Resident Evil fans eager to put the franchise’s latest multiplayer experience through its paces won’t have to wait much longer.
Bundled at no additional cost with all copies of the series’ upcoming eighth mainline installment, RE: Verse is being pitched as an all-star arena mode where gamers are able to play as myriad characters from entries past and present. While we absolutely expect further roster additions to be revealed in the future, the current lineup consists of siblings Claire and Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Leon S. Kennedy and Ada Wong for the good guys. On the flip side, various machinations of Umbrella Corporation and other nefarious entities, including Mr. X, Nemesis and Jack Baker are confirmed to be fully playable, with William Birkin likely to be a shoo-in, too, considering his status in Resident Evil Resistance.
As for when you can expect to put all of the contenders through their paces, Capcom has announced that an open beta is due to go ahead next month.
You won’t be required to pre-order Village or receive a special code to participate, with the only prerequisite being to have a valid Capcom ID linked to your hardware of choice. The test period is scheduled to kick off on two different dates (April 7th to 10th and 8th to 11th) and owners of last and current-gen consoles will be invited to take part, with pre-download available from Monday, April 5th.
The full version of RE: Verse will then be accessible a month later when Resident Evil Village launches on May 7th, which is itself due to get a pre-release demo. When that will arrive is anyone’s guess, though you can no doubt expect to learn more on that front via an upcoming showcase, so stay tuned.