This is why there is a normal and hardcore mode. There are two options, which appease both sides of the fence. Personally, I don’t care all that much, but I will say that I don’t think it is necessarily difficulty for difficulty’s sake. I think it’s a system that can force someone–to a degree- to live with their decisions. It’s not forced upon you by the developers, but rather an option the developers present to you where you can force it upon yourself. Most people, if given the option, will replay something if they don’t particularly like the way it panned out. But, these same people (a lot of them at least), when asked, would prefer if the game didn’t allow them to restart the game.
It kind of gives you ease of mind, per se, where you can play through the game and live with your decisions, because you know that there’s “no going back”, so to speak. When you know there’s going back, and you can replay something, that’s a temptation that is hard to avoid. So really what the developers are doing is helping you have discipline by making it harder (or impossible) for you to reload a past saved game.
Most people won’t reload a past saved game if they know that it would make the last hour+ of gaming a waste. Hope I am making sense.
I think there was some confusion where there wasn’t a choice. The choice is choosing Normal OR Hardcore mode. So for those who do not like Hardcore mode, they don’t have to select it.