A Halo Wars 2 announcement might be closer than you think

By Jonathan Dollison
last updated

Looks like a Halo Wars 2 for Xbox One announcement might be imminent. Thehalowars.com was discovered by some people on twitter today, and it seems to be a Halo Wars 2 teaser site. Halo Wars 2 has been speculated for some time and is deemed highly anticipated by fans of the original.

Halo Wars is a real-time strategy game from Ensemble Studios that released back in 2009. Even though it was entirely different from any other Halo before it, it was praised for its cinematics and intuitive controls. However, reviewers felt as though the RTS side of it was very shallow and had a lack of strategic options.

Halo Wars 2 teaser site

Once headed to the website, the first thing you will notice is a countdown timer that appears to end on December 17 of this year. Also on the site there is what appears to be a transmission from Serena, who happens to be the AI of the UNSC Spirit of Fire phoenix vessel. The transmission is of her asking the captain to defrost, and she then states, "Captain, wake up. Something has happened." If you stay on the site long enough you will even hear the audio of her saying this, which you can listen to here.

One final clue to this being a Halo Wars 2 announcement, is that at the bottom of the transmission there is a button with the hashtag "#SPIRITOFFIRE" which, as I stated is the name of the vessel from the original Halo Wars. When you press this button, it launches twitter so that you can tweet your friends, "Captain, wake up. http://thehalowars.com/ #SpiritofFire #HaloWars2."

However, the site SegmentNext believes the site is an elaborate hoax. Their evidence comes from the domain registration, which goes to a third-party host (Bluehost) instead of being hosted by Microsoft directly. Indeed, that oddity does raise a red flag.

If this website is the real deal, it has us all over here a Windows Central thoroughly excited for a brand new Halo RTS. One thing that also has us giddy, is that at the bottom of the screen there is a mention of Blur Studios which 343i teamed up with for the cinematics for Halo 2 Anniversary in Halo: The Master Chief Collection.

For now, we'll just file this under 'Rumor'.

What do you guys think, is this an elaborate hoax or the real deal?

