The thought came to mind after reading a recent post about Baldurs Gate 3 here but it reminded me of the Japense only PSX game Mizzurna Falls where if you don’t perform a certain action early in the game you are prevented from getting a true ending. While this might not be a traditional soft lock because you can still progress to a point it made me wonder none the less.
I understand BG3 might be a hard lock because the game abruptly comes to a close I am not going to get into the semantics. The only other soft locks I can think of are with Pokemon.
Shout out to the fan translation of Mizzurna Falls. An article on the ROMHacking.net website can be found here.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. If you don’t give the sandwich to the small dog you can’t finish the game.
I got bit by this one. Went over to a friend’s house to spend the day playing HHGTTG. Several hours later we discovered we couldn’t win the game because I had neglected to feed the dog 15 minutes in while he was up getting a drink or something.
It really shows that Douglas Adams was an author and not a game designer with how easy it is to soft-lock that game if you visit rooms in the wrong order or spend too long or short a time exploring one. Most of the possible mistakes become reasonably apparent reasonably quickly, but not always.