VN Talk: Code:Realize ~Wintertide Miracles~ - Part 4: Van Helsing

This week,I'll be covering Van Helsing's route for Code:Realize ~Wintertide Miracles~, both his Christmas story and his Special Epilogue.

This game is still less than a year old, so here's your spoiler warning!

Afternate Story: First Christmas

Van Helsing might actually have my favorite of the Christmas stories, which I'm surprised by since I found his original ~Guardian of Rebirth~ route to be unbalanced. Cardia's personal story more or less vanished so the story could focus on Helsing's personal pain. But this turned out to be the alternate universe that I didn't know I wanted.

As with the other Christmas stories, it begins from his perspective, saying goodbye to Cardia without expressing his feelings for her. Though, being Van Helsing, he's not entirely ready to acknowledge that he has those feelings at all.

It's been about six months since they put a stop to Isaac Beckford's Code: Realize plan, and Van Helsing has been trying to let go of vengeance.

The important thing to note in this route is that Van Helsing does not know the truth about the murder of his family or how he was artificially enhanced to become the "Human Weapon." That's because the Christmas story is based on Finis's route, and not Lupin's or his own.

This means that while he's attracted to Cardia, he's also well aware that the target of his vengeance is her brother, who she has finally reclaimed as a part of her family. In fact, he takes their farewell conversation as a warning from Cardia to butt-out so she can live her life with her brother, which he supposes is reasonable.

As with his endings on other routes, Van Helsing now spends his time working with Delacroix II to form a sanctuary where vampires can live undisturbed. Having Delly around has smoothed a lot of Van Helsing's rough edges, and it's nice seeing him smile a lot more, even though he doesn't see how someone like him can possibly be allowed a happy future.

But because he himself was a target of Delly's vengeance, and Delly is no longer seeking to exact it, his companion turns out to be the perfect sounding board for Van Helsing's confusion over how to feel about Finis. Van Helsing killed Delly's parents, and yet he's now Delly's trusted companion.

Interestingly, Delly doesn't brush off his concerns or say that Van Helsing is inherently a good person so none of what he did matters. He admits that in some ways he really does want to kill Van Helsing, and that feeling hasn't gone away, but he's come to recognize that letting him live is power too. Delly draws a distinction between vengeance causing a person to hate, and hate that demands vengeance, and he refuses to let himself fall for the latter, a lesson that Van Helsing takes to heart.

When Van Helsing finally does meet up with Finis at the house he shares with Cardia, they similarly have a private conversation during which Finis admits that he should pay for what happened to Val Helsing's family, since as the leader of Twilight whatever it was clearly happened on his watch. However, he can't pay with his life because that would make Cardia sad after all the lengths she went to reclaim him. Van Helsing gives Finis a punch and admits it doesn't really do anything to take away the pain, and Finis is sympathetic, knowing that Van Helsing has been carrying around his pain for years so obviously one punch isn't going to fix it. But then Helsing takes Delly's route, and tells Finis to live his life as payment.

The game easily could have gone for the simple route, having Van Helsing mooning over Cardia (and he does a bit of it to be sure), but I really appreciate the acknowledgement that this timeline is different and allowing Van Helsing to grow and explore as a person after his story is supposed to be done.

And the ending isn't too shabby either. Since Van Helsing isn't the type to walk up and confess his feelings, we instead get Cardia confessing hers, after having a talk with all the other guys, who help her recognize that what she's feeling is love. This is topped off with her notifying Van Helsing that the rest of the men feel entitled to punch him once apiece. He of course takes it in stride, with the exception that he might punch Impey back, without restraint.

Special Epilogue

On the other hand, Van Helsing's Special Epilogue is rather disappointing. It's not that he's being bad so much as it feels like the writers really didn't know what they wanted to do after his proposal to Cardia at the end of ~Future Blessings~. There's a cute scene of them shopping for a wedding dress together and then Cardia's at the chapel with Shirley, who is helping her get ready.

Since Cardia isn't used to walking in heels, she figures she'll get some practice in before the ceremony and leaves her dressing room. Shortly thereafter, she encounters some strange men in black suits who adamantly insist on taking her away by carriage. Not wanting to start a fight where she could be at a disadvantage, she goes with them while looking for a moment of weakness to escape.

Van Helsing finds out about this and pretty much goes on a rage trip to get his bride back. He gets to punch some bodies around and be his violent self, at least until the truth comes out in that Cardia was mistaken for another woman who hadn't shown up for her play rehearsal. (The scene was a wedding, so naturally she would be in a wedding dress.) The guys sent to get her found Cardia instead and dragged her along and apparently none of them knew any better.

The problem I have with this is that all the guys involved with the play had to be a bunch of idiots to not 1) ask Cardia for her name to make sure they found the right person (she was outside a church in a wedding dress so there was a good chance she was the bride of an actual wedding) and 2) not notice something was horribly wrong once they got to the church and she wasn't acting in character or as if she knew anything about what was going on.

And from the writing end of things, all the dialogue is written to obfuscate the fact that everyone involved is either an actor or part of the stage crew. This is to make it look like some random brute is forcing Cardia to marry him (for some reason). There isn't a single line that says something like "Rehearsal started an hour ago! Where were you?!" which you think would make sense.

Finally, the fact the play they're doing is in a church is just odd. It needed to be for Cardia and Van Helsing to have the reactions they do, but from the perspective of the people putting on the play it makes no sense, because unless the audience is in the pews as participants, there would be no place to sit.

The wedding artwork of Cardia and Van Helsing is very nice, and there's a good amount of Impey bashing on Helsing's part, but the plot itself is pretty idiotic.