Code Vein (1) has a really troubled development, with the game coming out 2 years after the reveal, and probably having being delayed internally a few times and even one to the public (it was supposed to come out in 2018 but it came out in 2019).

Most of the game mechanics are fine but the story and lore as presented to the player are a complete mess. So my question is, how do you fix something that was too broken to be fixed?

The obvious answer is to just scrap it and make an entire new thing, which is what Code Vein 2 is. Completely new and fresh, but with the themes of the previous game, the bits that worked well.

But what if Code Vein 2 wasn’t an anthology series? Instead a direct sequel to Code Vein (1). How would anyone get around to do it?

Already Running into Problems

The thing starts running into the ground if we consider that Code Vein had multiple endings, even though it did have a true ending (usually the ending that follows to a new game). In one of them, the Main Character dies and the Companions become the new Successors (long story, just roll with it) to delay the Queen’s resurrection (the bad guy of the game). And in the True/Golden Ending, everyone survives.

This means that we would need a new cast, considering that the Main Character and the Companions could have been put into the bad OR good endings, depending on the choices. Obviously the best way would be to make it sure the saves could be imported, à la Mass Effect, but considering that they created the game in a way that it would be more or less independent due to its ~lore~ connections to the God Eater franchise, it would seem that the game was an one-off. And essentially, it was.

So we immediately run into problems if we try to accommodate the game’s endings, which we sort of have to. But what else is there?

Playing Janitor Wouldn’t Work

I mentioned God Eater because the creators of that series, Shift (Studios) created Code Vein. Internally, Code Vein has the prefix “GE0” in some areas, translating into ‘God Eater 0’, essentially a prequel to the franchise. Okay, that would work fine, if we disregard the bad endings, but it also created an interesting problem: Everything is merely implied.

Revenants were made to fight the Horrors (read: the Aragami), but they have many flaws, they require blood to stay alive and can lose their memories if they keep dying or don’t get blood and eventually turn themselves into mindless monsters. Not the best solution to combat things. Additionally, the experiment failed anyway, and the ones that did survive out the ending were gonna find a way to fix things. Considering that humanity had a finally a chance to fight back, it did work, maybe.

Code Vein 1 quite amusingly set in the USA, possibly NYC or San Francisco (my bet is NYC), meaning we got three distinct areas about it, with GE1 and 2 being in the same region, likely Japan, and GE3 being set in Europe. The three can work and exist independently, but probably the devs didn’t think of that. Meaning that if Code Vein were to exist in the timeline without being implied, it would have to play Janitor fix some of the issues also in GE3, and considering that there’s no mention of the research in GE1 and later GE2, I’d very much assume that CV1 happened super early in the timeline.

That is until God Eater 3 came along and trashed the lore, saying that the world got even worse with that Ashblight as the game setting shifted to Europe. Quite literally everything done in GE3 undermine humanity, and the devs (not Shift but Marvelous Entertainment) tried to backpedal slightly with further additional content, like the ‘Traversing the Past’ DLC, for some recovery to the world. Lots of people refuse to acknowledge that GE3 is canon because it breaks the lore to cause more issues and leave everything in a much more bleaker state.

Connected AND Disconnected

I think this is why the decision to make CV2 be more like an anthology series has some merit to it. By decoupling it from the GE timeline, they were able to create its own new lore to compensate and different characters to populate the world.

I understand that some people would love if we got more of CV1 and I’d also like that, but we also need to make sure we don’t lose sight of what matters: What would be the next crisis they would take on?

Considering that BOR-Parasite made Revenants turn into the Lost if they keep dying or don’t get blood, how would the characters in the golden/true ending would fair? Louis, Mia, the MC and Yakumo all leave the Gaol of the Mist (the thing surrounding the region) to look for people that survived the Apocalypse caused by the Aragami, but what would they face? Just the Aragami? Would it be like a primitive version of the tech found in GE1? Many questions, and no answers.

Considering they went on making a game about time travel in Code Vein 2, it could be useful here too, but who knows what they would do if they did it. Perhaps trying to fix the problems would lead to the creation of the Ashblight, seen in GE3.

