Tempest Rising

Background

Tempest Rising is set in the same universe as Bombshell and begins roughly 100 years before the events of Ion Fury. The game's alternate history diverges in 1962 when the Cuban Missile Crisis was not resolved peacefully, leading to a Third World War and widespread nuclear irradiation. After the war, fissures opened in irradiated regions, and alien vines emerged that produced a mysterious energy called Tempest, which scientists saw as a solution to a major energy crisis. Two superpowers formed after the war: the Global Defense Force (GDF), an international military alliance of surviving Western governments, and the Tempest Dynasty, formed of Eastern European and Asian nations struggling with nuclear fallout.

The GDF sees Tempest as a resource for maintaining world peace, while the Dynasty views it as their birthright, leading to a three-decade global conflict over Tempest fields. In 1997, a Dynasty excavation in Iraq uncovers an ancient non-human object, and both factions eventually encounter an alien force called the Veti, which emerges after a nuclear detonation and attacks both sides indiscriminately. The Veti are revealed to have created the Tempest-producing plants and had been in hibernation underground since arriving on Earth ten thousand years ago, when they lost a war with humanity.