I much prefer tangible checkpoints in a game to invisible checkpoints for immersion reasons. The best use of this in my opion is what the Souls games do where they're constantly autosaving so you can't just reset after doing something you regret and so you also don't lose progress in the form of items you've discovered and NPCs you've interacted with. While still having checkpoints that you respawn at on death with a clear punishment for failure in the form of retrying a section of the level
My 2 major problems with them are :
1 ) it destroys immersion
every time you activate one of these things you will likely get a message like in the Alien example of " Would you like to save ?"
this pulls you out of the game world by reminding you that yes ,you are playing a game .
By extension even the character you are playing as acknowledges that he /she is is a video game by interacting with it and it becomes a goal of theirs to get to the next one .
Now i can understand this might not affect players who don't get immersed in the game and just play it but for me and others who like to immerse ourselves in the game and play as if we are the character it does .
it makes the game feel like it is just a stage with actors playing out their roles rather then them genuinely trapped in a dead or alive situation with horrible monstrosities .
my second problem :
2) In A:Isolation there are no checkpoints or quick saves . your only method of saving is those save stations and when you die you get kicked back to the last save station regardless of how long ago that was .
this creates 2 problems imo :
A) it causes you to fear losing your progress and having to do everything you did since your last save more then the actual constant threat of the Alien itself .
B) when you do finally get to the station you feel awesome and the thread of the alien is reduced to zero since even if he kills you 10 seconds later around the next corner you don't care since you just saved .
this guy explains it better then i probably did ( it is as he said a bit of a ramble but his point is clear :p )
the fix to this problem is simple : use a autosave sytem that saves in the background instead of immersion breaking devices that throw messages in your face + a Manual Save option in the menu when you need to save right now now ( although they should limit that last part otherwise it will invite save scumming )
I can't really agree with point 1. The least immersive form of saving has to be quicksave/quickload where saving essentially becomes a mechanic and you just think about the best times to save in order to be in the safest situation. (Though you mention save scumming as a negative too.) I don't think autosave (when saves are used as checkpoints) is that immersive either, sure it's not throwing "do you want to save?" in your face, but the immersion breaks down upon death, where will you respawn, why has my character respawned in this specified area? Save points are far more consistent in that regard and for that reason I find them more believable.
I don't think point 2 is great, either.
In response to A, don't you think that's the point? fear of actually losing progress heightens the tensions. Saying that fear is greater than the fear of the Alien is silly, since part of the fear of the Alien is that it will kill you, and part of the fear of death is that you will have to redo a part of the game. Without that there's way less tension.
B is a better point, but I don't see how it's entirely avoidable. I think the release of tension when you find a save point is a great thing for the pacing of a game, but threats being way less scary I can see as a problem. There's probably some solutions to this, but tension will build back up over time. More importantly though, this problem still exists in games with autosave, arguably more so. If I immediately die and respawn in the same gameplay scenario I honestly feel way less tension then if I know I'm going to be put a little further back. This happens all the time in loads of games actually, and I find it pretty annoying. I just end up kind of by trial and error making my way through a situation that isn't really interesting because I'm forced to complete it as the game autosaved right before that moment.
