Earlier this afternoon during their latest Marvel's Avengers War Table, Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics broke down the upcoming Beta and officially confirmed that Hawkeye will be one of the new characters to join the video game post-launch.
The Playstation Advantage Pre-order Beta will become available next weekend starting on August 7, followed by an Open Beta for the entire PS4 community the weekend of August 14 and a final Open Beta the weekend of August 21.
To ensure you get access, be certain to register for a Square Enix Member's account, which will be used to validate pre-order codes and content as well as to deliver post-launch exclusives like new heroes, new missions, and new regions at no additional cost. All gameplay progess will carry over from weekend-to-weekend.
As for what the Beta will consist of, here's a brief overview of what to expect courtesy of Playstation:
- Golden Gate Bridge Demo
- The Golden Gate Bridge sequence of A-Day is a roller-coaster that gives you a chance to try out the unique combat and traversal style of Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Black Widow. We’ve even included a boss battle against longtime Natasha nemesis Taskmaster. After completing A-Day, the Beta will give you access to new story Hero Missions, and eventually War Zones, where you can play as Iron Man, Hulk, Kamala, or Black Widow.
- To Find Olympia
- In this Hero Mission, you’ll play as Kamala and Hulk in search of the last known location of JARVIS, exploring the beautiful forests of the American Pacific Northwest. We’ve thrown in another boss fight for good measure, which will test your resolve against a fellow big green guy.
- Missing Links
- After finishing the Olympia Archive, Kamala and Hulk will take the Quinjet to the frozen Russian Tundra on a mission called “Missing Links” with the goal of uncovering SHIELD secrets.
- HARM Challenge Rooms
- Next up, the Beta will test your grit through Marvel’s Avengers’ Holographic Augmented Reality Machine rooms, also known as HARM Rooms. These virtual training simulators let you take on increasingly difficult waves of enemies with other players, or with companion AI. In the Beta, you’ll unlock three HARM challenge rooms, which are called Excursions when chained together in the full game. Once you best the three rooms, you’ll earn a Nameplate that carries over to the full retail version of the game.
- WAR ZONES
- Once you’ve unlocked an operational War Table in the Beta, you’ll have the option to tackle a series of War Zone and Drop Zone missions with friends or your AI team. There will be five Beta War Zones to play, filled to the brim with human and robotic AIM baddies to beat. In the full game, War Zone missions can range in duration from as short as 10 minutes to around two hours in length. Drop Zones are a smaller, more focused version of War Zones, and they almost always have just one Objective, and are great for earning gear or leveling heroes. The Beta will include five Drop Zones.
Hawkeye will be one of the many characters to join the game's post-launch campaign and the developers tease that all future characters will have custom move sets and combos, skills, gear, heroics, outfits, emotes, and name plates.
In addition to the standard edition for $59.99, Marvel's Avengers is also available in an Exclusive Digital Edition for $69.99, a Deluxe Edition for $79.99 and an Earth's Mightiest Edition for $199.99. Fans that order from Best Buy now will also get a Limited Edition steelbook as an extra physical pre-order bonus.
Marvel’s Avengers is a third-person action-adventure game where you play an all-new, original Avengers story reassembling Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
This video dives deeply into how you customize Super Heroes’ Gear, Skills, Outfits, and how to launch missions from your helicarrier base of operations to take on AIM.
Marvel's Avengers is set to release on September 4