Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs Discussion Topic Part 1

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Perhaps if you die, it wouldn't make you necessarily "respawn", but affect the outcome of the game. Maybe there would be this important part where you mustn't get knocked out, or else some important thing would be lost, like losing a character.

Events, where the outcome affects the story.

Yeah that was the direction in which I was thinking too One would have to be careful, though. If for example you tell the player in a loading screen or whatever "be careful, you'll get a bad ending if you die too often", it would cease to be an emotional threat and become a mere gameplay mechanic again. It's what I disliked about Dishonored... the endings made sense but the fact that they outright told you beforehand what would happen spoiled it a bit, because it put me into an "achievemnt" - mindset... if you know what I mean

Losing a character would be great if - and only if - the game succeeded at making you feel emotions for an NPC. Which is very hard to achieve, but definitely possible if done well!
Imagine for example having to save a beloved one and knowing that character will inevitably die if you fail and get captured O.O So no savepoints, but you don't have to restart either if you get caught. You just enter a different branch of the story in which you'll have to live until the end of the game with the thought that you failed.

Yes, but the point is that this chore takes about ten minutes, maybe five if you do it right.

It's not the same time that it took you the first time. That's what a lot of other posters miss, for me Justine was a five hour game that I, now, can run through in ten minutes. When you first go through a level, it can take you half an hour, being scared of dying, after you've figured it out it's a couple of minutes, but you've already spent that half an hour.

And each time you get to the unexplored part you switch to the "scared
as hell, sticking to the walls, running back to safety at every sound"
mode, and spend most of your time playing in that mode.

Yes, that's true of course. But to me it makes even less sense that way. Why would I want to speedrun through a part of the game/level after I die, only to get back to the scary part? To me there's no difference between that and simply respawning shortly before the scary part, except for the fact that I have 5 minutes of running before being back where I was.

I agree, though, the mechanic Amnesia used didn't really work that well either, especially after you figured out how it worked.