Video Game / Dune II

aka: Dune 2000

When you're wounded and left on Arrakis' plains
And the Fremen come out to drink up what remains

"He who controls Dune controls the Spice. He who controls the Spice, controls the universe."

— Lady Elara

Developed by Westwood Studios and released in 1992, Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty is the Trope Codifier for the Real-Time Strategy genre, as well as the Trope Maker for numerous gameplay conventions.

The games featured three playable factions: House Atreides, House Harkonnen and House Ordos. In Dune II, as well as its remake Dune 2000, the player would be given a map of Arrakis that represented the territories of the three factions. The player, no matter which side he picked, would then play through a variety of missions (In Dune II, either harvesting spice or destroying the enemy base and all their units) and could see their progress on the map. Once they'd conquered pretty much the entire map, the two enemy factions would join each other, as well as the Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe, Shaddam IV of House Corrino and his Imperial Sardaukar, to fight off the much too powerful player faction. Once the player had won the entire game, he would be treated to a cinematic of whatever faction he's playing bringing their own form of justice to the Emperor for having tried to use them in his elaborate plan.

The game was ported over to the Sega Genesis in 1993 under the title Dune: The Battle For Arrakis.

Dune 2000, a remake released in 1998, took advantage of the numerous advancements made to the RTS genre within the previous six years (you could now control multiple units at once, use the right and middle mouse buttons for easier movement, etc.), and replaced the drawn cutscenes of the original with Westwood Studios' near-trademark Live Action Cutscenes. It also featured slightly more tactical objectives (Rather than "Kill the Harkonnen" you get to "Protect the Fremen from the Harkonnen" then "kill the Harkonnen") and Frank Klepacki (you may have heard of him), one of the original composers for Dune II, returns to score the new music and remix some of the old ones. While the game received mostly lackluster reviews upon release and sold rather poorly compared to other Westwood games, it has since developed a bit of a cult following for being a mostly faithful remake of the original with a number of post-C&C gameplay improvements and far better presentation.

It was followed by a true sequel, Emperor: Battle for Dune, in 2001.

The Dune games featured Geo Effects quite early in the history of Real-Time Strategy. Buildings could only be built on rock, and there were limited rock available, meaning that players had limited base-building opportunities. Further, infantry could be positioned on mountains to protect them from being run over by tanks, and vehicles would move much slower over dunes than just desert plains. And, lest we forget, this is Dune we're talking about here - rock is also a safe haven from the Shai-Hulud.

Very loosely inspired by the Dune books, of course. The first Dune game was an Adventure Game with RTS elements that followed the plot of the 1984 film, and was actually developed at the same time as Dune II, making it largely a sequel In Name Only (only titled as such because both were published by the same company and Cryo Interactive's game came out first), retaining the basic setting elements but presenting a new story about war and political control distinct from the novels. The game engine for Dune II would later be refined and used for a game set in an original universe - Command & Conquer.

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Dune II and Dune 2000 provide examples of:

