Ghost Recon WildlandsNovember 13 will mark the 25th anniversary of Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, but Ubisoft is getting the celebration ball rolling a little early with a major update to Ghost Recon Wildlands featuring major visual and gameplay enhancements, and an all-new mission "set in a darker, more oppressive Bolivia."

Bolivia, you may recall, is where Ghost Recon Wildlands takes place, in a fictional future where the country has been taken over by a powerful drug cartel. That leads the US to send in the Ghosts, and then it's peace through superior firepower time, baby! This didn't go over very well with the actual Bolivian government, which filed a format complaint about the whole thing with the French government.

The game itself is pretty good though, if also pretty ridiculous. I put probably a couple hundred hours into it with a pair of gamer pals, and even though we never liberated Bolivia we did have a good time, mainly because Wildlands is above all else a five-alarm chaos simulator. Yes, we're an elite squad of deadly operators, but we're also launching ourselves off of dirt bikes and over cliffs at roughly 300 MPH because we forgot which button the brake is.

Speaking of forgetting, never forget the incomparable skills of PC Gamer's own tier one strike squad:

Anyway, with the 25th anniversary more or less upon us, Wildlands is being updated on both PC and current-gen consoles for "smoother combat, improved distance rendering, enhanced lighting and shadows, and a sharper image targeting 4K resolution."

The new standalone missions, dubbed Last Rites, see the gang hunt down La Llorona, the leader of a fanatical, violent cult called Los Pentitentes, who's hiding in a region filled with "dangerous swamps and dense forests where visibility is low and danger is lurking."

Notably, the followup to Wildlands, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, is not getting a similar facelift. It's a bit newer, although probably not enough newer to make that much of a difference, but it also came out in pretty rough shape and was quite poorly received. It's been improved dramatically since then, but maybe Ubisoft had to pick one and decided to go with the winner. Breakpoint players will get a new 25th anniversary bundle for free in September, though.

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In any event, this isn't the only Ghost Recon freebie in the pipe. Wildlands and Breakpoint are both free to play for the weekend on Ubisoft Connect, and on sale for 95% off on Steam—that's $2.49 for Wildlands and $3 for Breakpoint, which are both really good deals. You can also snag the classic Ghost Recon: Future Soldier for free until August 13.

And finally, Ubisoft also rolled out the new Ghost Recon Insiders Program today, giving fans "a chance to help build the next Ghost Recon." You can sign up for that at ghostrecon.com/insider.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.