Video Game / Ghost Recon

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon (also known as simply Ghost Recon) is the first game developed by Red Storm Entertainment and published by Ubisoft worldwide in the Ghost Recon series, except for South Korea since it was released by Capcom's Korean branch. It was first published in November 2001 for Microsoft Windows. It later got ported to Mac OS in October 2002, the Xbox in November/December 2002, the Playstation 2 in December 2002 and for the Gamecube in February/March 2003. The background for the first game is loosely based off Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising (which gave its name to the studio).

The first game is set in April 2008 when Russian ultranationalists overthrow Vladimir Putin's government with one Dmitri Arbatov as their leader. Under his watch, he establishes the Russian Democratic Union (RDU), a political and military alliance that would serve as the successor to the Soviet Union. The RDU later occupies and attempts to integrate Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Pro-RDU troops are later deployed to help their South Ossetian allies before Russian forces occupied Georgia to integrate it to the RDU. The Ghosts are deployed in The Caucasus and Eastern Europe to support NATO operations against Russian attacks on the Baltic states (Lithuania mainly) and in Russia to free friendly POWs and political prisoners. They later join forces with rogue Russian troops who are against Arbatov to weaken the Russian forces with operations both on the front and behind enemy lines.

The game received several expansion packs. Desert Siege is the first, released as an expansion for the PC and Mac versions and as a separate game on Xbox, while the PlayStation 2 port included its campaign as an unlockable. It's set in Ethiopia and Eritrea and concerns a coup in the former led by Colonel Tesfaye Wolde, who is trying to cover his tracks after an investigation starts for supposedly helping the RDU.

Island Thunder was released as the second expansion pack, once again as a standalone game on Xbox. It's set in Cuba, a few years after Fidel Castro suddenly passes away. The FDG (El Frente Democratico de la Gente, or People's Democratic Front) seeks to establish a post-communist, anti-American government.

Jungle Storm was a version of Island Thunder released exclusively for the PlayStation 2 as a standalone game, including both the Island Thunder campaign and a new exclusive campaign. The game is set after Island Thunder where the Ghosts are deployed to go after the FARC guerrillas who funded the FDG's efforts in Cuba.

Within the game, the player puts together and then controls a team of up to six soldiers split between up to three fireteams, each with his own specialty, stats, weapon and gear. The Ghosts fight as a group: it is possible to directly control any of the characters who are still alive, and switch between them at any time during a mission, but the point of the game is to learn how to control the entire team (using a surprisingly simple interface for the task).

Unlike "conventional" first-person shooters of the period, the game attempts to mimic real-world combat as faithfully as possible. Use of "smart" tactics and stealth is practically mandatory. That's because bullets kill, often with just one hit, and enemies are definitely not graduates of the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy. Covering fire, judicious use of explosives and coordinated assaults are pretty much required if you want to keep your squaddies alive more than a couple of seconds into a firefight.

In addition to the combat realism, this was one of the first PC games to feature high-quality 3D sound, and was considered very advanced in terms of graphics at the time. The attention to details regarding weapon performance and other military hardware is quite worthy of the Tom Clancy prefix. There's Scenery Porn as well, especially in missions that take place in locations such as downtown Vilnius, Riga, and finally Moscow. The Red Square and the GUM shopping mall across from it are portrayed with stunning accuracy.

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Tropes found in Ghost Recon:

