VN Talk: Code:Realize ~Wintertide Miracles~ - Part 8: Finis

This week I'm covering Finis's route for Code:Realize: ~Wintertide Miracles~. Please beware of spoilers if that concerns you as I'll be discussing everything including the ending.

When I started, I wasn't immediately sure where Finis's story was going, because he's a non-romantic route and while it's nice seeing him and Cardia establish a relationship as siblings, we already get a lot of that in the Christmas stories with the other characters. At first glance, living their happy ending feels like all there is.

In a nod to Saint-Germain's Christmas Story, both he and Hansel drop in on Cardia and Finis to check on how they're doing and what their plans are, though Finis is less than thrilled about it. Saint-Germain is relieved when Cardia tells him that the siblings plan on living out their days in rural Wales indefinitely.

We also get cameos from Sholmès and Watson, who are pursuing Moriarty/Aleister, who happens to stop by the Beckford manor to ask a question of Finis, his former boss. It's an excuse to show how Finis has changed, as he's willing to share his new outlook on life with Aleister (though he's too embarrassed to admit any of those feelings to his sister), but it's also a reminder that even though Finis has left his old life as the head of Twilight behind, he's still Isaac Beckford's creation.

And that's really where the story takes a much different tack than the rest of the stories in ~Wintertide Miracles~.

The remaining stories have a low level of danger, but in Finis's epilogue, London experiences a mysterious disaster that is causing buildings to collapse. Cardia and Finis aren't sure what's going on at first, being so remote that their local newspaper doesn't have the details, but they want to help, and that's when Idea steps in, in the form of Hansel.

Hansel tries to get them to peacefully stay at home, because it's the life they said they were going to live, and this causes them to realize that if he's preventing them from going, the disaster in London must be related to their father. And he comes clean about it, but admits that it's not really Cardia he's worried about (since her Horologium has been neutralized). Finis is the problem, because he has all of Isaac's memories. Conveniently, since we can't spend the whole game convincing an Idea hard-liner, Hansel caves relatively easily and even helps them to London by using the Forest of Fog that Idea uses to travel large distances.

We get to see cameos of the other characters since Lupin and company are obviously not going to stand idle while what turns out to be giant machines are wrecking London, and there are some good jokes about why a construction robot needs a cannon mounted on it (other than it makes for a menacing enemy!). Though this ultimately ends up being more of Finis's story than anyone else's, Cardia gets some really good moments.

Cardia is the one who thinks of getting Impey's ornithopter to head off the master robot, and she's the one who both pilots it and drops the bombs. While this feels well within anything Cardia does, it's sadly still refreshing to see an otome heroine this dynamic.

But it's Finis who jumps out of the ornithopter to land on the robot's head so he can get to the control panel and halt its commands to the other robots. We get to see Finis at his most vulnerable, when he hesitates to complete the command input. It's not because he is missing part of his father's knowledge, as Hansel suspects, but that he's saddened by the fact he has to destroy even more of his father's legacy. And if that's not enough, when he finally keys in the passcode, it's "my_dearest" as a reminder that Isaac Beckford had done everything to be reunited with his family.

In the end, Cardia and Finis come to realize that though their father was ultimately consumed by madness, there is a lot of good that he did for the world, and they spend their final pre-credit scene atop the wall around Steel London where Isaac once admired the view (in a nod to a plot detail from Lupin's After Story).

After the credits roll we're treated to a congratulations party for Finis, who has returned to work for the government to properly handle Isaac's legacy (no more malfunctioning giant robots). Idea's approved of his new work, so long as Hansel is part of the new Daybreak bureau for oversight, and Cardia happily announces to him that they're getting a new family member.

Given that this is a romance game, and Finis is all too aware that most of Cardia's companions are male, he immediately jumps to thinking she's getting married, but it's actually that the dog Sisi is joining their household so Cardia has someone to keep her company while Finis is at work. To be honest, I figured it was the dog, since the game wouldn't shoehorn in a canon love interest on a route where the player makes zero choices, so I pretty much stayed back and enjoyed Finis going around accusing various guys of impropriety or pondering whether they would try at all. Amusingly he dismisses Impey without even considering that he could be a candidate.

Other than the fact there are zero choices to be made on this route, I quite enjoyed it and would have liked to see what kind of future it would lead to. It's a bit odd that despite taking place six months after ~Guardian of Rebirth~ there is no snow, since temporally that places it concurrent with the Christmas stories, but I assume that was done to dodge the Christmas romance themes in the other routes.

Next week will be the last installment of VN Talk for ~Wintertide Miracles~, covering the Canterella side story, which I have to say is excellent.