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.
“Quick! A giant meteor is heading for our planet! Collision is expected in less than a week!”
…but if I sleep 7 times while doing all this level grinding and doing sidequests, nothing goes wrong…
That’s a quirk of the medium I’ve learned to accept. Some games do it well by having chunks of “on-rails” bits and others of “free-roam” based on what’s happening in the story so that it makes more sense.
You’re completely right of course, but I’ll say it bugs me too at times. I was always able to forgive it but as we got more advanced visually it bugged me more. Then finally in Oblivion it was too much for me. I still love and respect the game, but it actively bugs me there are portals around the world that are just waiting for me to decide I want to fight. I know it’s dumb, but it is what it is.