Making a full animated cutscene will take a lot of time, it is something we are saving for the AI overhaul that will include a lot of NPC stuff
>Having the character blink out of existence instead of phase out is jarring
When did it happen? might be a bug.
Some UI is using the old Unity UI, while the newer stuff is made on the new UI, so they conflict a bit getting on top of each other and there isn't much we can do until we do a full UI overhaul and replace all the older stuff (thats 2 weeks of work at the very least)
The map doesn't pan yet, we will redo the map with proper tools like pins on the Exploration update.
Thanks for checking out