Having recently replayed Twilight Princess, it's fascinating how many cut ideas from OoT made it into that game. Castle Town with its massive walls, the bigger Kokiri Forest, and so on. I doubt that these concepts were cut just because of gameplay reasons. I bet if they had had the technology at the time, Ocarina would have been much closer to TP than what it ended up being. They really did want to create a seemingly endless world.
Shigeru Miyamoto did say in interviews that cut concepts from Ocarina of Time did make it into later Zelda games from Majora's Mask all the way to the present Zelda games on Switch.
The craziest part about all these cut and altered maps is that we had the gigaleak and then only a few months later an F-Zero prototype cartridge somehow had an early version of Zelda OoT on it so it contained a lot of early content in the dump.
I sometimes wonder if Miyamoto and the OoT devs of the time ever watch these videos and laugh at the incorrect guesses. "They shall never know the truth."
It's crazy seeing references to Team Beta Triforce. I was part of that team nearing 2 decades ago. Absolutely amazing era of beta Ocarina of Time discovery.
This game's beta looks so fascinating. Sometimes it feels like we're watching something dreamlike. I hope a full functioning beta is eventually found, if it exists out there somewhere.
The entirety of Oot's beta screenshots give me a very hard vybe of the concept arts of the first 3 zeldas, which had a certain aesthetic to it that I didn't see transformed into any of the 3D zelda games I've played so far (The last "main" Zelda game I played was Twilight Princess and later on A Link Between Worlds.). I have this feeling with the empty hyrule castle town (the one shown in around 1:30ish) which brings the same architectures we see in Zelda II's manual(Pages 6 and 7), and how that portal on death mountain around 17:30 feels like the entrance of a zelda II temple, as well. The larger-than-life maps that were tried and tested in several areas reminds me of certain concept arts from Alttp's manual, specifically the view of Tower of Hera on page 43, and the overview of hyrule in Zelda 1's manual, page 6. The very first Link we saw in that darknut "fmv" demo also followed the original concept arts of Link closely, along with how Hyrule Castle was once on top of a hill (similar to how the North Castle looks like in Zelda II's manual, pages 4 and 12) makes me believe they probably were trying to go for a 3D "sequel" or "spiritual successor" of Zelda 2 or at least bring the first 3D zelda game a faithful recreation of how the Zelda universe was portrayed up to that point in the original manuals.
i remember reading in interview once, if it was one of the iwataasks or which interview it was specifically but i can't remember unfort. but the devs said exactly this. they started working on OOT by developing bigger more open playing fields, because that's obviously what makes sense in wanting to make something feel epic and have sense of scale, but it ultimately was kinda boring making these large environments with lots of empty running around.
I'd guess that many of the large spaces were conceived with the intention of filling them up somehow at a later point in development, but filling them up with lots of individual objects turned out to be impossible to render. The forest with all the individual trees is almost like a case study. It didn't even work with fog, and they wanted that sweet sunshine over Hyrule.
That last part of climbing up the tower really reminds me of walking up the final twisting staircase to fight the boss from Tower of the Gods from Wind Waker.
The reason all the fences block off specific areas was because the maps from that build were what Nintendo used as a playable demo prior to release in order to showcase gameplay. Nintendo didn’t want players to wander off too far and see areas too early on.
Yes, exactly. It's odd that he is clearly working from info from The Cutting Room Floor, and yet appears to not know a lot of the information given there. What's most interesting about the fences in that map is that they've blocked off the top left - an area that does not have anything in the release title but does have that potential entrance into Hyrule Castle in the earlier builds. Another sign they were planning something there which ultimately got cut.
@@Ashley6100 The Obsessive Gamer is notorious for saying whatever he wants. Literally just grabs an idea and starts making connections and states it as fact. Don't get me started on the use of "the beta version" being so inaccurate in every video
@@paradisealivegames2403kinda get that, if I recall correctly some of the connections he made in some videos felt wrong, I remember when he said the Saturn Sonic and tails are not used, I then stated that they were used and got a retexture in the plane level, you can see them before they get shot, (I think in tails story only but sonic might also have it) He then said that I was wrong because he couldn't see it. Edit: I can't find the comment, either it was on a short video or I am mixing things up.