Jonathan Dollison
Jonathan Dollison
72 Comments
  • YES!! I've been waiting too long for this (if its real)
  • YESSSSSS
  • I really enjoyed the original Halo Wars. This is good news. The original deserved more aclaim
  • Website is registered under Bluehost, nothing official or anything tied to Microsoft. So probably fake.
  • Plus Ensemble Studios was shut down. After all the fake Fallout announcements I am much more cautious of things like this until there is an actual official announcement. Also at the end there you mention Blur Studios doing the cinematics for the Master Chief Collection, they also did the ones for the first Halo Wars if I remember correctly.
  • Many of the Ensemble staff formed a new company, and have been working with Microsoft on Age of Empires online.
  • That I wasn't aware of, thank you for letting me know. I'm still not going to get too excited though, especially after this exact same thing happened with Fallout and it turned out to be fake.
  • Probably. But man do I have hope. Plus this is insanely elaborate!
  • The "Survivor 2299" for Fallout that was later revealed as a hoax was insanely elaborate also. I got my hopes up too much for that and was crushed when it came out it was fake.
  • Serious suggestion: Perhaps Microsoft is creating a "fake" site to gauge the strength of fan reaction, while being able to backpedal and claim it's not them if needed be?
  • That conspiracy theory
  • It's a shame that Microsoft hasn't put out a Halo Wars sequel, since 2009. I would love for this to be true. However, if MS does decide to put out HW2, i hope the do a little WP or W8 version, too.
  • Just got halo master chief collection and my god installing takes so long I've been at2% for the past hour
  • Matchmaking is still broken. Unless you want to play campaign, take your time. :)
  • Sounds like bad service coupled with wifi I had to reset my xb1 & having to install fm5 15gb worth of patches took about the whole day
  • This is one of the reasons why I bought it digitally. I had the entire game installed days before the game was released. Was even able to play it starting at 9pm the day before its release.
  • Halo CE done, half way through 2. Damn working every taking up all my time.
  • Elaborate would be an understatement if this is a hoax.
  • Definitely!
  • That would be awesome! I wish it came to WP or PC as opposed to Xbox, though.
  • That's what Spartan Assault is for ;)
  • I don't get the hype about "Halo: Spartan Assault".
    Why didn't Microsoft bring a true 3D Halo-game to Windows Phone?
    Todays Phones/Tablets are vastly better specced than PCs back in the days of the original Halo.
  • The interface for touch FPS' is so terrible
  • Hmm. People seem to be really content with Gameloft's touch controls for their FPS'.
  • Its not as bad as what silly walks is
  • Blitz brigade has wonderful touch controls
  • Spartan Assault is not a FPS, but it does have terrible touch controls. However, many other twin-stick shooters have much better touch controls.
  • Turn based and a universal app (Xbox, W8, WP8)?
    That's what I want.
  • NOT turn-based. This isn't 1990
  • I like the first one but I think it would play much better on console as a tactics style game. Sorry you haven't enjoyed any turn based games since 1990, you're missing out.
  • A turn based strategy just released like a couple weeks ago. It's still alive and very much well. Just because you don't like it doens't mean it's dead. Hell it's the only genre that seems to actually use strategy these days instead of clicking as fast as you can.
  • For turn based, play Armed
  • Sweeeet
  • Please be real!!! It seems like a legit site.
  • I've got twenty kittens in a crusher and if "free to play" or "in app purchases" appear anywhere in the game's description I'm switching it on.
  • For you only they integrate a "buy outright"-option.
    The price is $199.99.
  • I'd pay that for Halo Wars 2!!!
  • Don't worry little kittens, that's not what Halo is for. F2P games are a whole different thing, MS would never make that mistake (at least not on console)
  • I did enjoy the original Halo Wars even though i do not like RTS games. We shall see what comes from this 
  • The Covenant leaders were wayy to overpowered. Hopefully HW2 will be more similar to Airmech Arena in some aspects because Halo Wars felt like it took too long to build things, small population limits, etc. It was pretty flawed.
  • To be fair, in the real Halo universe the covenant were vastly superior.
  • Covenant leaders could be easily taken down by flamethrowers. The prophet could be easily taken out by anti-air. I didn't find them overpowered at all. It just took creativity and experimentation.
  • Well we shall find out on December 17th if its a huge hoax or not :P
    And it must predate halo. Because...
    ------------------------------------
    *MAJOR SPOILER ALERT*
    The captain passed away, the ship AWOL, etc because young "Lord" Hood got angry at the covies assaulting the nearby colony world so he blitzes them. The tracker for the spirit of fire fades, and the ship is lost ever since. After 4 aboard the infinity, he gets a transmission from the Captain's son, already grown up and hell bent on getting revenge on him over the likely death of his father.
  • Oh My God!!!!!
  • Yes please! Halo wars was amazing!
  • Funny the users only rooted for "Cortana" and not for "Serena" as the name of Microsoft's personal digital assistant!?
  • Serena isn't as popular and well known in the Halo Franchise. Halo Wars wasn't exactly a record breaking hit, but it had its fan base. What I loved about it was the timeline thing. Lots of history to read about
  • It sold over 2 million copies, so it wasn't exactly a minor game. However, Cortana is understandably better known and is in four games, not just one.
  • Oh yes the timeline was so informative!
  • OH please be real please I love Halo wars so much
  • December 7th. Today's the 14th. 14-10=4. 7-4=3. Half life 3 confirmed.
  • I don't understand why people go through all this trouble to fool fans. They gain absolutely nothing out of it...
  • Hope this is true! Best RTS on any console... They got the controls just right... :-)
  • That's sounds great!
    Blur Studio also made the cinematic of the original Halo Wars.
    One more thing. In the issue #6 of Halo Escalation, the Spirit of Fire is strongly mentioned (I'm not telling you more about to avoid making spoilers). And well, Halo Escalation is happening between Halo 4 and Halo 5: Guardians.
    So even if Microsoft is not hosting the website, it looks promising.
  • In the source for the site at the bottom there is a comment that says "Where are the bees?". I did a search online and I didn't see anything. I believe for the Halo 2 teaser there was something about bees that gave hints about what was to come.
  • It was ilovebees
  • Yes, pls do not release any new games for Xbox 360, 343i
    It does only violate us.
    (by now)
  • As much as I want this, the nature of the domain almost definitely means it's fake.
  • Bring it I say.  BRING IT!!!! I so want a Halo Wars 2.
  • Its fake the website changed
  • Well if this true here's hoping they do something similar to Bayonetta 2. You got a game that's on a different platform (PC in this case) and they include the original game as well (Halo Wars) in it for those who wish to experience the first one but with PC controls. I always wanted Halo Wars as a kid but now that there's no physical copy anymore I'm kind of bummed out that I can't get it anymore (heck I don't have a 360 anymore lol)
  • Microsoft, Steam
  • All I'm getting is this some morse code that is too annoying to decipher, and this: UmVhY2ggaXMgbG9zdCwgcmVwZWF0LCBSZWFjaCBpcyBsb3N0LiBPdmVyLg==
       
  • Ditto.  :/
  • The text is Base64 encoded and decodes to "Reach is lost, repeat, Reach is lost. Over."
  •    I really hope that this is a sign of things to come. I loved the original Halo Wars and if Microsoft does indeed bring the other Halo games to the One, ODST and Reach, they should include Wars as well. It was a great game that was over-looked because of its genre.
  • Shut up and take my money!
  • blur also did Halo Wars, so has nothing to do with Halo 2 Anniversary, as stated in the article
  • Please make it for PC!
  • This just made me really excited. I loved the feel and ambience of Halo Wars and have been dying for a sequel. I thought it was lost forever. Really hope this turns out to be absolutely real. After this, Halo 5, and the new Star Wars Battlefront emerge I may finally get an Xbox One. For now I'll just plug away on my 360 and maybe actually get the Halo Wars achievement to signify that I am ready for the sequel!
  • ....aaaand it's gone. They've updated the site.