Deus Ex: The Fall is a game for iOS, Android, and PC. It is a spin-off set between the prologue and main story of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the first game in the Deus Ex series to be released on mobile platforms. The game is also a sequel to the novel Deus Ex: Icarus Effect, and features Ben Saxon, one of the protagonists of the novel, as the player character.
Setting[]
Deus Ex: The Fall is set in 2027, described as a golden era for science, technology and human augmentation, but also a time of great social divide and global conspiracy.
At the end of Deus Ex: Icarus Effect, Ben Saxon, a mechanically augmented former soldier, and Anna Kelso, a former Secret Service agent, escaped from the Tyrants and arrived at the Costa Rica safehouse of Sam Duarte's parents. Sam, who was part of Ben's former Belltower squad, is presumed dead as a result of Jaron Namir's sabotage of Operation Rainbird in the Australian Civil War.
Plot[]
The intro to Deus Ex: The Fall depicts a secret conversation between Bob Page and other members of the Illuminati. Things mentioned include a candidate firm established to serve a "viable proxy," a "ghost" agent in New York, and clinical trials that require further testing. Page assures that the testing can be seen to in Panama. He asks if they are at risk. Jaron Namir responds, stating that their "new recruit" is ready but unstable, and that "the scientist" is under control and will obey. When Page asks Namir about the two that got away who interfered in Geneva, Ben Saxon and Anno Kelso, Namir promises that if they come out of hiding, he will kill them himself.
Continuing the story from where Deus Ex: Icarus Effect left off, the prologue part of Deus Ex: The Fall begins at the Costa Rica safehouse. At the safehouse, Ben recounts to Anna the attack that killed his Belltower squadmates in Australia during Operation Rainbird, the assassination of Mikhail Kontarsky in the Hotel Novoe Rostov, and his escape from the Tyrants aboard their private jet. During these flashbacks, Kelso goes into shock from Neuropozyne withdrawal. Due to a worldwide shortage of Neuropozyne, they have been rationing their remaining supply. After Ben uses the last of their reserves to treat her, he asks Janus for help on where to find Neuropozyne. Janus advises him to venture to nearby Panama City via train, and seek out the underground doctor Alvarez Araujo in the slums. Leaving Anna behind to recover from her seizures and cyber-sleuth more information on the Tyrants, Ben departs for Panama.
In Panama City, Ben finds Dr. Araujo at an improvised free clinic in the Panama City slums. The doctor offers him a free sample of an off-brand alternative, Zaaphire Biotech's Riezene, which Ben can choose to take to relieve his withdrawal symptoms. However, Ben ultimately elects to search for a Neuropozyne connection, as Alvarez is incapable of giving Saxon a major supply of Riezene, and he doubts the product's safety. The doctor directs him to meet with the LIMB clinic manager Camila Cardoso for a discreet supply of Neuropozyne, to which she obliges so long as Ben helps her investigate the local trafficking of Riezene. Cardoso directs him to Cobra, who tells Saxon to visit the hideout of the local Skulls gang to ask their leader, Diego. After infiltrating the Skulls' hideout, Ben discovers a sinister conspiracy: someone high-up at Zaaphire has been intentionally leaking Riezene into Panama City despite (or maybe because of) its limited clinical testing, by having Belltower supply the drug to the Skulls for further distribution. Additionally, Belltower has been covering up Riezene-related deaths. Cardoso agrees to discreetly send Neuropozyne to a PO Box near the safehouse, and directs Ben to someone who might be able to give him answers to Belltower's involvement in these illegal Riezene field tests, the Belltower pilot Alex Vega.
In the Nightshades Club, Alex tells Ben she has heard rumors that some of the guards have been taking some of the Riezene shipments and selling it to street dealers. She is currently assigned to transport WHO inspector Stuart St. John, who is himself investigating Riezene, but Alex fears for his safety. Ben agrees to warn the inspector so that she does not get caught discrediting her own employers, with Alex saying she will owe him one. Ben then breaks into the inspector's suite in Hotel Etana. There, the inspector admits that Riezene is not ready for market yet, and expresses his plans to go public on Picus TV as a whistleblower. Ben is too late, however, as a Tyrants' VTOL blows open the window to the suite, and an augmented Sam Duarte shoots the inspector dead, revealing him to not only be alive, but also working for the Tyrants. Before he can kill his former squadmate, he hesitates, and security forces begin to converge on the hotel, forcing the Tyrants to leave.
