A single-player, third-person shooter by The Collective and published by Simon & Schuster, set in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine universe. It loosely follows three novels by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens called Millennium: The Fall of Terok Nor, The War of the Prophets, and Inferno.
While responding to a Bajoran distress signal, the USS Defiant finds itself under attack by an enigmatic new race called the Grigari. Meanwhile, Major Kira visits Obanak Keelen, an old friend she fought alongside with during the occupation. Obanak has rejected his people's faith in the Prophets since the occupation, and has instead turned to the Pah-wraiths.
Each of the three protagonists has their own campaign, although they do occasionally go through the same or very similar levels. In those instances, they have their own objectives, though.
The game contains examples of these tropes:
- Artificial Stupidity:
- Grigari often fail to pathfind to you even after aggroing them.
- Also, enemies can't use ladders and don't use door controls as much.
- When they aren't hyper-aware of everything to the point of making Spider-Man's spider-sense look slow, you can use the phaser rifle's sniper mode to kill the person next to a given enemy and they won't notice.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Worf gets his Bat'leth instead of a phaser, which ends up making his missions more challenging compared to Sisko and Kira. While the Bat'leth can bypass shields, it also requires going into striking distance of enemies who usually either have ranged weapons or pack quite a punch themselves (although this can be avoided with the Grigari by circling them). It also means that Worf is much more prone to running out of ammo, which can leave him without any ranged options whatsoever.
- Call-Back:
- The counter-insurgency program from the Season 3 episode "Civil Defense" reappears, this time triggered on purpose by Terell during her raid on Deep Space Nine.
- Kira also undergoes surgery to look like a Cardassian, but unlike the episode "Second Skin", she volunteers for it. She even notes the irony of fooling the Obsidian Order with one of their own methods.
- Several Vorta in the game use their telekinetic powers if you try to kill them in melee combat. The only one to use them on the series was Eris, the first Vorta seen, in "The Jem'Hadar".
- Clairvoyant Security Force: Major Kira is at one point tasked with infiltrating a secret Cardassian base and does so disguised as a Cardassian scientist. She cannot use any weapons, up to and including her fists, until she's entered the base proper. Even if she stands completely unseen in a remote corner and punches the air once, she'll promptly be attacked by guards while an alarm starts screaming in the distance. Oh, and the base's PHASER CANNONS will start shooting at her even though they're triggered only by sight.
- Deflector Shields:
- The Grigari have personal shields. And they have unlimited capacity, too.
- In a few select missions, the player can also find belts that grant them a personal shield, but unlike its enemy counterpart, its capacity is limited.
- The final boss also has a personal shield, but thankfully, its capacity is limited. Also, the weapons you have by that point easily bypass it.
- Developer's Foresight: If you are playing as Sisko or Kira, your phaser can be used to shoot through forcefields, including Grigari shields, if you know their frequency. However, while manually adjusting the frequency may be viable while dealing with a forcefield, it's not really something you want to do while you are under attack. Luckily, you can set the game to automatically adjust your phaser to the last thing you scanned, provided it had a frequency.
- Emergency Weapon: Kira and Sisko get their phasers, which regenerate their ammo, so the player can always fall back on that. It's actually better to use the Phaser against individual enemies to conserve ammo for other weapons, and it's the only weapon that can change its frequency to bypass shields and forcefields, making it useful throughout the game. Worf is actually at quite a disadvantage since he gets his Bat'leth instead.
- Fate Worse than Death: Given what we know about the Pah-wraiths from the show, we can assume that Obanak isn't in a good place, assuming his consciousness survived.
- Foreshadowing: The ending monologues allude to the series finale. Sisko feels that he hasn't seen the Pah-wraiths for the last time. Kira on the other hand wonders what might happen if the Pah-wraiths came into contact with someone truly evil, rather than just corrupting a formerly good man like Obanak. Guess what happens in the show...
- Guide Dang It!:
- Unlike its Voyager counterpart Elite Force, which came out the same year, The Fallen does not highlight objects you can interact with on your HUD. You do get the Tricorder in exchange, but it doesn't show every console, for example, and targeting can be wonky.
- The Hass'Terral level as Kira. You can never be sure when you can safely use your tricorder to scan your surroundings without hyper-aware guards opening fire, even if you made sure you are outside of everyone's line of sight.
