I feel like a broken record at this point saying this but Jesus Christ please listen to the playerbase and give us the OPTION to skip the cutscenes.  I play this game for the gameplay, not the story.  I literally don't care about the story.  Please, for the love of God, quit it with these stupid unskippable cutscenes.  I don't care about them, I don't want to watch them, and we all know there are plenty of other players like me.

Hold R to skip cutscene was added long ago, if you can't skip cutscenes you never completed main story at least once.

Every cutscene has to be viewed at least once per account. But once you saw it, you can skip it with either esc in some cutscenes and holding R in certain other cutscenes.

Hope this helps!

I've completed the balenos questline on multiple characters but I've never been able to skip the new cutscenes they've added, like the ones in the cave by the wolves at the very start, holding R does nothing and hold esc says it will take me to the character select screen. Is there another condition or is this  a bug I can ask support to fix?

When you complete the new balenos questline for the first time, black spirit should give you an auto complete quest that allows you to skip the cutscenes on the next playthroughs.

Never saw that option. Each time I start a new season I have the same issue as other people here, I can't skip the damn cut scene, or it's offering me to go back to the character selection.
Very anoying.