Deus Ex: The Fall

Deus Ex: The Fall is a game for iOS, Android, and PC. Set in the Deus Ex universe, it is the fourth game of the series and the first to be released on mobile platforms. The game is 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 2026, 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
 * Ben Saxon
 * Allies
 * Anna Kelso
 * Janus
 * Alex Vega
 * Panama City
 * Alvarez Araujo
 * Camila Cardoso
 * Cobra
 * Diego
 * Tyrants
 * Jaron Namir
 * Lawrence Barrett
 * Scott Hardesty
 * Yelena Fedorova
 * Sam Duarte
 * Others
 * Mikhail Kontarsky
 * Eliza Cassan
 * Bob Page
 * Stuart St. John
 * Nadine "Widow" Stollock

World locations

 * Costa Rica Safe House
 * Moscow
 * Tyrant Jetliner
 * Panama City

Gameplay articles

 * Walkthrough
 * Augmentations
 * Achievements
 * Turntable
 * Weapons
 * Items

In-game media

 * eBooks
 * Picus TV News Reports
 * Pocket Secretaries
 * Auto-Secretaries
 * Computers/Emails

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. 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?". Hours later, a new tweet was released, saying "Who is Ben Saxon?", 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.

On June 05, 2013, Eidos Montréal officially announced Deus Ex: The Fall for tablets and mobile devices. 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." 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.

The game was announced for a PC in February 2014, 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.

Unreleased continuation
The "to be continued" card at the game's conclusion indicates that a subsequent chapter of the story was originally planned. However, no continuation of the story was released. Information found in the game's data files indicates that in the originally planned story, the next chapter of the game would have included a mission at Zaaphire's facility in Australia and then a series of missions in New York City, which was originally planned to be a full-size city hub similar to Panama City.

In the originally planned story, Ben's investigation of Zaaphire eventually leads him to New York City, where he enlists the assistance of the local hacker Widow, a character who first appeared in the novel Icarus Effect. The New York segment would have featured the decommissioned aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, also first described in Icarus Effect, as one of the locations accessible from the city hub. After Ben plants an uplink device at a bank, Widow performs a hack that uncovers evidence of VersaLife's involvement in setting up Zaphire Biotech. However, Anna, who had been staying in the city, is captured by Sam Duarte and the carrier is attacked by Belltower. The final mission would have featured a confrontation between Ben and Sam on the rooftop of the stock exchange building where Kelso is being held. For additional details, please see the following articles:


 * Deus Ex: The Fall cut story content (Zaaphire Biotech facility)
 * Deus Ex: The Fall cut story content (New York City)
 * See also: Deus Ex: The Fall cut content

The early-production Australia and New York segments include plot elements that are no longer consistent with the released storyline. However, subsequent Deus Ex media (specifically, Deus Ex: Hard Line and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided) adopted the general premise of the plot, namely that Saxon and Vega did travel to Australia and then to New York City, and that VersaLife was the maker of Riezene.

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.