E3 2016: MS shows off Halo Wars 2, talks beta

You’ll be able to play the long-awaited sequel to Halo Wars starting next week. Oh, and the cinematic trailer’s real pretty too.

Starring the UNSC ship Spirit of Fire from the first Halo Wars, HW2 should be very interesting. That’s especially true story-wise, since the ship was mysteriously lost according to Halo’s canon. Though they never made it back to Earth, the Spirit was salvaged by rebels. Not just any rebels either. These guys were from a section of space controlled by the Brutes, which leaves some pretty big questions.

According to Microsoft, HW2 sets Captain Cutter and crew against -you guessed it- a faction of Brutes. Called The Banished, there isn’t much to tell about this group as of yet, other than the fact that they’re a “massive” army, and that their leader Atriox is “a threat no one is prepared for.”

I’m in at this point. Though I’m not ashamed to say I had pretty much considered Halo Wars a lost cause. And I don’t think I was alone in that assumption. It’d been a while after all, with the original game hitting the Xbox 360 in 2009. So the chances of a sequel… well let’s say I didn’t see this one coming.

The game is so far looking pretty nice too, and even has a beta coming, exclusively for Xbox One gamers. Halo Wars 2 will actually be coming to the Xbox and the PC, but there won’t be a beta for the latter platform… at least that we know of.

On the Xbox though, the beta is going on right now, having kicked off on the 13th. It’ll run through the 20th, so if you’re interested you best get to downloading. You can expect to see Halo Wars 2 on the shelves, for both the Xbox One and the PC, on February 21st, 2017.

Check out the multiplayer portion of the game below, and the full Microsoft E3 presser right here.