2:02 The N64 was actually more powerful than folks give it credit for- but as indicated by the fact that the gigaleak shows that almost maps are shrunk down in their final forms, bigger maps *just weren't as good.* Just playing through the retooled beta maps, like the fairly polished beta Deku Tree shows that there's a lot of traversal without much to do. 6:42 And I think they're cut for both games in this form because it was most likely just weak content. The OoT form of the Lost Woods especially- just look at it. You bring up later that you struggled to run it, but we don't know your emulation setup- and we don't know theirs, but presumably there were reasons they had gotten that far with that map, and it may have run better on real hardware. But they DEFINITELY could have streamlined the mechanics and system to work if they actually thought it would have been worthwhile, because we would have seen the *gameplay* system implemented- that's the part they cared about. Nintendo have OoT an ungodly amount of development time by the standards of this era of video games, more than enough to explore the limits of where and how they could push coding and hardware. (And it shows in how they executed the Actor handling system, which is really THE reason they were able to create Majora's Mask on the technical side of things) They weren't just taking away content, they were curating, editing and refining what they had, both on the front end and back end of the game. Most N64 gamrs focus on the simpler models, spaces and textures because development time was too short to troubleshoot and streamline the environments and assets. 1/4-1/2 the console's power was a general guideline, unless you were, say, making a rail-based game like a Fighter, Crash-like, or Panzer Dragoon-Like, where the polygons and player behavior was EXTREMELY predictable. And cartridges were extremely expensive. But Nintendo were making a special exception for Zelda 64, and were living up to it, even moreso than Mario 64, which had HAD to come out so early. The sad thing to me is that I don't think any OoT developer will EVER admit to the totally reasonable explanation that they shrunk most of the OoT maps in development (and probably most Twilight Princess maps after the WW feedback) to make the game a stronger experience, because folks in general just have it in their head that Bigger = Better, no matter what. 7:11 I'm more inclined to think this was about the UI being tailored to represent the Elemental/Spell Arrow system they had been planning. Perhaps the plain white around the bow would take a different hue for each element? It seems a little strange to me for it to be so pale otherwise 10:54 To me, this feels like the place where an antagonist would exposit some stuff, before having you fight the Iron Knuckle, possibly while they watch. You run to catch them, but they're gone. If this were Ganon's Castle, then perhaps it would be a place to bait you with a captured Zelda? And the lit up area would probably be some pre-Rooftop Showdown safety/rest/item-get spot, judging by general video game logic. 14:14 I never understood why people insist that these are the same dungeon, and not a test dungeon being repurposed, with the different wall textures. I'm thinking Early Ice Temple, repurposed from the test/beta/eyecatcher they made with the Triforce in it. 16:52 Turtle Rock instead of a dead Dodongo. For some reason, OoT decided that the child dungeons didn't involve enough being eaten by actual beings, so they had to make it a real head, I guess? Its the only reason I can figure that they made the change, and its a strange theme. 21:39 IIRC there's unused text about a secret entrance. It both likely explains this, and how there's that rather conspicuous unused area to the West of the Castle gates in the Final game. A later, less Gravestone-ish version also reflects the ALTTP secret entrance you use at the start of the game, in a way. 22:01 Exactly what I was talking about with the Map shrinking. But the farm inclusion makes sense- Malon/Link was the intended OTP by the developers. They even wanted to include a Lon Lon ranch fire, where you would have Malon on Epona with you as you jumped the fence and galloped away, saving her heroically. 23:41 Looks like one of the public maps, like for E3 or Spaceworld-type events. Iirc they even have a sign that says something to that effect (In Japanese) 25:23 Using more recent textures doesn't necessarily mean anything, if the textures were replaced in the same directory before the map editing was discontinued. I'd look at the metadata instead. Even then, that's not 100% reliable. 28:43 Just to clarify, the Forest Temple is one of the earliest development settings in OoT- the rumors of them initially going for a Mario 64 setup about being set in Ganondorf's castle and going into paintings started development with the Forest Temple AS the castle. You can see early ~'96 footage from Giles Goddard playing with Portal-esque tech in the Forest Temple for some funzies. 