I want a full screen animated quick time event that pauses until you decide how to resolve the reaction and then action resumes accordingly.

You could clean up some clutter on the ui panels this way, this isn't an mmo afterall. In fairness I like the progressive changes over time, ui is a lot easier to navigate like the spell level toggles etc, full screen inventory button etc. I've been playing the game with 3rd party mods that allow more spells, feats and level 6 and it's been interesting.