I would also like to add that having all of that narrative strung together, with pictures, really ignited my interest. They need to record that (maybe with a different narrator) and make it available in-game somehow.
I think that people are going to be calling for text-2-speech from NPCs and for Holo-me head tracking and mouth tracking via IR cameras for player speech and expression.
That was too awesome to not be a future feature of the game! (At some point when spacelegs happens, you know after they buff the core gameplay).
Thumbs up for that one FD, loved the cinematic short too, was ace to see the commanders talking and while I know you stated that it wont be in game I do hope that was a 'yet'