Is your story too convoluted if you have text summaries to reacquaint the player with the 'story so far' after loading a previous game? Should 'episodic' games familiarize gamers with the back story of previous episodes, or leave the player to 'catch up' on their own time? Are video game stories even worth that sort of effort?

In the case of Metal Gear Solid 1 its 'briefings', or text summary if you like, certainly did aid in following the convoluted, over-the-top mindfuck of a story after putting the controller down for a long period of time. Or so I would assume, I blew through Twin Snakes in the span of a weekend. All I know is that I certainly could have used a similar device during my 'one year hiatus' between playing the first and second half of Metal Gear Solid 2. And come to think of it, there are more than a few RPGs that I quit halfway through and started up out of boredom a handful of months later that a nice refresher would allow me to catch up on the derivative and uninspired plot twists. Similarly with that copy of Silent Hill 2 I let collect dust for several months, it took quite some time before I found my narrative grounding so to speak, and actually remembered just what I was trying to accomplish. In every one of these cases, each time I came back I felt like an amnesiac, struggling piece together broken fragments of memories that may or may not exist, all buried in the recesses of my cluttered mind. Then try doing that while assaulted by goons, random monster encounters or faceless nurses.

Should I care though? With most games being simple vengeance tales no more complicated than a proverb scripted by a five year old, is such a detail necessary or even desired by the gaming public? Very few mediums besides the occasional multi-part television storyline and the occasional sequel bothers with informing the recipient on the prior events. And while that is all fine and good for the dedicated, it is not necessarily a plus for the casual viewer/reader/gamer. Remember, we aren't talking about storylines/arcs/so on being too complicated, simply that the end users comprehension and memory of the story & characters will fade over time, and (I'd garner to speculate) at a much more rapid pace than their ability to play the game. Personally, I'm all for giving a little memory jog to us gamers that may not be able to swallow forty hours of gameplay in one weekend. A nice little summarization, one that can would be skipped by those whose save game was last refreshed within the span of week or so might be a reasonable solution. Perhaps someone will take pity on us poor souls that end up having to shelve a game for periods longer than seven days, for as games become richer in narrative depth we will inevitably lose sight of the beginning after a certain period of time, no matter how engrossing and engaging the game is.