Original War

Original War is a deeply unusual 2001 strategy game that blends real-time tactics with persistent character RPG elements and a time-travel premise. An American geological expedition assesses natural resources in Siberia under a UN mandate and instead of oil discovers a deposit of a hitherto unknown mineral identical to the substance powering an extraterrestrial artifact the US Department of Defense has held since 1919.

The artifact — the EON (Extraterrestrial Object Nexus) — was found near the site of the Tunguska explosion by Colonel Emerson during World War I. DoD experiments revealed that items placed in the capsule are transported hundreds of thousands of years back in time. The Americans couldn't synthesize the fuel until the Siberite discovery in the new millennium. Now they can — and they come up with a plan to send a small force two million years back in time, mine the Siberite, and transport it via the Bering Land Bridge to what will eventually become American territory.

This creates a new timeline where the mineral is in Alaska and the US is the only superpower thanks to the inexhaustible energy source. The Russians, in this timeline, are the ones who discovered the EON instead — and when traces of American settlement and Alaskite show up in Siberia, they send their own expedition back through time to repel the thieves. The game alternates between American and Russian campaigns telling different sides of the same conflict, with characters who can level up, die permanently, and develop across decades of subjective game time.

The gameplay is RTS at the squad level with RPG-style character progression for individual soldiers. Each unit gains experience, develops new skills, and can be repurposed across different roles. Death is permanent for named characters. The interplay of strategy, character development, and the moral weight of choices about whose side you're on makes Original War one of the most distinctive strategy games of its era, with a cult following that has only grown over time.