Wow interesting concept reminds me of ChronoTrigger(the trial), what you are proposing to do if done exactly how you want it would mean writing an event on the fly...this (to my knowledge) is not possible.
but i think there is a way to at least summarize what happens
( Are you familiar with the many flashBack scenes of FinalFantasy7??)
For instance your main character , on his intial visit walks into a house and takes the contents of a chest from behind a house, while you cannot record the exact footsteps of the player you can have it so that when the player opens the chest he sets a global 'gb_visitChest to 1' and do the same for other things and people. Provided each object/entity has a variable to test.
Now you can do this one of two ways you can either have the player move about,
use a blank animation position it to where you want the player to arrive set the animation to lock camera, this will cause the camera to pan to that spot,now in the next frame have a launch event with an action of type "map position" and set its coordinates to cameraX, and cameraY since the camera is mooving and changing the player should begin to move after the camera.
ANd you'd have an NPC that narrates etc.
A better method IMO is to use series of NPCs each with a different target/coordinates to reach, for example the one set to walk to the chest, another would walk to a reflection pond another would toward the baker.
Either way you'll need to use an event with conditional/a global to check whether the flash back should occur, this event would check other globals through the use of conditionals if the condition is true then it would launch the proper NPC(npc control);
theChestSeeker.cnp
thePondSeeker.cnp
theBakerSeeker.cnp
give each one a rich series of actions under the target proximity,player contact,target reached etc. but make sure to include that after the actions have been executed the NPC either kills itself/deletes itself and launches the next NPC based on a true/false conditional.
If you so choose you could have the player walk about and interact with the NPC that represents himself "questioning his motives"
just for a strange twist, kind of like Christmas Carol/A Wonderful Life style FlashBack....
Any way you go you'll need an equal amount of Globals/Conditions/Events in order to act this out, my example only uses 3 incidents if you plan on going so minute as each step you have your work before you
------------------