Deus Ex Diaries Part Fifty-Two (The Fall)

Beginning life as a smartphone game co-developed by Eidos Montréal and N-Fusion, Deus Ex: The Fall launched on iOS in July 2013, Android in January 2014, and PC in March 2014. I’ll freely admit that I wrote this off originally because it was an iOS exclusive, and then I just never got around to playing it.

You play as Ben Saxon, the main character from the novel Deus Ex: Icarus Effect. I haven’t read it, so I can’t comment on it, but it was released to get people ready for Human Revolution. As far as I’m aware, this game takes place concurrently with events in Human Revolution.

I looked into mods, but apart from a shader and a way to bind the controls to different keys, there’s nothing. So, join me as I play Deus Ex: The Fall…

This is my ongoing exploration of the Deus Ex Universe, in release order. Whether you’re a newcomer or an old-goer, I hope to make this something you can read along with and enjoy. This time I begin Deus Ex: The Fall.

Bob Page, destined to one day battle JC Denton, spoke to three distorted voices while a holographic display showed several locations on a world map. They talked about market confidence being high, and a “ghost” in New York being ready to activate. They also discussed how further testing on a project was required, though one of the voices expressed concern before Bob assured them that the testing could be done in Panama. Two of the voices disconnected, leaving Bob to talk to a voice that I recognised: Jaron Namir, the one who would almost kill Adam Jensen.

Namir told Bob that the new recruit was ready, and “the scientist” would do what he was told. However, two people had apparently gone missing and were presumed dead: Ben Saxon and Anna Kelso. They had interfered in Geneva, and Bob was unhappy about that. Namir promised to kill them if they popped up anywhere before signing off.

We cut to Ben Saxon and Anna Kelso watching Picus News in Costa Rica, where Eliza Cassan was talking about Versalife’s Neuropozyne shortage. Saxon was concerned about Kelso not sleeping and skipping her meds, but she was more worried about “him” finding them. Kelso was angry that they didn’t have enough evidence to bring the Illuminati into the spotlight, but Saxon told her that they could never expose the covert black ops unit the Tyrants; he knew because he used to be one of them. Kelso asked Saxon what that was like, and asked him to tell her “about… him”...

Saxon stood by the window to tell his story, finally naming “him” as Jaron Namir, the leader of the Tyrants. Namir had rescued Saxon during Operation Rainbird, back in the Australian Civil War, and recruited him for a mission in Moscow. Namir claimed that the minister who they were sent to assassinate had been responsible for Operation Rainbird, and the death of Saxon’s friend Sam Duarte…

Flashing back to that day, Namir was giving orders while the Tyrants flew towards a dropzone in an aircraft. The target was the Russian Human Augmentation Administrator, Mikhail Kontarsky, currently staying in the Novoe Rostov hotel. Jumping out with a little “help” from fellow Tyrant Lawrence Barrett, Saxon’s Icarus Landing System afforded him a safe landing close to Namir. Finally taking control of Saxon, we walked along until we reached an open area with two skylights and three guards, ducking behind cover to avoid being spotted.

I managed either to kill or knock them all out with my crossbow (I think the bolts were poison-tipped?) and I followed Namir over the wall. The men were Bratva — the Russian mob — but Namir was apparently not surprised. I opened a door and knocked out the man walking away from it before exiting into another open area, this one with Barrett waiting next to a covered ventilation shaft. Namir ordered me to disable the Bratva communications, so I placed a jammer nearby while Barrett tore the cover off of the shaft.

Entering the shaft, we were now inside the hotel. Or, rather, I was, because the other two apparently remained outside. Following the hallway, I entered a room that was under construction, where a single man patrolled. I knocked him out before exiting into the next hallway which ended in a larger area with a couple of pillars and a security turret. Avoiding it thanks to the pillars, I made my way to a door and hacked the terminal keeping it locked. Inside was a ventilation shaft that let me bypass the turret, and I continued following the hallways.

Some stairs took me down to the 13th floor, and the instant I opened a door I was spotted and came under fire. After a brief firefight, my way was clear; I had a quick look around before entering the hallway opposite. Around the corner was a door leading into one of the suites that was partially furnished, despite apparently being still under construction. While exploring I spotted a mine and managed to disarm it, and in doing so actually bypassed a locked door that it turned out I had the code to (6980).

Namir told me to advance into Kontarsky’s room just up ahead of me, but as I continued it actually appeared to be a poorly built server room. What I assumed were server stacks hummed as I walked around them, Saxon exclaiming that it was a decoy before I unplugged whatever it was. It turned out to be for the Thermoptic Shielding which surrounded the room to prevent heat signatures from being seen, and a nearby guard was none too happy about me pulling the plug. Once I put him and his friend out of their misery, I checked the computer and found an email from the Juggernaut Collective to Kontarsky telling him to stop taking risks and get out of there. I hadn’t yet come across them but assumed that they were anti-Illuminati which was why Kontarsky had become a target.

I went down some stairs to the maintenance floor where I was told to buy an EMP grenade to deal with the security bot in the next room. Doing so, I went inside and tossed the grenade, destroying the bot while only getting shot twice when it spotted me… In the next room, Namir called to order me to isolate and neutralise the target, so I ignored the objective marker and checked out the room to my left, finding a handy ventilation shaft that took me into the next room, hidden from the two men inside. I shot them before grabbing the pocket secretary from the seat next to the locked door, which let me inside with the code 0451.

I was told to get the Glass-Shield cloaking system upgrade to bypass a laser grid, so I did that then entered the room that Kontarsky was hiding in. He was in the middle of uploading information about the Tyrants and something called the Killing Floor to Janus, the leader of the Juggernaut Collective. Since Kontarsky proclaimed innocence over the Operation Rainbird matter and Janus suggested that I was being lied to, I decided not to kill him and instead take him with me. But then Namir gave the order for one of the others to shoot Kontarsky through a window.

The scene briefly returned to Costa Rica where Kelso asked Saxon to remember exactly how he discovered that the Tyrants were behind Operation Rainbird. Saxon resumed his story, having skipped ahead to when the team were back on their mobile jetliner base, and he was in his crew quarters.

While I did nose around, there wasn’t much of interest apart from an email to Namir from Gunther Hermann, who JC Denton would later work with (and kill), talking about getting his augmentations completely redone. I did also nip into Barrett’s quarters and told him off for pushing me out of the aircraft and suggesting that I was gun-shy for not shooting Kontarsky.

On the second floor, I gained access to the operations room thanks to a door code that I’d found in Hermann’s email: 0101. The computer gave enough evidence that Operation Rainbird was definitely not on the level, so I returned downstairs to find Namir in the cargo bay. He readily admitted to setting things in motion, because he wanted Saxon to join the Tyrants. Fun fact, one of the audio logs I’d found aboard the jetliner had Namir stating that the group was righteous because it was named after the original meaning of the Greek word “turannos”. It meant “absolute sovereign who came to power without constitutional right”, but not in a bad way.

Namir stated that this was a test, defining Saxon’s future with the Tyrants, and as a person. Saxon didn’t want to be like Namir and the others, so he threw a grenade at his own feet, making Namir dive for cover. It blew the cargo door off — at least I think that’s what happened because it suddenly wasn’t there anymore — and Saxon leapt out of the plane, falling into the Atlantic…