I've had the same problem with recent titles too, such as GTA IV and V. I'd like to get into the Mass Effect series as well, but my gaming tends to come in fits and starts.

What would be awesome would be recognition of this by developers of AAA titles with long narratives - with the option to watch a dynamically generated cut scene comprised of both cut scene footage and significant in-game footage from the player's own gameplay.

'Previously, in Grand Theft Auto...'

The problem with this is that it's hard to have a reel or prior important moments to refer to without making it a spoiler. Is that seemingly inconsequential merchant you snubbed going to come back to haunt you 5 hours of game play from now? Well, it it immediately makes it to the recap reel, you know it was important before you maybe should.

It's sort of like watching Game of Thrones, and instead of seeing a prior episodes recap before the episode where it matters, you were able to check immediately after a scene to see if it would be worthy of a recap later. Sort of ruins some of the fun.

Other than that, this would be awesome. Maybe if there was some way to offer a recap immediately prior to it being relevant, so someone who was consistently playing could ignore and someone that might have forgotten portions could take advantage of. That does make it quite a bit more complicated though.

Alan Wake did something like that, but with static ones. It got old the second or third time it recapped the "episode" I had finished 15 seconds ago while I was bingeing on it.

Genius idea...

(Am playing Diablo III at the rate of about 3 hours every 3 months...)

Yeah... to be fair I tend to do that more with relatively linear JRPGs where not quite remembering what happened yesterday isn't necessarily a fatal problem.