Livestream 10/21/2021 – Emperor: Battle for Dune

Dune is in the news right now thanks to the new movie. While I haven’t seen it yet the Dune universe and mythos has been around for a long time now of course. Everything being based on the original books by Frank Herbert there have been many adapations in just about all forms of media. The 1984 movie definitely provided inspiration to what the Dune universe “should” look like trippy as it were.

As far as games we have had quite a few as well but besides the first Dune game featuring a mixture of strategy, adventure and some RPG elements my heart lies in the field of Real Time Strategy games or RTS. Westwood studios made Dune 2 which may be considered the first modern RTS with most of the trappings we have come to expect from the genre. Sure it’s a bit rough around the edges these days but all the basic building blocks for the genre are there. Westwood moved on to working on their highly successful Command and Conquer series after that but did revisit Dune in the excellent Dune 2000 which is basically a Dune 2 remake.

The last game they made set in that universe is the game we streamed this week which is Emperor: Battle for Dune. Positioned as a direct sequel to Dune 2000 it picks up the story right after with a war for the throne of the Emperor (hint hint in the name) of the known universe of course all set on the planet Arrakis again known as Dune. It’s an ambitious game that goes all in on the story and the FMV sequences that Westwood became so known for. Probably not my favorite game of theirs from this era but it’s still great fun. It’s a Westwood game through and through and it flew under the radar it feels like for many. Check out the replay below and see what you think!