Cinematics are a must! Can't believe there is even a debate about this!
Obviously, you are welcome to your opinion. But as long as the rest of us are also welcome to our opinion there will be debate!
In any case, as others have stated, the cinematics require a lot of resources to produce. I think Larian did a very good job with them, and the effort paid off. However, whenever you spend time and money on one aspect of the game you cannot spend that time and effort on other aspects. A dev that does not spend time and money on motion capture and cinematics and top tier graphics fidelity can spend the resources they save on other things, like gameplay, story, and C&C.
In the case of Baldur's Gate 3 I do think that the motion capture, voice acting, and cinematics are so good that they carry the game. So here the gamble paid off. It is possible for devs to flub this and waste a lot of money on this stuff, and I am perfectly happy playing games that DON'T have a massive graphics budget too.
