unMetal

Some time after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a Soviet military helicopter treads into U.S.-allied airspace and is shot down. The pilot, Jesse Fox, is apprehended and transferred to the U.S. Army's custody for interrogation by an unnamed lieutenant. The game's frame story follows Fox as he explains his turn of events to the lieutenant, which is in turn recounted by Fox to his unnamed girlfriend on a drive through a savanna.
Fox was falsely imprisoned by the X Army, a mercenary unit led by General X, and held in a prison on their base. After breaking out of his cell, Fox meets fellow prisoners Colonel Alan Harris, a U.S. Army colonel believed dead in an ambush, and Robert, a journalist arrested for photographing a shipment of concrete. Fox escapes the prison through the sewers, but unintentionally surfaces in the base's Alpha Building. While searching for a way out, Fox learns of "Operation Jerico", a large-scale attack plan by the X Army, and meets and falls in love with the Doctor, the sole physician of the base's sick bay, who rejects his advances but agrees not to turn him in. After rescuing the Doctor from being arrested for treason, Fox escapes into the jungle outside and tries to hide in the back of an outbound truck, but the truck returns to the base's boot camp, forcing Fox to sneak through the camp to board another truck.
The truck arrives at a port owned by the X Army, where Fox learns Operation Jerico is a nuclear terrorist plot involving stolen Soviet nuclear weapons launched from ballistic missile submarines; the concrete Robert photographed was a containment sarcophagus used to store the warheads. However, Fox's activities attract the attention of General X, who takes the Colonel from his cell. After sinking one of the submarines, Fox flees in a boat, but it runs out of fuel outside the Omega Building, the X Army's headquarters. Fox sneaks in to steal a helicopter and meets Dr. Hoffman, a nuclear chemist and the Doctor's father who was forced to create uranium-235 for the X Army; while Fox tries to comprehend how they are related, the Doctor is kidnapped by General X. Fox reaches the roof of the Omega Building and secures a helicopter, but while searching for its keys in the basement he encounters a hologram of General X, who orders him to surrender or the Colonel and the Doctor will die; Fox uses C-4 to rescue the pair, but the Colonel is knocked out, while the Doctor admits she was used to lure Fox and that she must stay or her father will be killed. Fox carries the Colonel to the roof and fights General X, who stuns Fox and almost executes him before the Colonel regains consciousness, shoots General X, and carries Fox to the helicopter.
During the game's final act, a burnt corpse is discovered in the crashed helicopter, and Fox is accused of murdering the Colonel. However, the corpse is identified as General X's, while the Colonel arrives alive and well, having been forcibly parachuted out of the helicopter by Fox so he would not be harmed in the shoot-down. Fox is cleared of wrongdoing and awarded for his actions. In the aftermath, Operation Jerico is foiled, the X Army is arrested, Robert receives a Pulitzer Prize, the Doctor and Dr. Hoffman work on a cancer cure using "nano-nuclear weapons", and Fox returns to his life as a smuggler; the drive he is on with his girlfriend is revealed to be one such smuggling operation. The pair approach a security checkpoint, but the soldier checking their passports recognizes Fox and lets them pass, impressing his previously skeptical girlfriend enough for her to kiss him.
In a post-credits scene, the soldier from the checkpoint reveals to a colleague that Fox simply bribed him to "recognize" his heroics, and that the entire story was made up "just to score".