31:47 This area is so bizarre because of the textures to me- it goes to show what the system can theoretically handle, but how janky it looks when you go mixing and matching different fidelity and color scaling levels. 37:19 To me, with the white triangle sitting over the black, I think its visually supposed to read as a grey Triforce with a black center, and a single, smaller white triangle in the middle, but from the ground, it just looks like an inverse triforce, so they had to change it. They were probably trying to visually represent "Three mcguffins come together to give you the Power in the Temple" but it totally fell flat. Just happens sometimes, and they caught it. 41:29 The Gerudo Training Ground at one point was used as a public demonstration space- giving preview players goals was pretty standard. Overall though, I hope I don't come off as nitpicky. We don't actually learn new things if we all just parrot the same ideas- its EXTREMELY important to do independent examinations and come to one's own conclusions on things with the skills we have, like you have and continue to do. I know that takes a ton of effort to go in and look at all these things by hand, especially when you get stuck in spaces, and things crash, or don't want to record and such. So kudos.
>The N64 was actually more powerful than folks give it credit for- but as indicated by the fact that the gigaleak shows that almost maps are shrunk down in their final forms, bigger maps just weren't as good. Or, you know, they cut them because the game was moved from 64DD to N64, leaving the devs with less storage space. Of course the original maps weren't as good as the finals. They were still pretty basic and early, so they didn't have all the polish, content and details from the final ones. That has nothing to do with map size, but simply with those being really early versions of the areas. Obviously if they had kept the large maps, they would have given them similar level of polish as the ones we got.
@@Ericss2009larger maps = more walking. Personally I think the final hyrule field is painful enough to walk through, I can only imagine how boring it would be to walk massive distances in even more areas
@@legokingcandylarger maps = more space for content and exploration There is no reason "walking" in large maps should be boring if they're well designed and full of content. Plenty of open world games prove it.
@@Ericss2009I genuinely don't think storage space was the issue. The 64DD wasn't a massive storage format, hell, it maxed out at 64MB, which was the same size as the later batch of N64 cartridges. As far as I know, models don't take up that much space. Maybe it played a small role but I don't know that it was the defining factor. Also keep in mind that in early 1997 Miyamoto was quoted as saying that the game would be 16MB, the final game is 32MB. So it's entirely possible it was a limitation early on before they were able to use bigger cartridges.
@@clouds-rb9xt Storage was definitely an issue. Mario 64 was going to have twice as many levels but they had to cut it down to half due to its cart's storage limit. When Earthbound 64 was moved from the 64DD to 64 it was similarly cut down. That was also the reason Square, Enix and most RPG devs skipped the N64 and moved to the PS1. N64 cartridges just didn't provide enough storage for a 3d RPG with a decently-sized world. The Ocarina of Time we got had very little unused space in its cart. To include bigger environments would have required a larger ROM, which would have been unfeasible considering that when it came out, OOT already had the largest ROM size of its time. Miyamoto and the dev team probably underestimated how much space the final game would require when he made that statement.
I believe I've read that the fences in the 1997 build are a remnant of when they made a tester build of the game for fans to play a short sample at an expo. They didn't want fans wandering into unfinished areas, thus, tall fences all around.
Pretty good video covering some of the more recent finds, btw the parts where it struggles to load in (28:04, 30:33) are likely just far clipping params (zNear/ zFar) not being setup for the map, making the camera cut off parts of the level (32:46 could play without issue, so the others probably would have been fine too)
Many of the people who analyze and preserve beta content in these old nintendo games are talented enough, I could see them getting into actual real world archeology
I think the Forest Temple ultimately having a windmill symbol is a reference to woodwind instruments. The ocarina itself is a woodwind; you even get your original cute fairy one from Saria. It's a really clever idea for a forest temple.
