You don’t have to pick firebolt, though. You can pick Friends for advantage on almost every single charisma check in the game. You can pick minor illusion to distract people and make enemies move into spots you’d prefer them to be in, like if you want to push someone off a ledge.
Yeah but there hasn’t been a TES release in over a decade. From looking at videos of Starfield it seems Bethesda hasn’t made great strides in that department, though.
BG3 also has that massive canyon of difference between the player and the companions since they were mocapped and acted out.