Soft lock in chapter 3?

[Warp]

Reading online, it appears the game is infamous for how easily you can get yourself soft-locked, unable to proceed.

I'm in chapter 3 and at one point you are supposed to kill two guards with one pot. I fumbled and only killed one of the guards. I then made the mistake of having the other guard chase me and... me managing to kill him in a different spot. Now the place where you were supposed to kill both is full of rats, and seems impassable.

What's especially infuriating is how close it seems like you could get pass the rats, to the doorway. There are some sticks a bit earlier in the level which you can bring, and the lit stick helps you enter the door... but burns out just like a second before you can get high enough on the stairs, no matter how quickly you try to walk. Also two fire pots are not enough to get past the rats.

The worst thing about all this is that when you kill the second guard the game autosaves at that point and remembers the positions where the guards died, and no matter what you do, you are stuck with that arrangement. You can restart the section, you can quit the game and continue, it doesn't matter. And there's no way to reset that section, other than restarting the entire chapter from the beginning.

They could have at least provided a couple of earlier autosaves for the player to load if needed...

[Lucaszap]

I have the same issue, I die, respawn arounded a bunch of rats and die instantly