Poor terminology on my part. Cut scenes should read 'scripted events'. Either way, clearly the scene with the Gman and Alyx is some kind of non or partially interactive storytelling sequence, meant to be viewed more than 'played'.
Ah gotcha. That wouldn't really make much difference though would it? I mean you can still run around a la normal gameplay, with the scripted event ocurring. It would be pretty odd if the shadows turned on for that then off afterwards. Maybe it's another test of their multicore threading method. They're focusing quite a…