But nothing is forcing you to check exeptions in most languages, right?

While not checking for exceptions and .unwrap() are pretty much the same, the first one is something you get by not doing anything extra while the latter is entirely a choice that has to be made. I think that is what makes the difference, and in similar ways why for example nullable enabled project in C# is desired over one that is not. You HAVE to check for null, or you can CHOOSE to assume it is not by trying to use the value directly. To me it makes a difference that we can accidentally forget about a possible exception or if we can choose to ignore it. Because problems dealt with early at compile time, are generally better than those that happen at runtime.