• Achilles' Heel: The Harkonnen Devastator is the strongest tank in the game. However, it's extremely vulnerable to the Ordos Deviator, which can take control of it and force it to activate its Self-Destruct Mechanism.
• Action Bomb: The Ordos Saboteur.
• Adaptation Expansion: House Ordos is unique to the game and has never been mentioned in any of the novels. Its origins can be traced to a non-canonical encyclopedia^note though at the time its canonicity was uncertain rather than clearly non-canon.
• Adaptational Villainy: While House Harkonnen weren't exactly friendly to begin with, their primary motivation for committing atrocities was desire for more money and power. In the game, they turned into an Always Chaotic Evil house, with Ordos taking their place as malicious manipulators.
• Advanced Tech 2000: Dune 2000
• Always a Bigger Fish: This can happen to you if a Sand Worm happens to munch an enemy force. Then again, it might just as easily do so to your units.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The Harkonnen.
• Ambiguously Human: The Ordos mentat Edric O in Dune 2000 appears to be a human with numerous cybernetic implants, but other houses suspect he may be a (very forbidden) thinking machine made to appear human. The other houses' suspicions are implied to be true, as Edric O refers to himself as "technology" in one cutscene.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: In the Harkonnen ending of Dune 2, not only do they blow away the Emperor, they kill his adviser too.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: 25 buildable units, although you could get up to a total of 99 by buying from Starports. 2000 had much higher headcounts.
• Arbitrary Weapon Range: Missile tanks cannot hit a target 2 hexes or less away. If they try, the missiles will go wild and hit random locations other than the target hex.
• Artificial Stupidity: The AI's move and attack patterns are very simple and predictable. This happened by mistake, as more complex strategies were programed but not well implemented due to several bugs, concrete examples include:
  • The AI rebuilds defenses as well as other buildings in a random fashion, and when it does the rebuilding it will crush any unit that stays upon the ruins of the building.
  • AI attacks on your base can be stopped by building four sections of wall at just the right spot. The AI units that arrive to attack can't manage to find a way around it, and just sit there. As long as no player units approach, they sit still, and the enemy doesn't send out more attackers.
  • In one mission the AI suddenly sends out a group of soldiers into an empty corner of the map for no reason at all, and they remain there, not moving, until the end of the mission.
  • The enemy will keep throwing units at your base defense turrets uselessly even as your offensive troops are in the process of leveling their base.
  • Enemy vehicles will move to attack your base as soon as they're built, meaning they will arrive in ones or twos, allowing you to defeat them in detail. They're supposed to form groups before attacking, but the code for this doesn't work because of typos (it does work for infantry).
  • Enemy tracked vehicles won't bother to drive around infantry belonging to an allied house, and will simply run them over if they're in the way.
• Ascended Extra: House Ordos was only briefly mentioned in the Dune Encyclopedia, in a list of Great Houses that existed when Muad'Dib became emperor. The encyclopedia did not offer any further insight to the House, and everything about them in-game is a creation of Westwood Studios.
• Attract Mode: In the Sega version, waiting on the title screen plays a tutorial (which you could also select on the menu), which describes all terrain, units and buildings in the game game and shows how to build, harvest and order units around.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The House-specific superweapons, to varying degrees.
  • The Harkonnen Death hand is a missile which can destroy pretty much anything it hits, but is so inaccurate you need to Save Scum for a proper hit.
  • The Atreides can call in Fremen reinforcements, but you can't control them.
  • The Ordos saboteur. It can be controlled and is much faster than normal infantry, but it isn't invisible and is likely to die before it can sabotage any building (in early versions of Dune II it was actually invisible to the player who built them!). Being a suicide unit means it can only be used once and respawning a new one takes forever. Furthermore, in Dune II it was only possible to have two of them on a map at the same time.
  • The Harkonnen's Devastator tank. It's impervious to all weapons, but it's as fast as a turtle without legs. It's expensiveness (800 credits) means it's hard to amass a large group of them. If it's destroyed, it will cause collateral damage to units close by, including yours.
