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.
Don’t know if anyone has said it yet, but Fallout 3. There is a story quest where you have to ask a radio host named Three Dog information about your father and it’s a percentage based skill check that if you fail it, I don’t think you can progress (unless I am completely mistaken since it’s been more than a half decade since I last played).
To make matters even worse, even at a maximum 100 in speech, the skill check can still be failed. Again, not 100% sure whether or not the Three Dog skill check is even required or if you can just run to the right place to progress the main story, but if you are a first time player you could absolutely screw yourself over not knowing about this.
IIRC failing the speech check is the “normal” outcome. If you convince him he gives you info you would have come across later, allowing you to bypass the next main story quest.