I have the intro cutscenes (the barrel) removed just so i load in faster, do i need to have these enabled? (it is technically configuring game files so i thought i'd ask.)

no you dont. On the discord they show how to delete them.

Yeah, to remove the startup cutscenes just delete RedBarrelsLogo.bik and TOT_ThirdParty.bik. I will amend the rules to include that deleting these are allowed.

also just pressing Escape skips the intro...

Yeah, but its faster to delete the files

thanks for the response, just wanted to make sure.