- Idiot Ball:
- One actually goes to Garak, of all people. If you talk to him before the third mission, he will make vague remarks implying that the Cardassian government is unusually interested in the bodies of the two soldiers the crew has found between the first two missions. Of course, he turns out to be correct, but he doesn't bother warning anyone about Dejar possibly being an Obsidian Order agent.
- Another goes to the two Jem'Hadar soldiers who were supposed to guard Worf. Granted, he had injuries that would render most people completely helpless, but this is a Klingon we are talking about. So when they are called to quell a riot, they just leave Worf on the floor. Not only that, but Worf actually has the easiest time recovering most of his equipment, as it is in the very next corridor!
- Major Injury Underreaction: Worf spends his part of the Arduria-missions injured. According to the Jem'Hadar he was forced to sparr with, he has four broken ribs, one of which pierced his lung. These injuries have no effect on gameplay, though, nor does Worf acknowledge them. Justified since Worf is a Klingon, who have redundant organs - among others, three lungs.
- Never Bring A Knife To A Gunfight: Worf carries his Bat'leth in every mission. Which would be fine if he didn't leave his phaser behind in exchange.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Grigari indirectly do this. Their weapons, most notably the EM-Rifle, are not only effective against them, but also make the final boss a complete pushover, due to both piercing his shield and stunlocking him.
- No-Gear Level: Arduria starts you out with no gear whatsoever, although Sisko and Worf get shock-blades almost immediately.
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: Whereas Elite Force allowed you to pick up any enemy weapon if it's one you are supposed to get anyway, The Fallen does not do this. Even if you are using the same weapon as the enemy, you can't even pick up their power-cells to get some ammo for yours. This is particularly glaring during the Arduria-levels - even if the shock-blade you found earlier runs low, you can't pick up any of the ones the Jem'Hadar use.
- Scare Chord: The game loves to do this. Some environments have audio cues that make you think the place is about to fall apart. Others are used to indicate danger, but the game sometimes uses those cues completely out of the blue. The game's audio files are aptly named, such as bad_plce_cue.mp3 and crescndo_stab.mp3!
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
- The game will regularly spawn enemies very close to you. Most of the time the enemies are beamed in, but in some cases, the game will spawn enemies into dark areas. This can lead to situations where you scan an area, maybe even use your flashlight to check said dark areas, only for an enemy to magically appear there once you trigger something by approaching an NPC or object. Needless to say that this can make players quite paranoid.
- The Grigari have some pretty powerful abilities, notably a personal shield. One ability that is never explained, however, is that they can apparently tell if you are scanning them. This can make your target hostile, assuming it wasn't already, although they also struggle to pathfind to you over longer distances.
- The Main Characters Do Everything: The protagonists are usually on their own. In their shared missions, they start at completely different points. You never encounter the other two protagonists outside of cutscenes and the interlude-segments, although you can sometimes communicate with them. Even if you start near allied NPCs, don't expect them to follow you or do anything useful. This leads to some very unusual situations compared to the show. Sisko's very first mission has him go to a damaged Bajoran ship to rescue survivors completely alone. Worf, meanwhile, personally fights of the Grigari boarding parties and repairs the Defiant at the same time.
- The Sociopath: The Grigari as a race. They are traders, scavengers and pirates. Unlike the Ferengi, who will often do plenty of shady things, the Grigari completely lack any morals and would even commit mass-murder without a second thought.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist:
- Cardassian scientist Terell will do anything necessary to get her hands on the Orb she studied years ago on Deep Space 9 in order to turn it into a weapon. However, she is also said to mistrust the Dominion and seeks to liberate her people from it. During the final episodes of the show, the Dominion indeed turns on the Cardassians and even attempts to exterminate the entire population of Cardassia Prime. Additionally, while she is desperate to turn the Orb into a weapon against the Dominion, she ultimately realizes that the Orb itself is pure evil. While she fails to destroy the Orb herself, she is the one who provides Sisko, Kira and Worf with the knowledge on how to do so.
- Obanak, in a way. He genuinely believes that the Pah-wraiths want to help the Bajorans, whereas the Prophets did nothing to prevent or stop the occupation of Bajor.
- At first glance, the Kaal-Taan are nothing more than religious zealots. When they are first seen, they kill defenseless civilians while attacking Obanak's Pah-wraith monastery, and are even willing to blow themselves up to take you with them. As it turns out, they were absolutely right about Obanak, even if they likely didn't know what exactly he was up to.
