidified as a concept. âThe first in Westwoodâs new
Command and Conquer seriesâ, ârunning on Westwoodâs
Command & Conquer engineâ. A direct mention in the Dune II box,
penned Fall 1992, reported in magazines as early as '93, and one even gives
the new game a name. The January edition of The One Amiga ran an interview with Sperry
ahead of Duneâs Amiga port, during which he teased âCommand & Conquer:
Fortress of Stoneâ. Louis Castle, co-founder of Westwood. "The first time we showed
that game internally it had wizards and castles,â he recalled,
speaking on this early form of C&C. âIt solved one of the
fundamental problems we had with making an RTS, which was
that we wanted to have a central resource that everybody was fighting over. Dune has Spice, which made perfect sense and it was also used when
we came to the idea of Tiberium.â The DnD-inspired fantasy setting
was dropped in favour of a more-relatable
near-future conflict, and inspired by the 1957 B-movie
The Monolith Monsters, a potent green crystal would
substitute the role of the Spice, becoming the resource
around which the entire lore would develop. Command & Conquer launched
in 1995, and- âŚwell, you know the rest. But it wasnât the
end of the road for Dune. Not just yet. >>VOICE: On this planet... >VOICE: you will die. >VOICE: We have seen it. 1998 saw the release
of Dune 2000, a remake of sorts of Dune II. While Westwood was
working on Tiberian Sun, development was outsourced
to British developer Intelligent Games, who had previously handled
the Red Alert expansions.
(EDIT: only the multiplayer maps) The gameplay is
comparable to Red Alert, being a decent upgrade
of the original Dune. It also included C&C series staple
live action cutscenes, >>MONEO: Riches!? >>MONEO: Is that why
youâve come to this >>MONEO: bloody sand pit? which saw the return of the Atreides, Harkonnen, and Ordos. The Ordos were of course
not in the original books, while the two other factions
played very prominent roles. The name of the House
was sourced from the Dune Encyclopedia, which was lauded
by Frank Herbert but now regarded as non-canon
by his estate. It appeared on a list of the
Great Houses of the Landsraad, though the coat of arms
of House Ordos as used in the Westwood games,
a snake coiled around a book, was actually designed
for House Wallach. Despite this being
the only mention of Ordos anywhere in the source material, the House featured
as a playable faction in every Dune RTS, allowing Westwood to
develop their own lore for this House
of traders and smugglers. >>MENTAT: Wormsign. Along with reprising his role
as the Harkonnen announcer, Frank Klepacki returned
to score the game, using it as an opportunity
to remaster his Dune II soundtrack, now no longer limited
by ancient sound cards. Dune 2000 really is
just C&C on Arrakis, and itâs a shame then that
the game is mostly forgotten today, now perhaps
best known as being that other game
that comes with OpenRA. It reviewed adequately
at the time, though many reviewers
disparaged it for its âdated visuals
and overly familiar gameplayâ, two factors which may have
been contemporaneously sound, but are now non-issues. Sure, itâs still dated, but for a 22-year old game, isnât that expectation
the price of entry? Still, âtis better for a good game to be misremembered
as a bad game, than to not be remembered at all. Much of the same can be said
for Emperor: Battle for Dune, a game which follows
the core tenants of C&C, but ends up feeling somehow different. Again outsourced to Intelligent Games, it was the first
and in fact only 3D RTS to release under the Westwood name. Itâs commonly believed to
run on the Westwood 3D engine, the same engine used for Renegade, and which was adopted by EA
under the name SAGE for every C&C from Generals
up until 2010. This is actually not the case. Research by tomsons26
from the Assembly Armada has confirmed that
Emperor in fact uses a completely different
engine named Xanadu developed in-house
by Intelligent Games. D2K similarly used its own in-house
engine rather than Westwood's, despite common claims that it
runs on the Red Alert engine. Emperor is a brave attempt
to transition to a 3D perspective. It allowed for a pretty
reasonable camera height, low camera being a common gripe
with the SAGE games, but going to maximum height
only exacerbates the gameâs issues with design legibility. With the low-poly models and
ease with which units clump together, the game can be somewhat murky
in the way it telegraphs what it is that youâre looking at. It may have inherited its
esoteric art style from D2K, but for a game from 2001, it canât be faulted for its polygon count. Reading an objectâs silhouette is always much easier
with 2D imagery. You may not know what
each of these units do until you get them to fire, but you will always be able
to tell them apart. These guys definitely
arenât identical, but when we zoom out
to a more playable height, they look like the same thing. The UI certainly doesnât help. While the sidebar is definitely
very appealing and well-designed, the health bar has been replaced
with a translucent health ring, which is by default, half concealed
behind the Guard mode icon. These are things you
can overcome with time as you become
more familiar with the game. The unit voices, however, are a problem which only
gets worse the longer you play. Individual units sound great, but the game has unique
voice barks for groups, and letâs just say it doesnât have all that many. >>HARKONNEN UNITS: At once! At once! At once!
