So here is my quick idea draft for intro story cutscenes:

• First a tiny map with 1 cave and a npc dropping say 3 packages, then a popup with @#$%! showing npc annoyed with garbage, then our player flies there, gets those packages, flies to target and npc now shows smile or something and goes back to cave.
• Second scene with tiny map where we show taxi, so e.g. 2 caves and transfering npc. Not sure how. But maybe we could have 2 npcs go out of caves, one puzzled how to get there, other holding a sign for floors, then both putting signs on plaftorms. Then our player lands and flies one npc to other platform.
• Third small map with scene where we show off flying player avoiding animals like attack npcs on ground, fish near water (could also show touching water before fish or after, or also diving), and lastly avoiding flying npc and getting blown by blowing-npc

If we had a replay system (to replay any game played) I think it would even suffice for these cutscenes.
Such replay system would be great here and this is code that we can write, possibly not very much.
And it would allow us to record such small scenes and show them to new players.
This way less new artwork would be needed.