Warning - spoilers!
I completely agree - the cutscene triggers need to be worked on. On my first playthrough (still not finished, played around 20 hours) I haven't gotten several cutscenes and only know about them by reading the forum.
I created a new character to test some triggers and am still at the beginning, but at least got some of the cutscenes that I missed earlier playing.
Scenes/dialog:
- 1st night was Gale looking into the fire ("go to hell" dialog) and Astarion having a dialog with you about sleeping in the woods. I got that on both my characters.
- The 2nd night I had the Gale cutscene where he looks at his double and gives the speech about not showing signs of transformation yet. Astarion will have a dialog about how to kill my character if the transformation occurs. I didn't got this on my first character. Only when I loaded an earlier save and made an earlier camp night I got it. So I guess proceeding with the story led me to miss this somehow. It is not dependent on using the tadpole power, at least I know that.
- On a condition where I assume you need some approval gains (but can still be neutral) and have spoken with Zurro about the Gith creche but haven't find out about Astarion being a vampire spawn you might get a cutscene with Astarion where he is looking at the stars. This I missed on my first character. I assume it was because I only talked later in the game with Zurro and had already found out about Astarion being a vampire spawn. On my second character I went straight after the recruiting of the companions (except Will) to the druid grove and tried to get as much approval with Astarion as possible and not lossing any. There are some opportunities for this at the druid grove. I think I got 2 or 3 approval gains (he was still neutral) and when I camped I got the scene.
On my first character I rested very few times because I got the feeling or urgency and thought the quest might be time limited. It wasn't and I am glad it isn't because I don't really like this kind of pressure and is not helping if you want to explore the game and surroundings. But with few camping nights I think I missed some of the triggers for the scenes. Gale for example has still not after 20hours talked to me about his need to get artifacts (I only know about this from the forum) also I have lots of them already aquired. He never died on my playthrough too. Might have helped with his story progression I suppose.
It is frustrating if you missed a cutscene with your favourite character(s), especially if it is somewhat romance related and you want to romance this particular character. If you find out 15+ hours later in the game that you are locked out of a romance or missed a nice flirt cutscene this is very unfortunate and for me for example a reason to start the character new. But if you don't even know about missing cutscene or how to trigger it isn't really helping because in your next playthrough you might miss it again.
Astarions cutscene where he looks at the stars could also work later if you already know who he is. If you don't have the necessary approval with him (because you played good) and only get it later you might miss it because I think already on night 4 is where you learn about his secret. Not so much time if you don't know about this.
I just think it is a shame if some cutscenes are not playing due to wrong timing. I mean not getting cutscenes related to tadpole power if you don't use them is one thing - but to miss nice or important cutscenes because you rested too late or at the wrong time is not encouraging. So I hope they fine tune that somehow to make it easier not to miss those scenes.