At once! At once! At once! At once! At once! At once! >>HARKONNEN UNITS: At once! At once! At once! At once! At once! At once! At once! At once! At once!
AAt once! At once! At once! At once! At once! At once! At once! At once! At once! At once! The soundtrack, on the other hand, really is something else. This time, each House
has its own unique music by a different composer. House Atreides is
scored by Frank, taking a mostly orchestral
approach similar to D2K, with some nods to his prior work. [music] Composed by David Arkenstone, House Harkonnen has
a tense industrial quality, heavily featuring electric guitars
for the melody. [music] However, itâs House Ordos
that steals the show. [bombass music] These tracks were composed
by Jarrid Mendelson, who had previously worked
with Frank on Tiberian Sun. Unfortunately, these two titles
would be the only games he would compose for, seemingly having left
the industry after Emperor. [radtacular music] Shortcomings it may have, but they donât define
an otherwise quality game. Emperor, first and foremost, was ambitious. It set out to distinguish itself
from Command & Conquer, becoming in the process
an entity unto itself. This is its legacy. Emperor: Battle for Dune was the last game in
the series to be released. Intelligent Games would
close only a year later, and Westwood Studios
would be liquidated by EA shortly thereafter. Our old friends Cryo Interactive
would release one further adventure game
based on the TV series, [Andrew Blanchard fart sound] shortly before the company
filed for bankruptcy. And that, was Dune. Itâs been over a decade since the
last Command & Conquer released, but with the Remastered Collection
on the horizon, thatâs about to change. But what about Dune? Emperor released in 2001, and since then almost two
whole decades have passed. Amongst all the talk of Remasters, thoughts have turned to Arrakis. Itâs a shame it isnât possible. Westwood may have had
a degree of creative freedom, but Dune was ultimately
a licensed product, and the license has since expired. Martin Alper hadnât licensed
the rights to make games based on the Dune books, but on the Dune film. âDune is a trademark of
Dino De Laurentiis Corporation and licensed by MCA /
Universal Merchandising.â Every Dune RTS has
some variation of this as part of its license. This creates a messy scenario; who actually owns the rights
to the Dune games? The Frank Herbert
Estate is of course the arbiter to the
Dune property overall. Herbert licensed the media rights
to Apjac in the early 70s, but these rights
changed hands several times, eventually going to the
De Laurentiis Corporation, who produced the film,
distributed by Universal Studios. Virgin Games then licensed
the rights from these two to make games on the film. EA buys Westwood
and all associated assets, but some time after
Emperor: Battle for Dune, the rights they held expired, reverting back to the prior owner. Now, itâs improbable that either De Laurentiis Corp
or Universal still hold any rights over the games. They certainly no longer
hold the rights to make films on the property, as neither are involved
in the 2020 Dune film. However, the De Laurentiis Corp
still retains the rights to the films they produced
even after the license to make the film expires. They still own Dune 1984. Question is, how much of
the filmâs merchandising do these parties still control? EA may no longer
have the Dune property, but they at least own
the work done by Westwood and
Intelligent Games. One would have thought so. Speaking on her efforts to
distribute Dune II on GoG.com, Marta Adamska detailed
the entire problem. And⌠thatâs it. It's interesting then to note that in 2019 Herbert Estate
happily approved the reprint of a Dune
board game from 1979. âShould stay oldâ, indeed. As it stands, the Dune RTSs are out of print
and cannot be sold digitally, If you want to play these games, you have two options; track down the physical discs, or ask a nice man with one leg, and you have no guarantee that
the old discs will work on a modern computer. They didnât on mine. December 2020 will
see the release of a new Dune film from
Legendary Entertainment. As a tie in, the Tencent company Funcom
has been given the exclusive rights to develop games based
on the new film. No RTSs have yet been announced, but even if Funcom
were to attempt that route, the Westwood heritage
is long gone. Still, never say never. Only 40 years now until
dune enters public domain. Better mark your calendars, EA. The Dune series shouldnât
have to languish in obscurity. It has more than earned
its place in gaming history, even if its license is
caught up in limbo. It should be remembered; the lost older sibling
of Command & Conquer; family in all but name. Dune II may not
look like much now, but its effect on the
games industry was prodigious. Even going beyond the concrete
it laid down for Command & Conquer and so many other RTSs, itâs worth noting that it
directly inspired WarCraft, setting into motion
not only that franchise, but also the eSports
juggernaut StarCraft, and the entire MOBA genre. There were many stopgaps
on the journey, of course, many wonderful, creative people and fantastic innovative games, but if you trace their lineage, then the vestiges of their ancestry can still be seen. All pointing back to an old DOS game about mining Spice. My name is Stefan. Thank you so much for watching.