With the Tyrants now in Panama City and aware of Ben and Anna's presence, Ben asks Anna to leave the safehouse. Ben tells Alex to get them out of Panama as soon as possible to a location of his choosing. She begrudgingly accepts the job, knowing her career with Belltower is over anyway since Belltower will blame her for the inspector's death. Alex cannot retrieve her VTOL until the company safeguards are removed, so she asks Ben to infiltrate the XNG Data Center, which houses a clandestine Belltower base and a helipad at which the VTOL is being held. In the base, Ben deactivates the surveillance equipment and arranges Alex to meet him at the roof of Hotel Etana, a difficult task considering Belltower has declared the site a crime scene. After reaching the top of the hotel, Ben clears the rooftop helipad of an 80-X Boxguard and accompanying Belltower personnel, allowing Alex to successfully land and pick him up. They depart for Zaaphire Biotech's facility in Canberra, Australia.
The game ends with Sam Duarte and Jaron Namir apologizing to Bob Page for failing to kill Ben and Anna. Sam vows to kill the rogue Tyrant before he can cause any more trouble. The screen then cuts to a "to be continued" card.
Characters[]
- Protagonist
- Allies
- Panama City
- Tyrants
- Others
World locations[]
In-game media[]
Gameplay articles[]
Development[]
In March of 2013, Square Enix trademarked and registered domains linked to the Deus Ex series: DeusExTheFall.com and DeusExTheFall.net, but nothing official was released.[1] However, on June 03, 2013, Deus Ex: The Fall was teased on Twitter by Human Revolution developer Eidos-Montréal in a subtle tweet, which said "Are YOU ready for The Fall?".[2] Hours later, a new tweet was released, saying "Who is Ben Saxon?",[3] suggesting a connection with the book Deus Ex: Icarus Effect. Another tweet, which said "Where will YOU take The Fall?" with a short teaser, reveals that an announcement will be made on June 05, 2013, a few days from E3.[4]
On June 05, 2013, Eidos Montréal officially announced Deus Ex: The Fall for tablets and mobile devices.[5] The game was originally proposed by N-Fusion, who, according to Jean-François Dugas, "proposed a pitch to make a direct follow-up to the Icarus Effect novel." Development of the game was a collaborative effort between N-Fusion and Eidos-Montréal, with N-Fusion serving as the game developer and driver of the game's development, while Eidos-Montréal provided oversight. Dugas also noted that the story is "canon" and that "the events of the story happen while Adam Jensen is recovering from his injuries at the beginning of Human Revolution when he’s on the leave for six months."[6] Anna Kelso was considered as a possible protagonist early on, but due to production deadlines, the developers chose Saxon as the protagonist since doing so allowed existing animations to be reused.[7]
The game was announced for a PC in February 2014,[8] and released on PC the following month. Reportedly, N-Fusion originally made the game strictly for mobile, but Square Enix later wanted to make the game available for the people who didn't have it on tablet. In a post-release interview, the developers remarked on the difficulties of the task arising from fans' much higher expectation for PC games.[9]
Unreleased continuation[]
The "to be continued" card at the game's conclusion indicates that a subsequent chapter of the story was originally planned for a later release. However, no continuation of the story was released. Information found in the game's data files[10] and known content for early builds of Deus Ex: Icarus Rising (the game's prototype and original title) reveal plot details of an early version of the story, which included segments set in Australia and and New York City. The Australia segment was originally designed to be a single mission, while the New York City segment was originally planned to be a full-size city hub similar to Panama City.
