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Given the indelible mark that the original Deus Ex made on the action RPG genre, and the critical success of the 2011 installment Deus Ex: Human Revolution, there was a great deal of excitement surrounding Eidos Montréal's recent Twitter teases that they were planning to release a new title called Deus Ex: The Fall, the domain names for which were registered this year.

At the time, it was unclear whether Deus Ex: The Fall would be a new major sequel to the PC and console series, it whether it would simply be a piece of DLC for Deus Ex: Human Revolution. In fact, it's neither.

A new press release and video from publisher Square Enix confirms that Deus Ex: The Fall will be an episodic spinoff title for mobile and tablet devices. The story will be a sequel to James Swallow's tie-in novel Deus Ex: The Icarus Effect, and features ex-SAS officer Ben Saxon, who originally signs up with Deus Ex: Human Revolution's resident bad guys 'The Tyrants', only to later be betrayed by them.

The video includes some gameplay footage, which suggests that Deus Ex: The Fall will be a fairly standard cover-based shooter, with the added bonus of augmentations like cloaking and armor. It does look like it might have worked as a DLC for the last game, since it seems to use a lot of the same combat and gameplay mechanics and even has the same hacking minigame. Icons on the HUD can be moved around the screen so that players can have them in whatever configuration feels most comfortable. Executive game director Jean-Francois Dugas says, "It was really important to us to make the game as simple to play as possible."

Though Deus Ex: The Fall might turn out to be a fun and interesting mobile game, hyping it with teasers in the way that Eidos Montréal did was probably a mistake. There's a definite sense of disappointment surrounding the reveal (currently, 93% of the responses on the YouTube video are downvotes) that it will only be a small game available for mobile platforms.

Perhaps that's our own fault for getting excited about the prospect of a fourth game in the main series, but given the fact that it's been two years since the release of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which sold 2.18 million copies within a month of its launch, it wasn't unreasonable to assume that the Square Enix might have something a little bigger. Then again, Eidos Montreal is currently developing Thief. The Fall is being developed by Square Enix Mobile division in Europe, alongside N-Fusion and Eidos Montreal.

Were you hoping that Deus Ex: The Fall would be a console or PC game, or are you excited to play it on your iPad/iPhone? Share your thoughts on this announcement in the comments.

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Priced at $6.99, the first installment of Deus Ex: The Fall will be available this summer on iOS systems.