Will the Cutscenes be Improved in the future?

[Shioban]

I'd like to think the reason for the downgrade in animation was due to the fact that a limited team needed to make a boat load of cut scenes to make it in time for launch. While the old version had time to really flesh each scene out as they came out over time. And the lack of other content gave them more resources to devote to the cut scenes. Now that launch is over and their going back to patch updates I sure hope they improve again.

The up coming Hildibrand scene's will be a good test to see if their going to improve or not.

Pretty much this. ^

Cut scenes aren't an easy thing to make, they're expensive and time consuming.

The considerably 'lower-budget' 2.0 cut scenes and generally lower quality cutscenes were quicker and easier to make.

I'm just hoping the downgrade was due to that, funding and time, and not something dreadful like overzealous terminations and forced resignations.

I hope the talent that made these is still there with SE... could they have been removed?

In the case of 1.23 they had the chance to create elaborate cut scenes and they delivered on that.
2.0 didn't have that luxury, their release window was VERY short.

All the tools (Lighting/Camera/Animation) were either reduced, changed or completely replaced meaning they had to re-do everything from scratch probably in a window of around 1 - 1½ years.