To me, they don't look identical at all.
Katie in 0.6 is also Zbrushed and heavily modified.
They're definitely different characters, but it looks like the same base model is used. There's nothing bad about that. There isn't an infinite supply of character models out there. Just a statement.
I am doing the "Learning by doing" route with animations. That's why I also added so many animations to the Bonus scene (10-11).
I want to be able to make some really high-quality Cinematics/Animations in the future. (That's also a reason why I am currently preparing to switch to Blender and leave Daz behind me and hopefully, I will be able to do it with Season 2.
(I couldn't remember the word cinematics for the life of me!) They're incredible! I don't know if the latest update was rendered in Daz or Blender (and honestly I don't know what engines Daz even offers) but either way, the quality top class. I don't know if it's mostly post work on the images/videos or if the renders just came out beautiful, but god they're beautiful.
From your review I get... "Cutscenes". I assume you mean the two cinematics? (Katie ball and the ending one).
If so, both are 90% animated. Alone the last cinematic at the courthouse took me 1 month to create.
The only two animations that I noticed to trip me up were the kiss and the mother's hair. The hug seemed a little awkward, but wasn't all that bad. Other than that, the animations were clean enough that I wasn't tripped up by any of them.
But from what I can see, you liked the update and I am glad you also saw how much work did go into the main menu and its transitions.
It's always nice hearing that someone does recognize the amount of work you put in there.
Thanks for your words, SomeGuyWithNoImagination. It always helps to keep the motivation up.
I know how incredibly difficult it is to make good looking renders. I have something like 150 hours in Blender (Steam doesn't log offline hours

) and I have only ever made one render that I think is anything close to decent, though I'm still not proud of it. I just can't imagine the amount of time and effort you had to put in to make renders that good.
I absolutely adored the update and I could not be more excited to see the overhaul you got planned.