I remember that there was a confusing period when there were two different Dune games, and they were both supposed to have been the same game, but one of them was an adventure and the other one was Command and Conquer before that game existed.
Because the first Dune was made by the wiggy French people who made Captain Blood, and Virgin was going to cancel it, but the developers managed to pull through. However Virgin had paid for another Dune game as insurance, which was sold as a sequel. The odd development meant that the developers of the second game had more time to polish it.
This was back when a publisher could ask some developers to magic up an A-list title in nine months. A side-effect of this is that the first game, the adventure - which had a lot more to do with the film, or at least it had a character portrait of Kyle McLachlan - tends to be forgotten nowadays.
Emperor: Battle for Dune will always hold a special place in my heart, and it really sucks that it's practically impossible to get nowadays without pirating it, and even then it runs rather shittily on modern PCs.
I spent countless hours just messing around in quick matches, easily putting hundreds of hours into just building bases and epic defenses that could withstand any enemy attack.
And the campaign... I still think it's one of the most creative epic campaigns I've ever played for a RTS. Fully filmed cutscenes with legit actors made briefings absolutely awe inspiring, and the way they tied in the lore (and their own lore) was perfect, and how they left it open just enough for you to follow Dune-lore while also making your own decisions.
It was the game of my childhood and I honestly wish Steam had been around at the time cause I honestly wouldn't be surprised if I put over 8,000 hours into it.
Dune II was a great game, the UI was terribly clunky and often got in the way of itself. If you really want to play a Dune RTS the remake Dune 2000 really cleaned it up and made it much more enjoyable. Emperor: Battle for Dune was released shortly after Dune 2000 and pretty much brought the "series" into full blown C&C treatment with video mission briefings and cut scenes.
Neither game has much to do with Dune beyond names.
I was searching for Emperor: Battle for Dune on GoG just a few days ago, and was surprised not to find out. A shame that Frank Herbert's family disagrees to revive the series, but maybe it's better to leave it in my memories.
That was a very nice video, subscribed.
Dune 2 was one of the first CD's we got after getting a CD-Rom drive in our PC.
We got a 10 pack of games and Dune 2 was the only one we ended up playing. The music was the best. Still get this song in my head from time to time https://youtu.be/2WKBjmJCBHw?t=2670
Hopefully if the upcoming Dune movie is successful enough, we can get some sort of a brand new title in the universe (be it RTS or otherwise), or a remaster of one of the old games. It'd be interesting to see the PSX version of Dune 2000 with updated graphics, for example, since that one used full 3D models instead of sprites like the PC version did
Sad to see a major mistake in the very title. The video is about Dune 2, not Dune.
Yes, Dune 2 is THE ancestor of RTS games. However, Dune was a different game, a very cool mix of adventure and strategy, with great music and graphics.
Ironically, while Dune 2 is better known, it has aged horribly, as the RTS genre has progressed immensely since that time. Dune 1, on the other hand, is still quite fun and playable.
What thereâs a 2020 dune film?!
Bought a second copy and a link cable for my PlayStation. Friend brought his PlayStation over and moved a second TV into my living room. Was a great day, but never got to play again.