I blame MMOs for the tuning out, and I blame WoW above all else.
Before WoW quests were often a rare, interspersed bit of the game you did on the side to get a
little exp to compliment grinding, status with a faction you want to get sweet with (often to get to the rewarding quests) or the rare one that provided an item that was usually the thing you did quests for. Back in those days there was a balance struck between story and reward. IMO, the apex of it was Everquests class Epics that were a very long, detailed questline that each had their own story that meshed with each class like a Warrior forging a master blade, a Druid helping battle the corruption of nature or a Shaman working to heal a wound in the spiritual fabric of the world. They weren't high quality storylines, but they were interesting enough to follow along as you did them as were most the rest of EQs little quests with the decline coming with Velious and their class armour quests that were simple offers for gear in exchange for items listed you only read to write down what things to go out and collect, often ignoring to use a website for that and handing in the collected items without really talking to those NPCs.
Then WoW came and quests became the main feeder of exp into the hungry mouth of the player with the occasional gear on top of it. At launch you might have read the quests but then you quickly realized that you were getting them thrown at you like potato chips and then just skipped through to get them and get them completed maybe skimming to see if you could spot some of Blizzards pop culture references in you liked that stuff.
All of this is nicely summed up in that one quest from the original game that ended with telling you to go a place despite the directions having no connection to what the NPC said. It aptly ended with "You know to do this because you are psychic".
After that and WoWs success that got moved to non-MMOs to varying degrees with Torchlight being the biggest one (although it made up for it by focusing on being more of an older style console RPG like Zelda, big on combat and dungeoneering and light on plot)
Think Drog Blacktooth's post touches on something very key to games, RPGs in particular, which is lacking now. And that's the sense of reward/surprise.
For example, you know that Skyrim books are going to be largely bollocks and rarely worth reading. It's rare anything contained in them will lead to any reward greater than what you'll stumble over anyway.
Can't remember the last time I had to watch a cut scene in order to learn something which would benefit me in the game. It's usually just a case of go to marker now.
It's all filler better hand held progress, which players will struggle not to do.
The problem with TES is the book recycling. I spent an ungodly amount of time in Morrowind reading the books because it was my first time reading TES' collections. After that going to Oblivion it then became a task to find the new ones in a sea of those carried over I'd already read while by Skyrim that got repeated while I realized that the quality of the series writing and story-making was tanking and so there was no incentive to go looking of the ones unless I wanted to see what the decline was like or if a quest asked for one.
Today the only thing cut scenes really offer is short bursts of movie cinematics shoved between the gameplay by developers who wished they were making movies, not video games. Keeping the TES theme going, as much as Oblivions ending drama was thrilling to see being near the beginning of this trend (and for being a part of this trend, it was largely well done remembering to keep the player in control for most of it instead of now when control is ripped away so you can't ruin the devs cool movie scene by doing something inappropriate or because you won't do the cool thing they want to happen), looking back I find it depressing as the calm before the storm.
Cutscenes in fps was was one of main reasons I quit post-2000 shooter scene for more than decade.
Nowodays, when playing games with lots of cs sometimes I feel like it would be better to drop this shit, watch them all on youtube and jump on games that are pure gameplay-centric except for intro and outro.
It's also pretty weird that only few games that have cutscenes I enjoyed are fighting games / hack'n'slash (MK vs DC, MK9+10, Injustice 1+2, Drakengard 3).
Brings to mind the wrinkled noses over BF1942s single player being simple a practice for the player or to test a mod before moving into multiplayer. Today such a MP dedicated game would have some stupid story hung onto it for... reasons.
That also brings to mind that that criticism was never lifted upon Counter Strike with demands for some story being shoved into Source and such.
And once the cutscene is over, you will not be interrupted again until you have finished the mission.
Thief 2 didn't really continue that and.... well, that can vary in Thief 3.
Thief 2 however remembered to keep them low and didn't overwhelm you with them unnecessarily, like all of those ones in T3 with Artemis that could have been done in game, instead you remained in control in T2 when interacting during such scenes like with Lotus in the freezer and could do the time honoured tradition of dicking around being stupid to break the atmosphere if you wanted (Or in Lotus' case, once he says the right things to trigger mission goals you can kill him before he asks you to).
The dicking around I think is big, it gives a new lease on life for cutscenes making them different and giving them a new feel in a replay that makes going through them again tolerable. But like I said, most devs today and wannabe movie makers and don't want you doing things that could spoil their masterful scenes of dialogue and drama with most combat scenes being the worst offenders, since you know, if anything should be gameplay and shown through the lens of player control it should be that.
Hell, that is something even old JRPGs understood when they put you in those odd plot fights you couldn't win or lose (the latter like Yu Yevons fight in FFX I constantly hear being reviled as unnecessary since you cannot lose it - I don't know personally, FFIX was my last taste of the series).
