Mine always is, completely forgetting what I was doing and where I was going after not touching a save file for a long time. This is happening to me right now with Stardew Valley.
I’m in Year 4, married Maru, have a decent farm going, I have yet to build the movie theater I just found out so that’s something I can do. And I know up until that point, I called it a conclusion of a game, but yet I forgot completely about there being some minor goals or things I wanted to do. Completely out of my head. It was a year ago since I last touched that save.
This happens a lot with old saves, because sometimes I have had something in mind as to how I was going to play the game or where I was going with a character.
I’ve often wondered why some more advanced games like Elder Scrolls don’t keep track of dramatic actions in some way and offer them up to you when you leave the game for a while. A “previously…” kind of element. Big budget action games too, like from Rockstar.
Obviously they just don’t think it’s worth the work, but I do wonder if it would affect completion rates.
Death Stranding 2 offers this feature. Useful, since the story is kookydooks.
With games like Elder Scrolls, they have the quest log that usually keeps track of things you have done.
But I have seen a couple games, not a lot, that have a thing very much like a “Last time on…” with dialogue/cutscenes telling you what the story is thus far that you either can optionally select from a menu OR, that just play as the loading screen whenever you load the game up instead of just a spinning widget and a static image/screen.
It definitely should be used more. I probably would not start an entire new game just because I stopped half-way through and didn’t remember jack shit when I go to play again.