  • Your soldiers can capture enemy buildings and allow you to build the enemies' unique units. It has several drawbacks however:
    • The enemy structures need to be weakened first, and soldiers have mediocre firepower. The captured structures need to be repaired, costing you resources.
    • Soldiers take forever to go from point A to point B and are easily killed, so you need to secure a safe route for them first.
    • You lose the soldier after the capture is complete.
    • The captured structures are still in enemy territory and must be guarded.
    • You still need to take the Tech Tree into account if you want to build the enemies' unique units, so you need to capture all the required buildings to make it work. Alternatively, you can just capture the enemy's Construction Yard. While this save you the hustle of capturing more enemy buildings, this mean you have to build all the Tech Tree yourself making the whole thing very expensive.
    • Enemies' units still require time and resources to build and you still have to deal with the maximum allowed units.
  • The Atreides and Ordos can build Ornithopters, fast-moving attack aircraft with flapping wings. They seem cool, but are very expensive, and you'll be lucky to get two shots off before the unit is shot down.
• Badass Army: The Sardaukar and the Fremen. The Fremen are always allied with the Atreides, while the Sarduakar are of course loyal to the Emperor and always hostile to the player.
• Canon Foreigner:
  • House Ordos, who are from a non-canon sourcebook and are heavily implied to still use Thinking Machines.
  • The Harkonnen Death's Hand tactical nuclear missile launcher, which violates Dune's Great Convention, one of the tenants of which is that nukes can only be used on alien threats (and, outside of an in-universe spooky campfire story, there aren't any).
• Cap Raiser:
  • Building windtraps increases the amount of power available to you, which is necessary to create new buildings safely.
  • Building spice silos allows you to store more spice (currency) at one time.
  • The maximum number of units in the game at one time (yours plus the enemy's) is fixed. Once that cap is hit, you can't build any more units. However, each enemy unit you destroy allows you to build an additional unit.
  • The maximum number of buildings in the game at one time (yours plus the enemy's) is fixed. Once that cap is hit, you can't build any more buildings. However, each enemy building you destroy allows you to build an additional building.
• Card-Carrying Villain: House Harkonnen proudly describes itself as cruel and ruthless toward both friend and foe in its quest for power.
• Car Fu:
  • Do not send an infantry squad to take down an otherwise defenseless Harvester...
  • It is possible to protect your infantry from this by sending them into "infantry rock", dense terrain that cannot be traversed by vehicles.
  • But don't try running over an enemy saboteur. It will explode.
• The Chosen One: The Commander from Dune 2000 was introduced by the Bene Gesserit after they had a prophecy that he would rise in power to command vast armies, destroy Corrino, and bring peace to Arrakis. They don't actually care which side you join to do this. Other than a bit of initial confusion over how the hell you got there the faction you join doesn't care about the connection.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: See The Good, the Bad, and the Evil below. In addition, regardless of chosen faction color, Atreides units and structures are always sand-colored, Ordos sickly green and Harkonnen ones dark brown. Other factions have specific palettes, notably a deep royal purple for the Sardaukar.
• Command & Conquer Economy: The Trope Maker, even before the namesake.
• The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: Zigzagged with all three Mentats serving as your advisers. While some of their hints are useful, some other information are worthless. Ammon's opinion on missile tanks being useless? Don't listen to him, order them through the starport as soon as you can! They can outgun enemy turrets. Cyril advise you to train light infantries because they are more than adequate for the task? They're actually really slow, terrible shots and die easily. Radnor tells you the Ordos' raiders are pitiful? He's right, but they actually make excellent counters for missile tanks in hit-and-run tactics.
• Cool Plane: Ornithopters, aircraft that use actual flapping wings to achieve flight. In Dune 2000 the Atreides can call in a flight of these for an airstrike as a support power.
• Cosmetically Different Sides: Though Faction Calculus applies, the house armies have largely identical units. Key differences are each faction's combat tank and unique unit, as well as their Support Powers.
