I think they can be great if done well; I suspect that for many people, the single most memorable moment of Final Fantasy VII was contained in a cutscene. On the other hand, if I keep having to put my controller down to wait, there's probably a pacing problem (oh hello, Final Fantasy XIII, didn't see you there!). I guess my only real rule is that if a game interrupts its gameplay, the interruption had better be good/interesting/exciting/whatever enough to be worth it.

See this would be infuriating to me. I HATE games that have long unskippable cutscense and for some reason a lot of these games always seemed to stick them right before difficult boss battles or platforming / stealth sections.

I do actually enjoy cutscenes - but my God do they drive me nuts when I'm watching a three minute segment for the eighth time right before another long tense boss fight that I end up losing.

Luckily it's been far in the decline - I can't remember the last time I found one I couldn't skip - leave it to Nintendo to make the boneheaded decision to bring them back.

^This...

And if not the wife, it's the kids... :-)

In the old LucasFilm/Arts games all cutscenes could be paused with [space].
And in case you didn't know already: The sometimes longish scenes in Witcher 3 can be paused by Alt-Tabbing out of the game :-) (Very handy when the kids are around...o_0)

They had that in Half Life. You had control of the player character while another character was feeding you some expository lines. But most players spent that time and exercised control by having Gordon Freeman jump uncontrollably all over the place like a rabbit on crack. I guess they couldn't wait for the good doctor to stop talking and open the blasted door so that they can go out and kill more aliens.

So, compared to that, taking away the player's control at least makes the game look a bit more...dignified. :)

I agree. A lot of people don't like Half Life 2 that much because of all the walking (or should I say talking) sections. If they could make such sections skip-able, nobody would complain. You could have no cut-scenes AND keep the flow of the game going! Still though, Freddi Fish 2 remains the apex of computer entertainment story-telling (and everything else for that matter).