This is probably why I don’t necessarily find CV2 bad in their idea of making an anthology series, because, they would have to mess with the GE timeline even more to make a new game fit. And if it was after the end again, it would just be annoying, because it happened in every game, including the current CV2.

Also, we killed the villains and problematic figures in CV1, so leaving a direct sequel to be mostly ‘in name only’. If you gonna do that, might as well do what happened to CV2.

“What you would do then?”

Since I’m gonna be questioned about it, let me tell you what I’d do for this:

• True Ending+ is the canon ending: Not much else that I can say. Discard the other endings that are not really important to the lore and plot and make sure we can reuse Louis, Mia, Yakumo, Io and whoever else we give a shit about.
• Revenants vs. Artificial Revenants: You see, we need a crisis. And the desire to leave the Vein could cause the events of my theoretical CV2 to happen, where they would find that the Queen is not the most powerful Revenant made but a ‘True’ Revenant. True Revenants turn into something similar to what she is if she’s not strong enough. Revenants are born, not made, but the BOR Parasite came from a real one, turning Cruz into a Real Revenant because she went insane. And since it appears that Queen is dead, the King has returned, or so he tried to. A new line of Successors were created to stop the Real Revenant King in the past but they became incredibly powerful Lost through time, becoming just beasts. A Real Revenant similar to Lou in CV2 has the power to travel timelines and so the group task themselves to take on the King by fusing his parts back and killing him for good.
• New Characters and Old ones: Bringing back Io, Louis, Mia, Yakumo, and adding characters that I liked in CV2, like Zenon, Holly and Josée (not exact copies but similar takes on them) would be a good idea to have a more diverse cast, where there are enough characters to make a good sense of camaraderie, a strong point of Code Vein, and still have enough to make them develop more (Louis got robbed of any character development IMO). The new cast would be Real Revenants.
• Cruz returns?: Due to timelines, Cruz could return at some point but to make it tragic, Louis can’t return with her to the main timeline.
• Location: New place, the Controlled Territory. Outside the Vein, it has small Aragami in some areas (for optional bosses) and travelling areas similar to the Frontier in CV2. Proper open-world, the cool bike from CV2 could be useful here. Subregions: Demolished Downtown, Mountain Range, Revenant Government, Monster Outskirts, Vein HQ (the team’s name).
• New villains?: We already killed the main ones, so we need new ones. The main one would be the leader of the Controlled Territory, a human that uses lots of resources to try to get the King back and make it kill the revenants. Revenants will oppose ‘Artificial’ ones too, with multiple Elite Lost monsters and Elite Revenants. To progress, MC and team needs to kill Elite Revenants to unlock the King Successors boss fights then travel the timeline to save them.
• Time Travel: Would be used to change the course of history, making sure they could get to the King Successors and deliberately resurrect the King, as well explore character backstories and memory vestiges.
• Hot Springs: Duh. Say what you want about CV2, they got hot springs right.
• Ending: Four endings, probably depending if you did things right or in order.
  • Bad Ending would be if you just killed the alt. timeline successors, then killed the King, without doing anything else. Bad as in, the timeline would still lead to GE, and nothing else would change (world is still fucked).
  • Normal Ending could be if you went on to try to save the characters that would be the King Successors but not all of them. The timeline resets to a point where true and ‘artificial’ revenants would be seen the same way.
  • Best Ending could be if you saved everyone but didn’t do all the quests, the timeline and world are saved, but leads to the Precursors creating a curse to sap the long lifespan of the True Revenants (leading to the events of CV2 as it exists).
  • True Ending would be if you did everything in one go, everything from the Best Ending happens minus that the MC travels to another timeline and goes on to create a way to stop the Aragami, now that they have the foreknowledge, creating GE’s timeline.

Closing Words

I get why Shift didn’t bother, it would be a lot of work. But I think they should have given it a shot, since you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, but even a 1% chance to hit can still hit.

Ultimately, even though I like CV2, it’s the same as Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2, similar themes, completely different experiences. And I’m okay with that. Just fix the performance and we’re good.

But it’s fun to imagine what could have been, doesn’t it?