Each to their own, but to a lot of people - myself included - the things that were removed play more of a part of establishing character than you might be giving them credit for.
- Leon & Hunnigan 1
- Leon isn't quite taking this as seriously as they might think he should - he's a Raccoon City survivor so this is light work for him at this point
- Establishes Hunnigan as a focused character, no nonsense
- Leon & Hunnigan 2
- Hunnigan starts to worry - she's warming up to him but it's still business
- Leon responds with a tease - he's still continuing to be casual
- Luis & Ashley
- Luis is shown as a sleazy character, and it makes him less likeable. His moral ambiguity adds to his character, because we keep losing him and you're not sure if he can be trusted
- Ashley sticks up for herself and is articulate about it, which shows us a bit more of her character
- Ashley & Leon
- Ashley shooting her shot with the man that came across the world to rescue her and they've bonded through adversity
- It shows that there's more going on with Leon, and either Ada got to him (likely), the mission got serious enough for him to take it seriously, or perhaps he always had that line because of the mission/age/whatever
- Seriously, what on earth could possibly be wrong with this one?
- Leon & Hunnigan 3
- After the experience they had on this mission, they've bonded. No longer strangers.
- When Leon compliments, she smiles. Then she gives the "May I remind you" playing hard to get facade because they're both still at work, but the subtext is "Wait until we're finished with this mission"
Even outside of the cutscenes, which are already quite confused in what they edit out, you have the woman with a pitchfork through the face at the beginning. A common rule across the world is "No women and children". We all know this rule. At this point we don't know about the Plagas, so Leon's thought when seeing a woman with a pitchfork through her face is that Ashley might be suffering in more ways than just being a captive, because it tells us that this group of people don't have a "No women and children" rule, it's just brutality.
With all of that in mind, the changes just seem strangely puritanical - especially given that it's a game where the primary focus of gameplay is to shoot people in the head until it explodes. We are hardly talking about a Disney game here, where "Will somebody please think of the children?!" attitudes are more justified.