• Construct Additional Pylons: Nearly every level in each game necessitates you building your own base, and then further building additional windtraps to provide power for all your structures.
• Convenient Color Change: If converted by the Ordos' Deviator gas, units turn to whatever color the Ordos player is using. As modders found out while toying around with the Deviator, it doesn't specifically change the units to the user's side, it turns them over to the Ordos. So if a non-Ordos unit uses it, it will simply switch the target over to the Ordos side, which will then simply continue attacking you.
• Creator Cameo: Frank Klepacki shows up in Dune 2000 during an Ordos briefing as a servant who is cleaning the mentat's implants.
• Determinator: In Dune 2000, Sardaukar will not be suppressed by enemy fire. Ever. Fremen however, can, which isn't exactly accurate to the books.
• Expy: Several characters loosely mirror ones from the novels, most obviously Frederick/Shaddam IV Corrino, who got his name retconned to be the same as the novel's in Emperor. Elara is more complex, visually paralleling Jessica but having shades of Paul in her character.
• Enemy Exchange Program: The aforementioned Ordos Deviator. It doesn't last, though, despite what the Ordos mentat says.
  • Dune 2000 has The Engineer, who can capture buildings, allowing to build even enemy's unique units too. In the original Dune II building were captured by sending regular infantry into it. However, capturing a fully repaired building required a lot of light infantry, and the Harkonnen and emperor could only produce heavies. Plus, the infantry, especially the light ones, was very slow, no match for tanks and subject for Arbitrary Headcount Limit of 25. A common tactics involved "softening" a building with quads or tanks before capturing.
• The Engineer: Each side in Dune 2000 has an engineer unit much like those found in Command & Conquer. Every infantry unit was like this originally in Dune II, however.
• Faction Calculus: Atreides (balanced) vs. Harkonnen (powerhouse) vs. Ordos (subversive).
• Faction-Specific Endings: has three possible end victory sequences, one for each of the houses that the player can be a part of (Atreides, Harkonnen, Ordos).
• Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: Many vehicles are this. The trike, the Ordos Raider, the quad, the Devastator Tank and the Sonic Tank can only fire in the direction they're facing.
• Fog of War: Removed permanently from a zone after it is explored. You get an onscreen radar once an Outpost is built.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil with Chromatic Arrangement: Atreides are blue, Harkonnens are red and Ordos are green. Even though the original book specifically states that the Harkonnens are blue and the Atreides are green or red. But then we can't have blue bad guys and red good guys, can we? That's not allowed. The Harkonnen's griffin emblem is replaced by a snarling bull for the same reason.
  • Color-Coded Armies: The above color-coding only applies to your overhead map view; closeup view of troops, vehicles and installations shows them to have muted, earthy color schemes better suited to desert warfare.
• Homing Projectile: Various missile units are capable of firing these.
• Informed Ability: The Sardaukar infantry in Dune II are presented as elite troops that surpass any others except maybe Fremen. However, in-game they have the same stats as any other house's Troopers.
• Injured Vulnerability: If you damage an enemy building enough so that its damage indicator turns red, you can capture it by sending one of your infantry units into it.
• Invisibility Cloak: In Dune 2000, Fremen units are perpetually invisible, unless badly injured. This is meant to represent their skill at moving and hiding in the desert.
• Live-Action Cutscene: Dune 2000 replaced the 2D illustrations of the original Dune II with live-action actors, including well-known actors like John Rhys-Davies.
• Luck-Based Mission: Dune II becomes this whenever a Harkonnen player launches a Death Hand — for either side — since you never know where the missile is going to hit. It leads to Save Scumming on a regular basis, because if it destroys your Construction Yard, you've probably lost the game.
• Make Me Wanna Shout: The powerful but delicate Atreides Sonic Tank.
• Manipulative Bastard: The Ordos, natch. Elara, for a more individual example. Then again, this is the Bene Gesserit's Hat.
• Mobile Factory: The Mobile Construction Vehicle, though it has to deploy and become immobile to actually build anything. It can pack up and move elsewhere, however.
