Storytelling in the interactive realm is based on a series of tradeoffs. If one chooses first person the entire time then the player may feel more immersed but that immersion can easily be messed with by shooting other characters or jumping around like an idiot while they're speaking to you. Cutscenes are a more deliberate way of advancing story but when you're playing a game you'd rather actually play rather than watch a movie. Gears uses a combination of techniques. We had a priority for these; the ideal way was to always tell story when the player was moving in the world (BTW, this is usually the cheapest way to do it.) The next fall back was to use seamless camera moves while you were playing along with points of interest (Basically, hold Y to see cool stuff.) Finally, we use the occasional (brief) cutscene to inform the player of critical data.