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 donāt 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.
Sierra adventure games, like Kingās Quest and Space Quest, were notorious for this kind of thing. Like there could be an item you have 1 chance to get, and you didnāt know, so you donāt get it and then several hours later when youāre at the end of the game, you realize you need that thing to solve the puzzle and actually move on. But you canāt. Because you didnāt get it when you had the chance and you can not go back.
In the same vein: the games in the Hugo trilogy had several fail statesā¦ each. Trying to cross a bridge? Oop, youāve bumped against the wonky hitbox and dropped the matches you need near the river. Theyāre wet now and completely unusable.
Maniac Mansion was the first that came to mind for me. You select a party from a number of characters at the beginning, but unless you pick the exact right party, youāll never be able to finish the game.
I like the Unstable Ordinance from Space Quest IV that you can pick up near the start of the game. Itās entirely useless, you canāt ditch it, and if you have in your inventory near the end of the game, it blows up and kills you. Everytime. You have to restart nearly the whole game and resist the adventure game urge to grab everything that isnāt nailed down.
Those games didnāt give a fuck about your feelings. I remember some of those point and clicks had zero chill. I played one where all I wanted to do was cross the street. My character was immediately run over by a car and I had to start over. The typing games could be even worse. Oh sorry this bees nest is attacking you, hereās hoping you grabbed the bug spray under the carpet on the 3rd floor and are quick enough on your feet to type out the exact sequence of words necessary to get your character to use it. āUse bug sprayā sorry can you please be more specific. Oh never mind your character is dead, no saves, heres the worst 8 bit death audio anyone has ever created.
Ah, fond memories of playing Hugoās House of Horrors and having to frantically type while a dog bites your face off.
