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.

  • Merwyn@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Tes 3: Morrowind, every NPCs can be killed and of course if you kill some of them before they got usefull to progress the main quest you are locked.

    At their death there is a notification message like “you fucked up, you can reload or continue to play in this world forever doomed”. BUT, in my first playthrough some broken mod I installed was hiding this message …

    Also, in the same game you could lose quest item and be unable to finish the main quest. But that kind of require you to be stupid on purpose, because it’s obvious what item are important.

    EDIT: found the in game message: " With this character’s death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created."

    • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Good news. You can still beat the game if the “thread of prophecy is severed”, but it is fairly challenging and generally requires stumble-luck or at LEAST knowledge of how to normally beat the game. It helps to know the identity of another character you have to kill in cold blood to get “almost back on track”. And then the location that serves no real purpose except to get back on track from that situation.

      • Merwyn@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Yes indeed, I know what you are talking about. But I would not really consider that the “normal” ending as described by OP. Even if the ending scene itself is exactly the same, it’s a very different path and clearly a much harder one.

      • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Me, more and more these days. Especially if the game has been out for a while.