Ghost Recon - Campaign 1: South Ossetia & Georgia

Ghost Recon is probably the best tactical military shooter ever; however the playthrough of the campaign in this video is with the Heroes Unleashed mod. The best thing the mod brings to the game is the vast selection of weapons for every soldier in your platoon: Even though your soldiers are supposed to be special forces, in the base game everyone was limited to an M16, M4, M249 - or M21 for snipers. This meant after your first shot, your small 6-man-team of "ghosts" were compromised and every mission turned into a desperate firefight for survival against overwhelming odds - not unlike the story of Bravo Two Zero.

With the Heroes Unleashed mod, you can select suppressed weapons for a start; and the enemy's previous ability to instantly locate your team, now seems more realistic. Enemy placement and behaviour feels more realistic, too. It's all these little things that mount up and make for a much better experience.

As for the plot of the first campaign, it is uncanny. Even though the game came out in 2001, it is set in 2008 where the autonomous region of South Ossetia is fighting against Georgia. Georgia's presence in South Ossetia then prompts Russia to launch a full scale military invasion of Georgia. This happened in real life - right down to the year: Georgia does not recognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent regions and in 2008 (real world) they began amassing forces to take these regions back. Eventually, Georgia did enter South Ossetia and Russia responded militarily to protect the autonomy of the ethnically Russian regions. Georgia was defeated very quickly (within a couple of weeks) and a ceasefire was negotiated. Russia pulled out of Georgia under the agreement that Abkhazia and South Ossetia remain autonomous.

The game even recycles the same propaganda we hear in the real world - that Russia's motivation for invading Georgia is to "re-establish the Soviet Union". This simply isn't true because in the real world, Russia did not occupy Georgia. It left entirely under negotiated terms.

Fast forward to 2014 and the same situation happens in Ukraine: A pro Russian president is overthrown in a coup, he is replaced by a pro Western president, prompting two breakaway regions to form: the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic. In 2022, Ukrainian forces build-up in an attempt to take back these breakaway regions and Russia invades militarily. A negotiated peace could be obtained so easily - all the West would need to do is what happened in Georgia in 2008: agree to leave the autonomous regions. Instead, the West seems to have chosen now to have a protracted war. The plot of Ghost Recon is so similar to the real world, it is likely an example of predictive programming and pre-emptive propaganda.