Behind Lord Jabu-Jabu in that open area head to the back and climb the rock and stick as high as possible, now face north. There's a weird white thing you can see. Wish someone would boundary break that area. I remember it from years ago so details can be off but it's that area.
21:29 I think this was an attempt at reusing an old cut concept from A Link to the Past where Link would've escaped Hyrule Castle by emerging from a secret tunnel underneath a grave. There are theories that the Bottom of the Well was supposed to be the sewers of Hyrule Castle, and just like in ALTTP, Link would've had to escort Princess Zelda away from the castle while its under attack by Ganondorf.
Saria's name came from Zelda 2, so I doubt they would have been intentionally changing that name during development if they were meaning to reference it.
Agreed, especially since the other sages also derived their names from the same source. (Plus Mido.) I think the townsperson was just named Aria because it's a good name.
I like to think that they still kept the "lost woods" and used a section of it for the begining of Majora's mask. That seems to be the only place I've ever seen a huge tree area like that...
A lot of times designers showcase early concept they got from managers, this is just supposed to foster more management conversation. It's not supposed to be fleshed out. So it's not really just an evil castle.
All I could think when seeing the much bigger and open maps was, “Man, the devs must’ve been really sad when they realized that, because of the limitations of the N64, they’re entirely unable to make their visions of huge Hyrule work.”
also note that in the beginning of the clip Link stopped in his tracks with visible drag on his feet and his upper torso leaning forward because of the forward momentum. god the final version lacking those physics makes it feel weightless in comparison
@@yozora1047Even if it looks better, it might not end up feeling better depending on how it was implemented. FF14's original version had much better character animations compared to 2.0, but it came at the cost of stuff like starting/ stopping your character movement feeling really sluggish. Although tbh I don't think OoT link moves fast enough in the final game to warrant sliding so much lol
@@yoso378 i dunno generally when a game adds weight such as gravity, air, momentum, friction, etc. it makes the game more satisfying and adds realism. for example in most hack and slashes like tales, side kh games or nier, the characters stay level in the air when doing an air combo until the combo ends. but in the main kh trilogy, dmc or even souls games, the character will slowly descend even when doing an air combo, which adds weight and realism. or in the switch games where link throws his body with the momentum of the weapons he uses, making the older 3d games look weightless in comparison.
The horse and archery "mini game" area looks to me like it was a development only level, not meant to be played in the game, but as a space to build and test horseback riding and archery itself.
At 38:10, I always found it interesting as a kid that the great fairy as adult Link was moved from where it was as child Link to be north of the castle instead. Whenever the overdump happened and this map got leaked many years later my first thought was "well shit, that explains the age old question." The path even looks similar to the one in the final game as an adult.
Playing OoT now, I'm so glad the N64 couldn't handle so much data because this seems like a heck of a lot to explore. Just going from one area to another would've taken forever, when so many people are already walking Link backwards or sidestepping to get to places faster in the final, smaller cut.
The main reason why they downscaled the game so much was because there was a ton of space full of nothing to do because, im pretty sure the n64 could handle big vast areas like these.
I have been interested in the beta of Ocarina of Time since I first saw YuriOfWind's Gaming Mysteries video on the subject in 2010-2011 and it's still as interesting as ever! I am still hoping for more new discoveries.
21:28 The presence of the cross is interesting. Some of the early Zelda games had references to Christianity, but this basically ceased with OoT where they introduced the Hylian goddesses.
During the 90s it was more mysterious to see update news from the development of a game. For ocarina of time I had to wait 1 to 3 months just to have 4 small pictures, or maybe a 30 seconds video on a video game tv program. So this made the waiting so long. Now this days, the mystery is over, there are just to many spoilers, the new game will be released in 3 months and they already showed the intro, the first stage, the controls, even there is a demo, so when the game is released I don’t feel as mysterious as in the 90s. But if they don’t show all of this stuff, younger people seems just don’t buy the game.
