Moving a camera down to do an in game "cutscene" of a conversation is harmless and takes very little away from other tasks of game development. Making a scripted cinematic with higher quality textures and different rendering than regular game play graphics is more time consuming and can detract from the regular flow of the game if the player is forced to watch too many of those, like hideo kojima games with the hours of in game movies interrupting play.
The cutscenes in this game were, the intro, maybe you would consider us falling down out of the ship, and possibly the first fight at the druid camp gates. At the end there is "conclusion" cutscene to tie up the story so far. Those are logically placed and help enhance the story telling.
The conversation cut scenes help bring "character" to the characters, by showing their faces and emotions as they talk. If we stay in max distance isometric/overhead view and just had voices these characters could be any generic humanoid, but putting a face to them helps bring unique traits and qualities out in them. Asking to get rid of that would mean we are surrounded with throw away NPCs who don't matter.
