I would second this analysis.
As a holistic thinker, timelocks in stories feel arbitrary. Like, why give the characters three hours until the bomb goes off? Why not six, or twelve? It could be anything, since the author is just making it up. Obviously in real life, we encounter timelocks on the regular, but in a story, using one seems like an excuse for a weak argument, since you don’t have to explore ALL the options and demonstrate that one of them is conclusively the best, you can just offer the one you prefer and ignore the ones you don’t want to contend with, implying that there was no time to consider them.
Optionlocks feel more grounded in reason, i.e. the characters have explored all the possible solutions and have concluded that only one strategy will solve their problem. Having the story end because the characters run out of time feels like a cop-out.