Another update, another opportunity to savour the relationships in the story. I do have to say that the scenes away from the exhibitions, and the ones that are club adjacent rather than the club situate, are my favourite, and so both this update and the previous update were quite welcome.
As always, the presentation and visual quality of the game just continue to improve and excel. In trying to catch all my saves up to speed (there are now 38 pages of them at various junctures for the various paths), I ran a few saves from the early days to the present, and the improvements to an already visually well-defined product was nothing short of remarkable. A fair few of the visual shortcomings from the first few chapters, such as overly pale skin on certain characters and the relative lack of details in the male cast due to HS restraints, have now all been smoothed over. One observation I made was that I can now actually buy into the idea somewhat that Ian's as good looking as the characters in the game make him out to be.
The texture of skin, the detail in their hair, these little things that build up over time culminated in me being almost startled when we call Felicia to check up on her and the camera zooms in to show a beautiful profile of the blonde in her bikini. The way the gold and yellow colours of her outfit and hair worked off of each other with the lighting, especially the flowing strands of Felicia's hair, *chef's kiss, looked simply phenomenal. I honestly am amazed that GIL is able to get these sorts of results from the HS engine and continues to push the limits on a relatively dated character creator (RIP Illusion).
Ian and MC's new hairstyles were also quite refreshing, though I will miss how perfectly his previous hairstyle matched the dweeb persona that I've embraced. I could see MC's hair working especially well to give Patrick Bateman style slimey vibes in a more sadistic playthrough. I think him freshening up and meeting Veronica also caught her by surprise with how well put together he looked, but I'll have more to say when I talk about her scenes specifically.
It was another thoroughly great update, even if I'm not the biggest Veronica enjoyer. I do think that there was also plenty of other content and progressed several plot points, and has whet my appetite for the next update.
Kudos TD and GIL, in a world where many great AVNs that I follow on this site have plateaued or saw slight dips in quality, Pale Carnations keeps on delivering.
