Not sure if it counts, but Pillars of Eternity by Obsidian has an interesting take on amnesia. Basically, your soul (not your mind or maybe it is, lore is complicated) awakens and you see snippets of your 2000-years-ago life while doing main plot questline, you get flashback at certain PLACES for info drop about your past-self connection to BBEG (which you can customize in dialog (like how you got introduced to BBEG, why you sought him out, why you obey him etc)). But why current-self tries to stop BBEG? Well, your past-self had died under a lost of stress, and if you dont calm past-self… you’ll go insane, both present and past
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Nolan’s Memento remains one of the best stories about memory loss.
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THIS tbh is what I was about to say one VN that was bad and good at the same time that did that was Amnesia: Memories. One route that stuck to me was Kent being one of the best guy in the whole ass game and the other Love interests are just in the meh category. It’s been a long ass time since I played it so forgive me.
The Blank Paper MC™ (I say blank because she legit has no personality) gets amnesia just before Kent and her got into the relationship so to act not sus she basically just showers him with lotsa love. Kent becomes suspicious of her because they would always argue with each other. Kent actually doesn’t want you to get your memories back because he had a great time with said Blank Paper MC™ and still wants the relationship to continue so on and so forth.
While the other routes are just ew. Anyway the main reason i liked his route so much is because of uhhh give me a good enough reason to care, why and how to make a good use out of the amnesia trope or something like that.
And please for the love of god don’t ignore this. I hate those kinds of authors
Memory loss isnt a bad trope, it isnt really advice but more so a nifty fact. People aren’t able to actually “lose” their memories, it in fact just becomes more difficult to recall them; since our brains are constantly creating them. My guess is, it works like a scale of importance. Like, when traumatic events happen and it scars someone that link is firmly established and thus wont fade, where as what snack you had on a certain day tasted like doesnt really impact you. So it fades.
So, when memory loss happens, it seems to me that its more like the links become broken or blocked
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