Victor Frankenstein, Code:Realize - Guardians of Rebirth Character Analysis
Revealed!
So as I alluded to last week, I was going to do an in-depth analysis on one of the romantic mains in Code:Realize - Guardian of Rebirth. And here it is, the gentleman of the day! Happy Valentine's Day everyone!
The quiet, professor type is the one I chose to explore first since he seemed most likely to help Cardia with her problem.
I chose him first because our heroine, Cardia, is afflicted with a terrible poison that eats away at anything she touches. She has to wear special clothing and have customized utensils in order to be able to function.
An image of Cardia, the heroine of this game. Most of the game is explored through her perspective.
It is clearly a great source of distress for her, and one of the primary goals of her journey - a cure to the poison imbedded in her body.
As a result, I felt that a genius Dr. Frankenstein was just the guy to pursue. He is a skilled Alchemist (this games version of a chemist), and I felt he would be most likely to be able to help Cardia with her affliction.
Activating Victor's Romantic Storyline
Code:Realize - Guardians of Rebirth does a fantastic job at making it easy to choose your main path. It is very simple. Just pay attention to the storyline (do your best to side with Victor’s opinions), and always choose to follow Victor.
This is especially important early on when Cardia is being trained by all of the gentlemen. The game explicitly makes you choose what lesson you will be able to view between Victor, Van Helsing, Saint-Germain, and Impey. Simply choose Victor at every available opportunity.
These choices don’t seem seem to change the story initially, but don’t be alarmed. Code:Realize - Guardians of Rebirth focuses on the main storyline first. Once the story is wrapping up, a gentleman’s romantic path is activated.
I think this was implemented extremely well, because some of these romantic Visual Novel games give you choices and it is hard to ensure you activated the path you want. Typically, a player has to reload the game and break their immersion to check.
This won’t happen with this game. Just focus on pursing Victor early on and enjoy the main story. When I made a mistake in the "romance" portion of the story, I was shortly greeted with a game over screen. No reload needed.
Spoilers Below
Pros and Cons to Victor's Storyline and Personality
Not everyone is or should be perfect. Here are the following pros and cons to following Victor’s path. Further analysis is in further sections.
Pros:
- He has a sweet personality.
- Cardia is a genuine partner.
- He is capable of taking action when needed, not weak-willed.
Cons:
- He is poor at combat.
- He recovers from his trauma a little too quickly when Cardia gets involved.
Sweet Personality
It is clear from the beginning that he is more of a “gentle” type, mostly due to the skill of the voice actor. It is easy to tell right off the bat that he is nice, and nothing in the story really negates this impression.
In addition, his art style points to this as well. For the most part, even when he looks “mean” and is ready for combat he still looks gentle. He doesn’t have the sharp eyes and mouth structure the other characters do, and this reflects his personality well.
Not sure if this image illustrates it well, but Victor's face (his nose and mouth especially) seem to be more blended and less sharp overall compared to other characters.
Cardia is a Genuine Partner to Victor
This has to do more with the very end of his path.
In the final moments of the game, he and Cardia are left alone, and discussing if they should sleep in the same bed or not. After giving her a vial containing some substance and having her drink it, they are able to kiss one another. The game leaves off at this (though it is very clear they are physically capable of going beyond kissing now that Cardia’s pesky poison problem can be negated).
I like how the ending is tame enough for younger players, and yet mature enough for older players to be able to realize they will be able to live as a normal couple and do “normal couple things”.
When starting, this was the kind of ending I wanted Cardia to have. If you feel the same, Victor would be a great choice.
This is a perfect example of Victor touching Cardia without being seared by her ever-present poison.
Victor Can Take Action
Though he seems very gentle (and could possibly be too passive to be a good partner), he is not. It is actually a pleasant surprise to see him break out of his diplomatic shell and take charge.
One of the best in-game indications of this is when he confronts Queen Victoria. Even though he has been wrongly branded as a traitor to the crown, he is willing to literally crash land on palace grounds and hold up a fake detonator to hold everyone present hostage. Towards his goal of negotiating with the queen, he is bold enough to adopt the brand of "traitor" and play the role wholeheartedly.
In this screenshot, Victor is holding Queen Victoria (right) and many people present hostage. It is a fake detonator, but the hostages don't know that. His performance is good enough to convince and terrorize the crowd throughout his exchange with the queen.
Victor is Poor at Combat
This could be a “pro” if you like men who use their brains instead of their brawn. However, it is listed as a negative because of Cardia.
At the end of the game, all of the others leave and it is just Victor and Cardia left alone together. This may sound like heaven, but there is still a looming problem. If anyone else wants the power imbedded in Cardia and decide to physically pursue her, Victor would be a poor protector long term.
We don’t get to see more than the happy resolution, and I am curious if the sequel will touch on this at all.
Victor Recovers from Trauma too Quickly
This can happen in Visual Novel games. A character is filled with angst (justified or not) and the lady comes along and saves him from his aching heart.
There is a little bit of this in Victor’s storyline. He created Zicterium (the same poison in Cardia) and it was essentially used as a deadly poison in a war. It killed who knows how many.
He actually tried to go and stop the people from using this substance as a weapon, but he was too late and got to witness the carnage in person.
Victor is distraught to see the pile of corpses his invention claimed. He always wanted to create substances that would help everyone, and never intended to make a large-scale deadly weapon.
This is very traumatizing. It is one thing to hear someone used your creation to kill “x” number of people. But he saw this first hand. He saw corpses and was horrified enough to keep this piece of his story secret until the very end. And he only shared it with Cardia.
The reason the game gives for the fast recovery is that because Cardia herself contains Zicterium, her birth is attributed (at least a little) to him. This realization give him visible relief when Cardia points this out to him. (And later in the game he is worrying about sleeping arrangements, so there is no evidence he is even thinking about this after this point too much.)
But this seems a little superficial and fast. It could be the writers didn’t have enough time to expand on this, but I feel like the sequel should touch on this a bit more. I would expect he would have more flashbacks, or he would seem “cured” but later show cracks.
After all, temporary psychological relief does not equate a full recovery. If this is the intent, then I think this would work. But in the current game, it does feel a little unbalanced.
Final Thoughts
I have not completed multiple endings, so I can only judge his path.
He is a flawed choice in the long run, and maybe is a little delusional in his psychological self-recovery. However, when examining Cardia, she gets a perfect end. She ends the game as a more normal woman, a woman in love, and a woman capable of having a normal romantic relationship. Both emotionally, and physically.
Thank you again to the creators of this wonderful game! I make no profit off of this website or from writing this, and hope this article is helpful or interesting!