In the early version of the story, Ben's investigation of Zaaphire eventually leads him to New York City, where he obtains help from local hacker Widow, a character who first appeared in the novel Icarus Effect. The New York City segment would have featured the decommissioned aircraft carrier USS Intrepid (also first described in Icarus Effect) as an in-game location and the base for Widow's group. With Widow's assistance, Ben uncovers evidence of VersaLife's involvement in setting up Zaaphire Biotech. However, Anna is captured by Sam Duarte, leading to a final showdown between Ben and Sam at the rooftop of the stock exchange. For plot details of the original story, including the parts preceding New York City, please see the following articles:
- Panama City pre-release content
- Zaaphire Biotech facility (DXTF cut content)
- New York City (DXTF cut content)
The early version of the story has multiple inconsistencies with plot of the released game. For example, while in Panama City, Ben would have discovered that he has been carrying the Argus Implant. This discovery would have been a motivating factor to travel to Zaaphire's facility in Australia to confront the implant's creator, Isaac Tiven. The Argus Implant would have played a major role in Australia and New York City, but was cut from the released game. Additionally, in the early version of the story, Ben does not encounter Sam and the Tyrants until the Australia mission.
These inconsistencies with the released story indicate that the plot had undergone major revisions during the game's development. It is not known how the plot for the Australia and New York City segments would have been revised if they had been released. However, the facts of the general premise of the early plot, specifically that Saxon and Vega did travel to Australia and then to New York, and that VersaLife was the maker of Riezene, was subsequent adopted in Deus Ex: Hard Line and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
Reception[]
The iOS Release of the game met with mixed critical reception, averaging scores of 69/100 on Metacritic and 70% on Gamerankings. Reviewers agreed that despite The Fall being an overall shorter, worse written and less complex Deus Ex game than it's predecessors, the game was still excellent by Mobile Standards, and more or less an acceptable entry in the series. One of the lowest review scores was by Eurogamer's Christopher Dolan, who criticized the game's poor visuals, controls, combat and even story, in addition to poor performance by the game itself. He assigned the game a total score of 5/10, one of the lowest by a major reviewer, but both Metacritic and Gamerankings recognize reviewers that gave the game a 4/10. User reviews were far more negative, averaging 4.4/10 on Metacritic.
In early 2014, the game was ported to Android and Windows. The Windows release saw much worse reception, this time averaging 45/100 and 44% on Metacritic and Gamerankings, respectively. Critics cited the minimal effort done in porting the game, including features left in from the mobile release, such as the inventory shop, lack of a jump button, and permanently bound controls. Andy Kelly of PC Gamer described the game as "truly one of the worst PC ports [he had] played in some time", and YouTube consumer advocate Totalbiscuit condemned the game in a "review" on his channel. This backlash lead to Square Enix releasing a small patch in August that allowed mappable controls, added more audio options and fixed some of the more noticeable bugs, but as of January 2015 no further patches have been released for the game.
Sales figures on The Fall are as of yet unknown, as Apple, Google and Valve are all reluctant to release any metrics, but as of the 27-month mark since the original iOS release, no public talks of a new mobile game have been seen or heard of from Square Enix, N-Fusion or Eidos Montréal. Coupled with the strong negative public reception of the game, Square Enix may be waiting to release a more polished mobile title, or even abandon the platform entirely. The game was removed from the respective Apple and Google stores in 2018. Therefore, the iOS and Android versions are no longer available for purchase. The PC version remains available on Steam.
Gallery[]
Videos[]
References[]
- ↑ Deus Ex: The Fall domain registrations pop up online
- ↑ https://twitter.com/DeusEx/status/341537040107712512
- ↑ https://twitter.com/DeusEx/status/341600492813680640
- ↑ https://twitter.com/DeusEx/status/341721095767986176
- ↑ Announcing Deus Ex: The Fall
- ↑ J-F. Dugas (Jun 11, 2013). "Eidos Montreal Tells Us All About Deus Ex: The Fall". Siliconera (interview). Also archived 2020-09-23.
- ↑ J-F. Dugas and James Wright (Jun 22, 2013). "Square Enix Presents E3 2013 - Day3 [#06] - Deus Ex: The Fall Interview". SQEXPresents (video interview).
- ↑ Phil Savage (Feb 25, 2014) "Deus Ex: The Fall announced for PC release". PCGamer.
- ↑ Julian Benson (May 20, 2014). "Deus Ex: The Fall devs on difficulty of porting to PC: 'Expectations are really high'". PCGamesN.
- ↑ The mainData file located at:
- Steam version: Steam\SteamApps\common\Deus Ex The Fall\DeusEx_steam_Data\mainData
- iOS version: Deus Ex. The Fall 1.36.0.ipa\Payload\dxm.app\Data\mainData
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