The Avengers, Earth’s mightiest heroes. And Hawkeye. You’d have to have a few screws loose to want to hang out with an actual thunder god, a living legend of World War 2 and irradiated collection of muscles with astounding anger management issues, but through multiple incarnations and weekly threats involving space gods looking to treat Earth as a pit-stop snack, Clint “Hawkeye” Barton has been a regular fixture of Marvel’s A-Team.
He won’t be sitting on the benches for long when Marvel’s Avengers launches, as he’ll be the first free DLC character that players can get their hands on. “You asked for him and we’re thrilled to bring him to you,” Crystal Dynamics said during the latest War Table digital stream via GameSpot.
When we started working on Hawkeye the first thing we did was find the best comics and pull ideas that would fit into our post-A-Day universe. One of our favorite runs is writer Matt Fraction and artist David Aja’s ‘My Life as a Weapon’ and we’ve taken some exciting ideas from it.
Hawkeye will have his own story arc to complete, and in combat he makes use of his various trick arrows to stay ahead of enemies. A few other tasty details were dropped during the stream, which I’ve formatted into a crib list below:
- Several missions will allow you to tackle them in solo action, or with a few AI partners by your side
- One of the missions shown off was a Kamala Khan and Hulk tag team infiltrating an AIM base while searching for Iron Man’s JARVIS AI
- Another mission involved heading off to Russia to recover SHIELD secret intel
- Hawkeye’s story will “continue to move the entire Marvel’s Avengers narrative world forward”
- All new missions are also accessible with the entire roster when they’re made available
Marvel’s Avengers will also be dipping its toes into the world of Fortnite, because everything is Fortnite these days. If players link their Square Enix Members and Epic Games accounts, and then complete the three HARM missions in the upcoming beta, they’ll earn the Hulk Smashers Pickaxe with “bonus Hulkbuster style” for use in Fortnite.
The beta for Marvel’s Avengers will kick off proper on 7 August for anyone who has already pre-ordered the game, and it will open up on August 14 for everyone else on PlayStation 4. PC and Xbox One pre-order players will have a chance to try it out August 14, while the rest of that audience can hop into open beta access from August 21. For all tiers of access, players will have two days to fool around in the slice of Marvel mayhem and you will need a Square Enix Members account to play it. Sign up right here if you want to sort that hassle out before beta-day lands.
Marvel’s Avengers releases on PC, PS4, and Xbox One on September 4, with a free console upgrade coming in the near future if you decide to hop on over to Xbox Series X or PS5. No word yet on if PC2 players will have such an option available to them.
Last Updated: July 30, 2020
Morne Nell
July 30, 2020 at 10:29
I have 2 unanswered questions
A) Can all co-op aspects of the game be played with AI bots
B) Is there matchmaking for ALL activities in the game