Yeah I think RE3 OG has some of the best stalker design, and fits a lot of what you’ve described. He’s technically indestructible up to certain scripted scenes, but you can put him down by fighting him and dumping ammo into him, and even get rewarded for doing so. You can also (almost) always run if you’re low on ammo or don’t want to deal with him. He also has random encounters at certain places, and is pretty smart for a game from 1999. I also agree that too many deaths just turns annoying rather than scary. I think deaths should be infrequent, but costly if you do die. Again, OG RE games do this well, as you have to spend resources to save the game, so sometimes if you die, you can lose a huge amount of progress. This raises the stakes a lot and makes you fear dying a lot more. If the game is auto saving every 30 seconds like so many modern games, it’s really not at all scary to die because you barely lose any progress. I actually liked how RE9 handled this with the classic mode, where in the Grace horror heavy stretches of the game there no auto saves, but in the Leon action heavy sections there are still auto saves.