• Mythology Gag: In Dune 2000, during some of the Ordos cut scenes, Edrico can be seen sitting in a Harkonnen Chair. This is the famous chair that was designed by H.R. Giger for the unproduced 70s Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune film. Despite that film never happening, it is still called the Harkonnen chair and has been since produced in larger numbers and are actually for sale.
• Neutrals, Critters, and Creeps: Massive Sand Worms that attack ground units that idle in the desert.
• Never Trust a Title: Though the game is titled "Dune II", it has nothing to do with the first Dune game by Cryo Interactive. That game was, more-or-less, an adaptation of the 1984 Dune movie, while Dune II is an original story that only uses Dune's world and characters as its foundation. It is only a sequel in the sense that it was released after Cryo's game.
• Non-Indicative Name: To be picky, Dune 2000 was released in 1998.
• Nuke 'em: The Harkonnen Death Hand missile.
• Oh, Crap!: The Emperor has an epic one in each House's ending.
• Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The Ordos leadership is so secretive, they're never directly seen.
• One-Hit Kill: A Sand Worm will inflict this on anything.
• Palette Swap: Every basic units look the same despite belonging to different factions. Special mention goes to the Trike/Raider, Missile Tank/Deviator, Heavy Trooper/Fremen/Sardaukar who are completely different units stats wise, but share the same sprite.
• Palmtree Panic: The Atreides homeworld, Caladan, has hints of this in its appearance.
• Path of Greatest Resistance: The enemy units were created at (and came from) the enemy base. You can follow the trail of enemies back to their base and attack it.
• The Plan: The Emperor's plan in Dune 2 and Dune 2000.
• Planet of Hats: Each faction is much simplified from their appearance in the books, The Ordos not withstanding.
  • Atreides: Always Lawful Good, though Good is Not Nice.
  • Ordos: Sneaky, Manipulative Bastards driven by Greed.
  • Harkonnen: Always Chaotic Evil, have Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and like Stuff Blowing Up.
  • Ix: For Science!, possibly even Machine Worship.
  • Tleilaxu: Playing with Syringes to the point of Squick, driven by religious fanaticism.
  • Fremen: Proud Warrior Barbarian Tribe.
  • Sardaukar: Proud Warrior Space Marines.
• Polluted Wasteland: Geidi Prime, the Harkonnen homeworld. Reflecting this, nearly every Harkonnen building has smoke stacks. Including ones that logically shouldn't, like their radar outposts, barracks and palaces.
• Powerful, but Inaccurate: The Harkonnen Death Hand missile can destroy nearly anything it hits, but its accuracy is so bad that whatever target you actually click on will usually remain unscathed.
• Recurring Riff: Both 2000 and Emperor use music from II, like this one for example.
• Red Shirt Army: In Dune 2, infantry was only useful to sneak into a base to capture buildings. Using them for actual combat was guaranteed to result in a lot of screaming and a pile of corpses slowly sinking into the sand even against simple trikes. This was improved upon in later games though.
• Resource-Gathering Mission: Many of the early missions have the simple objective of harvesting a certain quantity of spices while fending off raids by the other houses.
• Ridiculously Fast Construction
• Ridiculously Human Robot: The Ordos mentat in Dune 2000 is rumored to be a forbidden Thinking Machine made to look like a human to hide its nature. That, or he's just a creepy human with lots of cybernetic implants.
• "Risk"-Style Map: This serves only as a cosmetic role where you choose one possible territory to attack. The outcome is identical, with the difference simply being the layout of the map chosen - a system likewise used in Command & Conquer.
• Robo Speak: Ordos often sound like this, due their drone-like dedication to their cause.
• Rousing Speech: House leaders and Mentants are prone to these, though flavor varies. The Atreides are usually Tired of Running while the Harkonnen prefer Dare to Be Badass. The Ordos speak of their House's True Companions and the threat their enemies pose to it. They may come off less rousing to the viewer due to Robo Speak, but the Ordos are a weird bunch.
• Sand Worm: Of course. Keep your units off the sand whenever possible to avoid attracting them, as they cannot be killed and will destroy your units instantly. Watch for Wormsign to know of their approach. Fremen units can move without attracting them. In Dune 2, they can be driven off by reducing them to half-health, but it takes an obscene amount of firepower.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: House Ordos has the weakest army which is purely comprised of hired mercenaries. But as a mercantile House that is only concerned with generating revenue to sustain the elite-class of their society, they absolutely do not care how many expendable pawns they have to buy off and send against their enemies. Just so long as they can safely get to the spice melange and harvest it for their own benefit.
