Yes, they even had an idea of "Platform Independent State Files" (with save/load feature) back in 2018, but they also had Ned as CEO.
Even now, you can use periodically saved state as a backup to avoid replay. That however has some disadvantages: you need to shut node down (or use separate nodes only for a sole purpose of creating such backups, so called "state providers"), it can be transferred between systems but they have to be compatible to some extent; same build environment, compatible CPU (sets of instructions), etc.
That's for example very useful for spawning multiple seed nodes in a short amount of time: replay once, transfer to many, start it up.
Exactly. I am just thinking ahead to hardfork issues that would take down the chain for many days like in the past.
Seems to me like there is potential here for a HPS proposal to pay for a few of these state file specific nodes in the case of chain restarts. They could be distributed to various top witnesses or something like that. Just thinking out loud.