"Open World Survival MMO" is, at this point, the equivalent of "cheeseburger" at an American restaurant. They're all exactly the fucking same, usually overpriced, and with zero substance.
I guess if there's any MMO setting where survival makes sense as a mechanic, it's Dune, but come on. Steam shits those out like the aftermath of taco night.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 6th 2024 at 11:59:07 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I think my favourite thing in the movie was how beautiful the whole Harkonnen colliseum sequence was, where it's like, harshly contrasted black and white for some reason. and the fireworks look like ink blots.
Visually, that was the main sequence that really made me goo "woooowww".
Besides, Feyd is great. In a movie where I was always going to struggle to vibe with certain things, it felt like Feyd was thrown in as a big dumb boss battle as some kind of bone specifically for me. XD
Edited by GNinja on Mar 6th 2024 at 5:13:05 PM
Kaze ni Nare!
They very briefly bring up the "black sun" and when we see it, it looks real weird. I guess the implication being that there's something genuinely bizarre about Giedi Prime's sun and it contributed to what the Harkonnens are like.
It is pretty clear that whatever the light it puts out actually is, it leeches the color from everything it touches. Lady Fenring looks wildly different when she's not in the light.
Edited by Zendervai on Mar 6th 2024 at 12:19:46 PM
The "black sun" thing is absurd from a scientific perspective, but I'll be damned if it doesn't make for some cool imagery. So hey, chalk one up for spectacle over verisimilitude.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 6th 2024 at 12:22:36 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"IMO, it depends on what it actually is. Because it's clearly not full black, and when we see it, it's got all these black splotches swirling over it. It could easily be a star that's been poisoned by something.
and given that Frank Herbert wrote a different book where the universe was threatened by someone trapping a living star in a BDSM relationship, seriously, weird-ass stars are within the realm of his ouvre
From what I understand of the book's climax, it seems like they also removed both Feyd trying to cheat using a poisoned barb against Paul, and Paul choosing not to use a psychic code word the Bene Geserit put into Feyd's head. So they made the fight a lot more straight up fair for some reason.
At least... I think they removed the poison thing?
Edited by GNinja on Mar 6th 2024 at 5:26:52 PM
Kaze ni Nare!Poison is barely mentioned in the films. Which is odd because, in the books, it's the Imperium's favorite method of assassination. Every dining table has a "poison sniffer" to ensure nobody slips something into the feast.
Yueh's "poison tooth" is about the only thing that's preserved.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 6th 2024 at 12:28:42 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Oh, apparently the Giedi Prime outdoor scenes were actually shot in infrared. So the Black Sun barely puts out any visible light at all and the indoor scenes on Giedi Prime are probably closer to what the outdoors look like if you can't see in infrared. And the blotchy firework blob things might be actual fireworks, just filmed in infrared.
Edited by Zendervai on Mar 6th 2024 at 1:01:02 PM
Yeah, but human beings can't see in infrared, and I don't see people wearing special eye-gear.
Also, not sure what kind of star that would be. Even red dwarfs output in visible light. A brown dwarf is a failed star that wouldn't put out enough energy to keep a planet warm. There's also no indication that Giedi Prime is tidally locked, which would be the fate of any Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of a red dwarf.
Maybe the star is completely encapsulated by a Dyson sphere.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 6th 2024 at 1:09:38 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Right, apparently the FTL drive is some purely mechanical thing that can perform the actual process just fine without computers. But navigating properly requires seeing the future.
I can't remember, did they ever explain what FTL looked like before the Navigators? Either in the original notes or in the prequel novels? We do know that humanity had an interstellar empire before the Butlerian Jihad, that was definitely in the notes. But I don't think they went into detail.
Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.Humanity used to have navigational computers to calculate fold space travel but then the thinking machines conquered humanity then the Buterlian Jihad happened w/c outlawed them. A scientist (and latent psyker according to the prequel books w/c I dislike remembering) named Norma Cenva discovered the effects of spice on the human mind and saw how it can be used by certain people who ingest it in large doses to replace thinking machines in calculating fold space travel. This resulted in the founding of the Spacing Guild. She's also the 1st Navigator mutant.
'd
Edited by KRider on Mar 6th 2024 at 6:30:39 AM
Set! Avenge! "Henshin." Black General! Bujin Sword! Ready, Fight!The whole reason the Spacing Guild, the Mentat Order, and the Bene Gesserit exist was largely to fill the roles left behind by computers and artificial intelligence.
The problem with this is that two out of three of those are heavily dependent on Spice to do anything, leading to human civilization being increasingly dependent on Arrakis. And with that came stagnation that threatens to doom humanity.
Disgusted, but not surprised![]()
Yes but the movies didn't show the Spacing Guild and Paul's threat to nuke spice production hit more in the books when guild members were present. Both the Lynch movie and the miniseries had Spacing Guild members present and the threat was directed more to them.
Edited by KRider on Mar 6th 2024 at 6:38:49 AM
Set! Avenge! "Henshin." Black General! Bujin Sword! Ready, Fight!![]()
Whoever takes over from Villeneuve needs to start filling in these blanks in the world building.
It is true that the navigators use spice to navigate not travel FTL, but giant worms shouldn't be able to exist by the Square-Cube Law, nor do we have spice that helps us see the future so I don't really mind a black sun.
You can only write so much in your forum signature. It's not fair that I want to write a piece of writing yet it will cut me off in the midMost of the really weird shit in the Dune verse is based on the spice and the sandworms (along with their larval form the sandtrout).
Though it's also true that the Dune setting has some weird and scary tech. What few hints we get of what civilization was like before the Butlerian Jihad show that humanity had reached The Singularity. We had created engines capable of folding the universe, after all.
You know that bit in Futurama where it's explained that the Planet Express ship doesn't actually travel through the universe but instead makes the rest of the universe move? Well, the Holtzman-engines actually do that.
Disgusted, but not surprisedIt's easy to Hand Wave super tech when your story is set ten-thousand years in the future. It's implied that the main reason the Imperium isn't at Crystal Spires and Togas yet is the Butlerian Jihad.
One of the things that Paul and Leto II fear in their visions is that the proscription on thinking machines will be broken and prescient AI murder-bots will exterminate humanity.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 6th 2024 at 10:55:42 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Wake me when they make a Lego Adaptation game. (I miss those)
You’re Gonna Carry That Weight.