Halo Wars announcement trailer

"If they want a war, we'll give 'em war."

— Commander of SPARTAN Group Omega

The Halo Wars announcement trailer was revealed on September 27, 2006 at the Microsoft X06 media briefing. It was the official media release to announce the development of Halo Wars.

The trailer is used as B-roll background footage on the main menu of the final game.

Transcript

The Covenant army emerges from the fog.

The trailer begins with an Ensemble Studios logo, before showing four Warthogs and two turretless Warthogs leaping over a rise in a snowy night landscape. The camera shifts to the two Marines in the lead Warthog, dressed in arctic uniforms.

• Passenger: "Spirit of Fire, this is Blue Six. We're joining Blue Five and are en route to the recon patrol's last known position. Six out."

The Warthogs catch up to an outfit of five M808B Scorpion tanks (Blue Five). The camera then pans ahead to two members of the recon patrol. The two seem to have re-established contact, as they radio in to Blue Six.

• Recon: "Blue Six, Blue Six! We're under attack!"

As they flee from an unidentified figure towards a waiting Warthog both Marines are promptly gunned down by plasma fire. The passenger gasps as he hears it over the radio. One recon Marine is shown to have survived and is attempting to crawl away. He then turns on his back and witnesses an Elite uncloaking and drawing an energy sword. The passenger listens intently as screams are heard over the radio.

• Passenger: "What the?"

It is revealed that the last remaining patrol member has been killed. The Elite picks the Marine up and inspects him, letting out an animalistic snarl. It then tosses the dead Marine aside. Additional Elites uncloak behind him as eleven Banshees rise into the air and charge forward. An all-out battle breaks out as several Heron dropships land, accompanied by Shortswords, Scorpions, and Warthogs. A group of Banshees is shown wreaking havoc upon the UNSC air forces, while several Marines taking cover behind an overturned Warthog gun down the leader of an Elite lance using what appear to be Battle Rifles. A Banshee strafes them, hitting one Marine and sending him flying into the camera.

Spartan Group Omega.

The camera then cuts to an over-the-shoulder view of a Spartan. Several columns of smoke are seen rising from the destruction. The camera then flips and pans back revealing five Spartans standing in front of what appears to a platoon of Marines.

• Spartan: "This is Spartan Group Omega. If they want war, we'll give 'em war!"

Four Shortswords fly overhead.

Music

The music begins with a restless violin section almost reminiscent of the music omnipresent the Matrix series. The music then shifts into a triumphant, driving drum beat that takes a distinctive minor turn when the recon team is gunned down. When the surviving recon soldier is stabbed with the energy sword, perhaps the most recognizable piece of music is heard: the Gregorian chant section of the original Halo theme song is reworked into a mournful section that depicts the hopelessness and despair of the fight against the Covenant. As the Elite tosses aside the body, the music takes a distinctive modal shift into what sounds almost Middle Eastern, but immediately shifts again into what sounds increasingly reminiscent of the beat-driven riffs of Martin O'Donnell of the Halo series, despite the fact that O'Donnell did not work on Halo Wars. After a desperate violin arpeggio, drum beats accent the brave words of Omega Leader, and the trailer ends with a simplistic low note that seems to be inspired by the simple tones of the announce trailer for Halo 3.

Production notes

The trailer, as with the cutscenes in the final game, was produced by Blur Studio. It features the debuts of several new assets including the Shortsword bomber, Heron dropship, an Oghal-pattern Banshee variant with more pronounced details and headlights, a winter weather Marine uniform, and the first visual (albeit non-canon) debut of the Mark IV MJOLNIR outside of the Halo novels. Many of these assets went on to be heavily featured in other Halo media between 2006-2009, with the Marines and Elite designs in particular being heavily featured throughout various episodes of Halo Legends. As with many other animated features for Halo, the Elites are not depicted using any kind of energy shielding, something which would carry over into Blur's final cutscenes for Halo Wars alongside their contributions to Halo Wars 2 and Halo 2: Anniversary.

In the short, the Marines' battle rifles are depicted as firing in fully-automatic rather than the three-round bursts featured in the Halo first-person shooter games. After the trailer's release, fan backlash to the supposed canonical inaccuracy of the weapon (which at the time had been described in Halo: First Strike as first entering service in late 2552) being used in the Harvest campaign meant that it was removed from the final game. Later Halo media including Halo: Contact Harvest, Halo: Collateral Damage, and the Halo Encyclopedia (2022 edition) have established the battle rifle (and its derivatives like the XBR55 prototype) in use in the early war era.

Gallery

Press images

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Miscellaneous

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  The model for the Mark IV armour used in the trailer.

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  The model for the Elites in the trailer.

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  Extracted crop of the Elites.

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  Blue Six.

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  The Elite holding the dead Marine.

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  A closeup screenshot of the Marine winter uniform.

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  Marines battling in the snow.

External links

• halowars.com: Halo Wars Trailer