• Self-Destruct Mechanism: Normally, Devastator units only go nuclear when destroyed. A Harkonnen player may force their Devastators to explode, with predictably messy results.
• Sentry Gun: The Turret and Rocket Turret.
• Shoot The Deviator First: You sure don't want your tanks to suddenly become an enemy property, right?
• Sigil Spam: Many structures incorporate their House's logo into their very architecture if not simply having it stuck on the side.
• Single-Biome Planet: Arrakis/Dune is a Desert Planet as in the original novels. Also, the home planet of the Ordos is said to be "frigid and ice-covered" in Dune II and just "icy" in Dune 2000...i.e. an Ice Planet.
• Space Marine: The Sardaukar are depicted as this, clad in much heavier armor then other House infantry. In Dune 2000, they wear distinctive box-shaped helmets with green view-ports, echoing their portrayal in the 1984 film. In Dune II, their artwork shows them using distinctly badass-looking armor and weapons, but in-game they have the same stats as ordinary Troopers.
• Spiritual Successor: Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn and the subsequent Command and Conquer saga, Dune "III" not IN SPACE!.
• Standard Sci-Fi Army: Unlike the books, the games provide a wide range of infantry and vehicle units.
• Status Effects: Ordos Deviator tanks have Charm.
• Stock Footage: Dune 2000s Cutscenes occasionally have clips from the 1984 film, usually scenes of ornithopters, harvesters, and armies of troops charging into battle.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Often. Every house likes to it a different way, but the Harkonnen really don't mess around.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: No matter how bad the odds are against it, the AI controlled enemy will attack you no matter what. Light infantries against a squad of siege tanks? No problem.
• Support Power: Dune II has the "Fremen attack", which makes Fremen appear and charge at a specific target. You get it from building a Palace.
• Tank Goodness:
  • The Harkonnen Devastator. It has an on-board atomic reactor and radiation-based weaponry. An equivalent huge, double-barreled tank appears in every Command & Conquer game to date.
  • Each faction in Dune 2000 has a Combat Tank in their arsenal, but have different in terms of stats. The Atreides tank is the Jack of All Stats. The Harkonnen tank is the Mighty Glacier. The Ordos tank is the Fragile Speedster. The Combat Tanks in Dune II all have identical stats.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Dune II had only a limited supply of spice on a given map and when you harvested it all you better had an army capable of winning fielded or you could restart. Dune 2000's development team must have taken notice since in this game the spice keeps regenerating faster then it can ever be harvested, allowing you to saturate the entire map with tanks if you feel like it.
• The Unblinking: The Ordos mentat Edric O in Dune 2000 most of the time has his unblinking stare fixed straight at the camera.
• Trope Codifier: Created the Real-Time Strategy game in the shape we know today, forming the conventions of You Require More Vespene Gas and Construct Additional Pylons. (StarCraft gets the naming rights for having the more memorable terms.) The developers in turn were very influenced by Herzog Zwei.

• Worker Unit: The ubiquitous Spice Harvester (in Dune 2000, they appear beetle-like, exactly as in the 1984 film, but in Dune II they have a more generic boxy design) and the Construction Yard. Carryalls also function as such, automatically ferrying harvesters to and from spice fields. These carryalls are entirely automated and uncontrollable (though they will automatically ferry a damaged unit to an available repair pad).
• World of Ham: In the spirit of the 1984 movie.
• Worm Sign: Burrowing sandworms are visible as distortions on the desert surface, but are invisible on the minimap until the little dot representing your harvester disappears. In Dune 2000, the sandworms are followed by bolts of lightning, caused by static discharge from the sand.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: In gameplay terms the Spice is converted directly into funds, or "Solaris", as it it is offloaded into your refineries. In the novels its a kind of Unobtainium, with uncountable purposes and powers. Dune 2000 explicitly justifies this, mentioning at various points that the houses are selling the harvested spice on the interstellar market, so funds used to power your war machine are expressly that generated by Spice sales. The stuff is that valuable.

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