I agree. Instant death without warning is never fun.... it makes you want to save all the time and that breaks immerision and feels a bit like cheating.
It always amazes me the ideas people develop about how games are "supposed" to be played...;) A simple read through of the game instructions (yes, the game-play instructions written by the game creators) provides the following information on the proper way of playing the game: "save early, save often." (Possibly paraphrased, but dead accurate.) It's not a suggestion, it's a rule for playing the game successfully. Of course, playing successfully might not be what the player wants. He might prefer to play the game unsuccessfully, over and over again, and then write complaints in forums as to how impossible the game is to complete if one breaks the "save early, save often" game rule.
I've been playing rpgs for decades and I *always* save before taking a risk. I learned that rule of the genre from the start. It's not a matter of immersion--even in real life we hesitate (well, most of us) before taking a risk, and we think about what we are doing. Yes, some of the graves are booby-trapped--so saving ahead of digging an unknown, perhaps booby-trapped grave is simply...common sense. It doesn't pay to be angry with the game developer because you have no common sense, and because you refuse to heed his instructions about saving your games regularly. Just learn from your mistake and strive not to make it again, if possible. Saving early and saving often is a wonderful cure for frustration.
Lots of developer time and energy goes into creating a sleek, fast, efficient and reliable save-on-demand, save-anywhere system. To not use it is to not properly play the game, imo, and is not following the game-play instructions.
Want frustration? Play a brain-dead checkpoint-save game which might force you to blow yourself up ten times before you manage to get past the danger to place where *the developers* decide to let you save the game. Now *that's* immersion breaking...;)
