(Review is based on Eternum 0.2)
A while back I did a review of Once in a Lifetime. There's a lot to love about OiaL, and my regard for it has grown as I've revisited parts of it. That said, there were also opportunities for improvement, particularly in some technical areas, and so I sat down to try Eternum 0.2 with an eye for how it improves upon the solid baseline that OiaL established.
STORY AND CHARACTERS
★★★★★
Once again, Caribdis demonstrates a superb knack at story-first novel design. The premise of the story draws heavily from influences like Ready Player One, but is already setting up to head in its own direction. It is so rewarding to have the novel focus first and foremost on the story, with the various sexual encounters finding themselves organically in the main plot arc. I'm really enjoying it so far!
The cast of characters is interesting, and we've already seen some solid character development and even some heartwarming backstory exposition. All of the characters so far seem interesting, and each for their own unique reasons. A small but amusing gaggle of supporting characters are already providing lots of comedic moments to keep things lighthearted.
Compared to OiaL, it feels like several characters' "corruption" (as it were) is ramping up at a faster clip, and I'm unsure whether that's anything to be concerned about. It's important that the reader feel vested in the evolution of each character's trust in the main character and (eventually) their willingness to act on their desires and lusts, so that the payoff moments are more rewarding.
GRAPHICS
★★★☆☆
The biggest opportunity for improvement in OiaL is in the graphics, and while Eternum inherits some enhancements by using the updated Honey Select 2 renderer, a lot of the same critique still applies. Much of this can be chalked up to HS2's rendering being based on Unity, which is a rasterization renderer and not a full raytracing/raycasting renderer. Let's take a closer look at some areas that could be improved upon.
(Note: A lot of this feedback comes from my humble place as a Blender hobbyist. It is by no means meant to impugn the author's hard work, nor their workflow, but perhaps may offer ideas to pursue in future projects.)
Depth of Field (DOF)
There is almost no DOF employed in the camera shots. DOF is often a critical means of drawing attention toward the subject in frame, especially when the background has a lot of its own detail and can be distracting. The dystopian backdrop of Ion, while gorgeous, can also make it very difficult to pick out the things that matter in a particular shot. For an example of effective DOF usage, look no further than Square Enix's Life Is Strange, which made heavy use of DOF to artistically draw the player's attention to desired areas of focus throughout the game.
Shadows
Shadows in Eternum are texture-based, and there are places where this really shows, especially in some animated shots. Some shots employed very low-res shadow textures, resulting in blocky artifacts that can break the immersion of the scene. Also, shadows tend to all be very sharp and thus distracting at times; this is a combination of heavy dependence on point lights (versus area lights) and no secondary reflected light sources (which are a hallmark of raycasting renderers but typically not available in rasterization renderers).
Ambient Occlusion
There appears to be little or no ambient occlusion, even screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO). Ambient occlusion is a subtle but profound factor in giving more depth to the surfaces in a scene, and can go a long way toward ensuring that a scene does not feel too "flat".
Screen-space Reflections
The scenes use screen-space reflections. They are a fast method of generating reflected scenes in water, but are susceptible to a lot of unsightly artifacts. This is especially noticeable when characters are standing in front of a body of water (like a school pool?) — they become outlined in a haze of phantom reflections that should never exist. Full raytracing or raycasting does not suffer this issue; absent that, some scenes could be remedied by rendering the foreground characters separately and compositing them into the final shot (assuming HS2 supports this workflow).
ANIMATIONS
★★★★☆
OiaL's animations were enthusiastic, energetic, and a lot of fun to watch. Eternum is doubling down on the energy with a lot more animations, even beyond just the sexual encounters.
Several key characters are introduced with a camera rotating around the character while panning up from foot to head. It's a great way to bring in a new character with pizazz, and in one instance (where two characters were in the middle of a stand-up shoving contest), it even gave a cool, momentary "bullet-time" vibe to the shot.
The most exciting technique in Eternum, I think, are the sex scene animations in which the camera itself orbits back and forth between two points in the course of the animation loop. These shots add an immense amount of life and interest to the scene, and I have thoroughly enjoyed them. I look forward to many more instances where this technique is employed.
A number of animations have nothing to do with the sex scenes but help bring the main story arc to life; the most dramatic examples (so far) take place toward the very end of 0.2. I anticipate that these additional animations will continue to make the core story a lot more vibrant, compared to what OiaL was able to achieve.
As with OiaL, animations for sex scenes — which naturally involve a lot of surface contact scenarios — suffer from a fair amount of polygon clipping that underscores the simplistic (or nonexistent) physics of the scene. It's a mildly distracting characteristic that can be easily forgiven in light of how lovingly designed the animations are otherwise. For an example of the impact that can be achieved when contact surfaces are given additional attention to detail, consider NLT Media's Treasure of Nadia. The subtle but detailed behavior of lips and vulva are inspiring.
SOUND & MUSIC
★★★★☆
So far, Eternum seems to be leveraging a lot more background music than OiaL, to very good effect. The music tracks that are used have mostly been well picked and really help bring the scene to life. Music has also been used to enhance some comedy moments, also to very good effect. I like how the music landscape in Eternum is shaping up!
Usually, if I had a complaint with the music, it was because the track had lyrics. I find this highly distracting when trying to read the dialogue. Solving this may not require a different musical track; in some cases, some simple post-processing could better incorporate the track into the scene. For example, the music in the cafe could be filtered to sound more like it is being piped into the space from some speaker in a corner. It would give the scene a feeling of physical space while also relegating it to a more appropriate background role. For an example of really well done ambient audio, consider Fallen Snow Studio's Lucid9: Inciting Incident; it does not specifically feature ambient background music (all music is front-and-center but has no lyrics), however its other ambient sounds are incredibly immersive.
(I would be inclined to extend my complaint of lyrics to the use of Snake City's "Run Boy Run", but I cannot help but forgive the distraction given that the sexual encounter in which it was used was arguably the frickin' hottest scene in 0.2, and the music had a lot to do with that — so I give it a pass and even a nod of respect. By the way, apparently the YouTube of that track is getting a lot of love from the Eternum community, and "my shirt is itchy" is on track to become a bona fide meme in the comments section.)
Sounds effects are passable and about equivalent to what we enjoyed in OiaL — no crafty sound design work here, pretty straightforward, but generally the sounds get the point across. The one sound effect I would call out, however, is the "slapping skin" sound that is used in sex scenes; this one misses the mark and ends up sounding more like something is slapping against a wood board. Given that it's a key, repetitive component in the escalation of sexual encounters, I would love to see this one undergo some refinement.
CONCLUSION
So far Eternum is shaping up to be a really fun ride! I enjoyed the content in 0.2 and look forward the upcoming content. Mad props to Caribdis for impressive storytelling finesse and lovingly scripted and animated sexual encounters. This is going to be quite the story!