Forward-Rendering and Shadows in Unity?

We’re currently considering Unity as a possible engine choice for an upcoming game. Two features are pretty high on our wish list: Antialias and smooth Soft-Shadows.

It seems that by default Antialias is only possible in Forward Rendering and Soft-Shadows (for Point and Spotlights) is only provided in Deferred Rendering.
Is there a way to get soft shadows working in forward rendering? I would not mind to get my hands dirty with shader code if that would be required.
Another thing I tried and failed at is that I’d like the soft shadows to be a bit more realistic and use a more sophisticated sampling approach but it seems that the shader code that is used to sample shadowmaps is not under the users control?

Where exactly do you control/tweak the way a scene is rendered? Is what I try to do is beyond the scope of what customization options Unity allows? (I’m not meaning to critizise… I just don’t know enough about Unity to really be sure what’s possible and what not.)

Softshadows work on both rendering, but there is no shadows at all for point / spot lights in forward rendering only shadows for a single directional light.

You can’t introduce shadows for these light types even with “shader magic”, replacing the one thats present is possible to rework the shader (its available in the built-in shaders example)