[quote=Raxacoricofallapatorius]
I ponder this query myself every time I die in Assassin's Creed by accidentally jumping off a building, except it respawns and "continues" automatically, so it's like I'm forced to go on living without any choice.
[/quote]

Well, in Assassin's Creed is because your ancestors never died, so the Animus can't draw from genetic memories that never happened. Respawning makes total sense in that world (except for the Desmond sections where you can kill yourself and it's like "WHOOPS LOST CAMERA FEED".

BioShock Infinite handled this probably in the most profound way I've seen in a game, with the whole many-universe hypothesis. It's strongly implied that every time you die, you just created a new universe where Booker DeWitt died and the story carries on from that point, dealing with the consequences of his actions and death. I also can't remember what it's called, but there's another theory connected to that where your consciousness will always carry on with the universe where you survive, so if there's ever been any situations where you could have died, you simply experience one where you survive where you might have died elsewhere. They use an example of if you take a gun and load a round into it and put it into a contraption where the gun will shoot you in the head, and set it up 100 times, there will be 99 universes where you died, but one where the gun or contraption malfunctioned and you survive. 

It's kind of crazy to think about, to be honest.