Prior to closing the UE project for the night, the character was getting possessed and responding to inputs. Upon reopening the project with no changes and it no longer works. Is there any folders to delete to do a clean rebuild? Is there something that might cause this issue? I have been following the making a third person character tutorial and was using the input controls from part 5.
Sounds a bit extreme and unlikely to fix anything.
debug it:
- is the character possessed?
- is Enhanced Input set up? test it in the Level BP
- does the character process input? press key → print screen
I was referring to a clean rebuild like Visual Studio has where it ignores all the previously compiled debug folders and recompiles without taking advantage of the precompiled files because sometimes previous files corrupt. This is a common process in the industry. Note: UE5 apparently does a clean rebuild when the project is reopened.
As I previously stated, the Enhanced Input was fully set up and the character moving around in a level before closing UE. In the debug that I did last night the character is no longer being possessed after restarting UE even though it was getting possessed properly prior to saving and closing UE.
Found the issue:
I double checked last might after reopening and making sure that the character should be automatically possessed on game start both in the Auto Possess Player of the actor and the default pawn in the game mode. Apparently the print logs were hidden on the main screen but was in the output log. My soft references that I was going to add Async Load today were not loading. Adding the Async load fixed it. Sometimes a good night of sleep helps.
Note to self: UE5 apparently does a clean rebuild each time the project is reopened. Sometimes a clean rebuild reveals problems too. 
And always make sure to put in the Async load node for your soft asset references before using immediately, don’t wait to add them in later.