There's a lot of good feedback here, I'd just like to add my perspective on one thing: cutscenes and wildshape.
I'm really glad that Larian realized that it would be very frustrating to lose charges just because you want to talk to an NPC instead of mauling it. Thus, for cutscenes, the player is switched back to humanoid form and then at the end of cutscene back to wildshape free of charge.
The problem is that this isn't consistent at all - sometimes you stay in wildshape form for a very important conversation such as
first encountering Kagha and Arabella, where you literally "speak" as an animal - you can talk to the snake, which does nothing, you can choose to say nothing (which is awful) or you can choose to attack (which is bad)
.
It is also frustrating that many times the avatar will be ignored for conversation purposes, while NPCs simply choose to speak to whatever companion is closest.
My suggestion is to try and make a general rule that all discussions are directed towards the Avatar (as they usually do) and that you enter humanoid mode for every dialogue with a non-animal being (is it RAW that bears can talk to snakes? I don't recall it being that way...)
What I did as DM for a player that was a druid and played a Ghostwise Halfling was to allow him to use his telepathy to talk while in wildshape. In the same spirit, another suggestion could be adding a "Potion of Common Speaking"
PS: Tav in humanoid form sometimes has comments about things (most of the times you pass a passive religion / history / investigation check or so on), but they don't happen while wildshape. I can't see why not, really. We'll just pretend it's inner monologue