One thing that slightly (slightly!) irked me a bit about some of your old videos was the occasional tendency to jump to conclusions about something cut when there was little evidence to support it as true or false. I notice now there's more "in my opinion, it may be..." or "some theorize...," stuff like that, which is appreciated when something is more open to interpretation. I know we're just talking obscure info on a video game, but still. Your reads in general have improved over time (not that they were ever really bad with it) and your videos in general are improved, too. In my opinion. NICE JOB 😃
I personally like to think that the beta dungeon was actually meant to be something closer to the Hyrule Castle Tower climb from A Link To The Past or Twilight Princess, seeing as it's not as dark and dirty as Ganon's Tower.
I think what you keep referring to as the N64 having a hard time rendering is just a culling mask. The developers put a draw distance limit so it wont overwhelm the N64. It COULD render the whole scene it would just start to create considerable lag after a point. However, given how flat a lot of early maps are, i doubt it would have much trouble as that would equate to relatively few polygons.
I have a theory about the Beta Ganon's Tower. The strange aesthetic change between the first two sets of stairs and the third one that leads to that glowing room. I think a lot of the ideas and aesthetics of the Tower of the Gods were experimented with and then shelved, and then later reused in Wind Waker. I think the glowing circle would've been a teleporter, and that the top would've had a bell. That got shelved and revamped into the Ganon's Tower in the final game. I think that map might've been a transitionary one, partway through revamping. The first and second halves are just so, so different.
This is amazing! I for one would have loved a deeper and more complex Water Temple. It's my favorite OoT dungeon and I've been laughing at people ever since release for bitching about it.
While it probably never made it past the pre-alpha drawing board, It would be hilarious if the long rumored "dating simulator" mechanic version was real, and link really did get to court the many women of Hyrule.
20:32 note the difference in the heads. Middle is looking straight, right (of viewer screen/ stage left/ rnd lf timeline side) is facing up/looking skyward, left (stage right, towards beginning o timeline side) is looking downward and seems a bit darker shade wise. If viewed in old ass magazines/ screen shots of poor quality, this head (looking down/ sullen) is at the bsck of the room, the unicorns of sky and land locked looks are skewed towards the mouth / opening. It is my belief, this conferred magical arrows. Fire, light and i prepose a possible dark equivalent though this is conjecture apropos nothing really. I believe this is why the very unique placed/seemingly import fairy grotto right st beginning of the stretcb leading to moblins before forest temple. Additionally this is why ganon pupet dons a horned horset helmet. This is why the horse of light seemingly disappears after Ganon giving chase following the lost woodz/hylia recion of map after 3 stones before first time warp. As well, this is why the spooky horned effigy statue on boat during kakariko well dungeon. I believe this dsrk arrow, became the lens of truth This is why i think several things are though not because of why they cufently seem be. In brief heres my thoughts/ preposition: Ganon wounded zelda, killed impa using lance, a hesvy inversion of silver/ sacred arrows of yorr, his fatal weakness. He commandeered the horse, forrupting it and enslaving it in death. He wounded zelda and hlinded one eye, this eyes blood flows into the water, corrrupying its purity in kind and distorting through a evil lookinglass like effdct of red and purple. This is why the red flame. I believe that the idea for the flame arrows in relation and usage in final feriges from such cincept I think zelda presumed dead was used as s excuse for zelda to look into and take up the mantle of snd avenge the now eradicated bloodline of sheikah, seeking to keep it ali e in practice. Sye is a inversion to Ganondorf (man) but not entirely like a warped mirror/ looking glass) a brutish but flamboyant darker skinned, ill doer serving unddr fslse purposes and ideation/ design. Sporting red motif, one eye vs one mind. A smattering of three red accents of a otherwise all seeing eye adorning in sheer mesh fabric at chest