I guess I was mainly amped for a steampunk game. I'm still kinda enthused with steampunk in general (Yes, yes, I know it's soooo 2004 (arguably peaked earlier (arguably never peaked))) and I am always up for an alternate history setting.
On that note, I don't give two flying hootie-hoos about cutscenes; for me, they're the equivalent of an externally-imposed Pause Menu, a brief chance to rest my hands usually on the heels of some big fight. Except lately they're hugely expensive. Man, seriously, cutscenes cost a lot of resources to do right, and almost no-one does. It's like a resources arms race: you've got Square-Enix' pre-rendered cutscenes at the high end, or in-game cutscenes like in Dead Rising 2 and Saints Row, and on the low end you get the J-RPG staple: the game screen showing idle animations, and an inset overlay of text and a character reaction shot from whomever is speaking in the text. Usually the sales and marketing team wants to push everyone toward the high-end, even if it's impractical. And it's pretty frequently impractical.
The RPG staple may be low-end, but it works, and just think about if that money on the cutscenes had instead been spent on additional development time, maybe even tweaking the shooting model so it works.
