On the note of the strangeness of the man turning to face the background, it's to do with a thing called 'blocking' in stage productions. It's weird! You always want to present an 'open' face to the audience, so even a complete profile feels strange (imagine two actors standing completely parallel to the front of the stage). Subverting this can be quite powerful when used carefully but the basics apply quite well to fixed camera cinematics and animations as well. Most people have an intuitive understanding of this anyway, if you think back to Mardek (or even Fighunter!1!) you have the portraits of everyone as a 3/4 profile rather than directly facing the 4th wall or giving a complete profile.

I don't have much else to add, I haven't been playing much in the way of RPGs lately, and I can't exactly disagree with your feelings on things! This post seems like a sensible assessment of things to me.