I would be for this, but it would have to be done carefully so that penalties aren't stiff enough that you cannot continue and you have to simply reload afterwards, as that would be annoying. It would be even more annoying if you found out you had an illness that you contracted on a save you had already overwritten that prevented you from continuing on (say in a dungeon which did not have a 'rest' area to go back to), and that illness was only making itself known now.
It would also be incredibly tedious to have to drop a dungeon halfway through and crawl halfway across the map back to town, manually walk around and sleep at inns for 10 minutes and then have to walk all the way back in order to be able to continue playing.
I think more punishing systems work better for tabletop rpgs as they have to option, should your character die, to simply reroll a new character and pick up from where you left off. Its less appropriate for a game where, for all intents and purposes your character has to survive for you to keep playing.
