Excellent article, and sad indeed that we still need people saying stuff like this this day and age. I'd like to add two suggestions to the list that I think are crucial:
* Don't abuse the opportunity of the cutscene to put the player character in a position where they are at the worst strategic position possible for combat.
I remember Dragon Age: Origins being especially guilty of this several times, though it's certainly not the only one: I would be sneaking along, trying to scout into the next room, when I'd suddenly unwittingly trip a cutscene trigger. When I wanted to be standing, by myself, at the edge of a room, the cutscene would drag my character into the DEAD CENTER of the room, along with the entire party I had just very intentionally left behind three corridors away. A fight would inevitably start post cutscene, normally with the whole party swarmed on all sides, and with my wizard right next to a giant monster I had just taken great pains to try to keep from happening.
Beyond bad cutscene design, it's artificial fight challenge increase. It's the designer being too lazy to design a fight that's properly a strategic challenge and takes into account player intelligence; rather it just hamfistedly forces you into a bad position to make things harder, even though you yourself would never have allowed your PC to get into that position. It's like if you were playing a tabletop RPG and the GM just picked up your miniature against your will, for no reason, and put it in a square you didn't want them to. Technically the GM might have the right to do that (and even then, not really), but it ensures the game will end with my miniature shoved up the GM's nose and me leaving to find a better game with a GM who doesn't have to cheat to get the game exciting.
This also leads to...
* Respect player agency (especially if it's an RPG)
People play games to be able to interact, not watch a movie (indeed much of Shamus's thesis). If my main character should reasonably be able to act in any way possible during a scene, they should have the option of doing so.
I've seen several JRPGs in particular--but other games and game genres have done this too--where you have the villain monologuing while any sensible character would just stab him while he was still talking. Worse are scenes where the scene is blocked so that you should be able to move around and react and, for example, jump in the way before the monologuing villain stabs the heroic sacrificial lamb party member to death. I won't cite the most obvious example of that that everyone's probably thinking of, but rather mention some others: the farmgirl getting killed by the warlock in NWN2, or the prince's bodyguard getting stabbed in Suikoden 5. Both of those are actually blocked in such a way that technically you should have been able to intervene and help.
This is also lazy design because if you really just need the main character to be helpless during a scene, make them actually helpless! Someone upthread mentioned cutscenes happening when you're bound--that makes sense! Pillars of Eternity has a scene where it would be hard for you to intervene because you're separated from the action by a balcony (although why, say, you can't fire an arrow at the obvious baddie is still beyond me). Either give people a choice to react and reasonable options in doing so, or if you want the PC to be immovably helpless, then actually in the story make them immovably helpless. The former is better than the latter of course.