First Game

• Alternate History: The game now qualifies as such: while it did manage to predict that there would be a conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008, the real conflict didn't spread any further than fighting between Russia and Georgia for five days, compared to the seven-month ordeal of Russia trying to annex all the former Soviet states as depicted in-game.
• America Saves the Day: Various military specialists join the Ghosts from NATO countries and in Georgia. The end of the first game was credited to anti-RDU troops.
• Anyone Can Die: If one of your soldiers die, they won't come back. You'll have to recruit a newbie soldier and train him. Specialists with their powerful weapon are gone. Non-fatal wounds, which are rare without high Endurance versus a weak weapon, require time off of the field to heal before the soldier in question is back to full effectiveness.
• Armor Is Useless:
  • Inverted with infantry in the first game. Enemies who wear heavy body armor will pretty much be invulnerable in their torso area when hit with 9mm rounds (such as from an MP5 or M9 pistol). It's sometimes possible to empty an entire 9mm magazine into an armor-wearing baddie's torso and still have him be unharmed, in addition the Heavy Armor that the Support Class wears actually gives them better protection against low-caliber weapons like 9mm, it's just the AI nearly always aims for the head/uses high-caliber weapons that highly reduce it's effectivness. Notably the unarmored enemies in the expansions are actually somewhat easier to fight compared to the Ultranationalists due to the fact none of them wear body armor.
  • Kinda averted with tanks in the first game. An M136 can destroy a T-72 in one shot and an RPG-7 can destroy an M1A2 Abrams in one shot.
• Decapitated Army: In the first game, the Ultranationalists place their own president, Dmitri Arbatov, under arrest as the situation turns against them, and later have him executed. You still have to fight several more missions before they're ousted from power altogether though.
• Enemy-Detecting Radar: The original game plus expansions had the threat indicator at the bottom of the screen, made up of one circle which lit up red when an enemy was within 40 meters of your position, one segmented ring around that that glowed yellow to point out the general direction of any enemies beyond 40 meters, and another segmented ring around that one that flashes red in the general direction of any enemy gunfire. The map also displayed enemies on it if one of your soldiers could see that enemy and was within a set distance of them.
• Escort Mission: The original game had your team escort tanks on at least two instances. Granted that this is through urban terrain, where they're far more vulnerable to baddies carrying rocket launchers hiding behind walls. Thankfully, as long as you deal with the anti-armor troops and the occasional enemy vehicle (with your own anti-armor specialist), the tanks can take care of themselves fairly well. There were also a few missions with more traditional hostage rescue and the like, such as the optional objective in the first mission (capture the leader of the enemy guerrillas), and the entire point of the second (the crew of a downed F/A-18), fourth (UN peacekeeping troopers caught behind the enemy's advance) and eleventh (prisoners of war and an optional dissident among the enemy) missions.
• Game Mod: The first game has many of them, available here.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The old bios for the various specialists in the original game seem to have been written before their kits were set in stone. In particular, Scott Ibrahim (sniper) and Dieter Munz (support) are both noted as having qualified with the M136, the former noted as, well, a marksman with the weapon and the latter claimed to keep meticulous track of each and every vehicle he disables with it
• Glass Cannon: In the first game, M1A2 Abrams tanks can take out any vehicle on the battlefield in one shot, but one hit from a measly RPG-7 will catastrophic-kill it.
• Make the Bear Angry Again: The ultranationalists form the RDU to recreate the USSR.
• Monumental Battle: The final mission takes place on the Red Square in war-torn Moscow, with the Ghosts fighting inside the gallery of the GUM department store and right outside the Kremlin's walls. There's also St. Basil's Cathedral and Vladimir Lenin's mausoleum, of course.
• Next Sunday A.D.: Takes place in 2008.
• Occupiers Out of Our Country: Some native specialists such as Guram Osadze (Georgian) and Astra Galinsky (Lithuanian) join the Ghosts in the first game. They don't speak, but it's easy to tell they fight to boot the Russian ultranationalists out of their countries.
• Post-Soviet Reunion: In the first game, the government of the Russian Federation is overthrown by an Ultranationalist coup, which accuses the former of betraying the Russian people by siding with the Western countries, and glorify the Soviet Union. They then spend the next few years securing control over Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan through mostly foul means, rebranding the resulting alliance as the Russian Democratic Union, before going on a war of conquest against the rest of the former Soviet states with the aim of forcibly annexing them into the seconding coming of the USSR.
• Rogue Soldier: Anti-RDU troops join forces after the Ghosts are deployed in Russia.
• Shown Their Work:
  • In the first game, when you enter the Russian-occupied Lithuanian capital city of Vilnius, you can see that the Russian soldiers have taken down the Lithuanian flags from the Presidential Palace's flagpole and replaced it with the old Lithuanian SSR flag from the Cold War days. It makes sense, as the storyline states that the Russians are trying to reestablish the Soviet Union by invading and annexing former Soviet members. If you look closely nearby, you can see a real Lithuanian flag crumpled up on the ground. In the PS2 version of the game, if you beat that level, there is a mini-cutscene at the end showing an Allied soldier taking down the old Lithuanian SSR flag and replacing it with the real Lithuanian flag. Speaking of which, the actual city itself is accurately modeled on the real thing, featuring actual buildings rendered realistically and faithfully.
  • In the first game, the enemies' appearance also change as the campaign progresses. In the first mission, you're fighting South Ossetian separtist guerrillas, and thus, they wear a mix-match of uniforms with no patches. When you fight in the Baltics against the regular Russian army as they invade, the enemies wear Russian flora uniforms with Russian Ground Forces patches. When you sneak into a Russian Navy base to sabotage submarines, the enemies are wearing Russian Navy patches on their uniforms. The enemies' appearance also differs by where in the level they are. If they're outside, they'll be armed with rifles and wearing thick jackets to keep warm, and if they're inside, they'll be wearing regular uniforms with sidearms only.
  • The first game was developed with help from real Army soldiers◊, and it shows.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: In the final level of Ghost Recon, civilians will be calmly wandering around the war-torn streets of Moscow as heavy fighting takes place mere blocks away from them. Given the history of the nation, it's likely their blasé attitude stems from having already personally seen similar crap at least three or four times in their lifetime.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In the first game it is mentioned in the intro cinematic that the Russians invaded Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, but no missions take place there and their fates are left unknown at the end of the campaign. Though it can safely be assumed they probably got liberated since the Ultranationalists lose the war.
  • Huge battles are mentioned taking place in Estonia between the U.S. and the Russians in the first game, but we never get to see or participate in them, despite missions taking place in nearby Latvia and Lithuania.
• Zee Rust: The first game was released in 2001. It's set in a then-future 2008, but most of your squadmates are outfitted like 1990s soldiers, wearing PASGT helmets, SPEAR BALCS vests, M81 cammies, etc.

Desert Siege

• Alternate History: Eritrea and Ethiopia didn't go for Round 2 of their 1998-2000 war.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Specialist Jodit Haile, who's listed as a Rifleman but gets Support kits.
• Next Sunday A.D.: Takes place in 2009.
• Rogue Soldier: Colonel Tesfaye Wolde of the Ethiopian Army is investigated for being an Arms Dealer for the Russian Ultranationalists. He later leads a coup, partly in order to avoid being arrested.

Island Thunder

• Alternate History: Fidel Castro died a full decade after the game projected (and Cuba didn't erupt in violence following this, and still doesn't have "democratic" elections).
• Gun Accessories: The M4 SOPMOD is available for use by the Ghosts.
• Next Sunday A.D.: Takes place in 2010.
• Western Terrorists: The Ghosts take on FARC guerrillas trying to gain control of Cuba. After suffering severe losses, they retreat back to Colombia.

Jungle Storm

• Alternate History: The game suggets that FARC was defeated by an American-led coalition force. FARC agreed to disarm through peace talks in the 2010s.
• Next Sunday A.D.: Takes place in 2010 like Island Thunder.
• Western Terrorists: The Ghosts take on the Movimiento de las Fuerzas Libres Colombianas (Free Colombian Movement) in Colombia. They also take on FARC.