Er, I don't know about you guys but I consider that yes, this scenario:

"Here is a source of information, suitably weakened to the point that you might have an edge to deal with it!"

- You get the full reward if you skip the content and kill it using base game mechanics outside of any interaction
- If you do engage and interact, you have to make at least one save... and if you fail that save, you get a Game Over (most likely)!

Yes, indeed, that IS bad game design. It's terrible game design. It's inviting players to engage with your content, rewarding them for not doing so, and brutally punishing them for trying to with a complete reset - so that they must either skip the content, and get the reward externally, or they must save scum and reload UNTIL they pass the game-over save and can continue.

That's Bad Design.