vs long flowing but entirely obfuscating/blocking Crimson flows at back in robe and hair source. Essentially dealing a hand of death and living beyond natural means, destined for a greater end beyond bllldshed and false heroics. Both stem from similar concepts but ultimately only use them to a point but never entirely championing them (Gerudo/sheikah vs Ganondorf kingdom/ vs highrule) the middle groun is the lost woods, death mountain, zora domain. Mediators, intermingling but not entirely stemming nor denying/servings from or to the divine but thesd aee the crucial missing link all higher and lowly powers ride upon. Epona is the one , like how Link, Sheik, Ganondorf are up until they link the trinity within their shared rivers flow ij life and desth within themselves. This is why the ice arrows pop up so randomly, originally i think it waa dark. Dark , fire, light. Death, life, eternity. So.. I think this is the origin of the paintings and demon ghost ganon, his spear, his mask, his mount, sheik and impahs ends/ origin and why they appear/ interacti near/with/what or because of. The unicorn fount, i think was at the beginning of forest temple, second lake Hylia, third kakariko well Executioner dumping reservoir, certainly element still link them in theme/ behaviors Like oke horned charging moblins, prominent eye/bow / exploding sunbheads of magical/ deasoy bezks of light reflection and the cutting off/sacrifice of others bodies, blood and deeds for a grander scheke only viewable unddr the right but ekewed/ damaged perspective. The horse unicorn mane also seem to denote a partial covering of eye or face/ wrapping or folding thin but effective fliksy veil over omes full facd to obscure, hide or lend perspectives tailored to the design one find/often seem Bla bla bla i have way more to say but my wording eyfks extra bad because tired and on medication Sorry if intolerable/ poor wording
"it may have even been unfinished." my brother, you are so deep in speculating that all the places for these things were finalized when the game was still near fully a crayon drawing. NONE OF IT WAS FINISHED??
I wonder if the grave looking thing on the side of Hyrule Castle showcased @21:31 was meant to be a Royal Family tomb/graveyard or even an early version of the Composer Brothers Sharp and Flat? I mean, with the Shadow Temple and Bottom of the Well both hinting at Hyrule’s bloody past, as well as Zelda 2 having a place called “King’s Tomb” makes me wonder if that’s what they were going for with that grave like texture. Either that or a just shortcut from Graveyard to Hyrule Castle. Which ALTTP had the graveyard next to the Sanctuary (which had secret passage from Hyrule Castle to it)
22:39 think those rivers and canals are still conected but you cant see the conections in the map, going all the way from zora waterfall going through the castle river, until we see the river again on gerudo waterfall and ending in lake hylia
My Teenage years dream was to live in the Universe where they developed the Beta Zelda 64 all the way through and released it, so we could have had an open world Zelda since the N64 instead of the linear Zelda formula being set in place. I mean, the beta screenshots look so much COOLER to play than what we got...
The Gerudo Training Ground and fences in Hyrule Field are that way due to the F-Zero Overdump likely being the exact same cartridge used for the playable demo at Space World 1997.
The strange head inside of the beta Dodongo's Cavern actually reminds me of the recurring location/dungeon in earlier games in the series, Turtle Rock. In fact I think the giant terrapin that takes you to the Great Bay Temple in Majora's Mask is potentially a nod to it. Interesting that it might've also existed here; check out that beak and those beady eyes! Plus it being much more clearly _rock_ as opposed to fossilized bones. Ultimately the giant saurian skull was probably cooler.
Now that you mention this, Turtle Rock in Link’s Awakening heavily features lava….so it would certainly make sense if they were considering this in the early stages of development.
Zelda devs have often mentioned in interviews that they keep scrapped concepts for future games. For a recent example, TotK's seamless sky/land exploration was something they originally wanted in Skyward Sword, but the Wii wasn't powerful enough to make it happen.
One thing I've never understood about Ocarina of Time is the fact that the Castle Market is just a rendered background. In Majora's Mask the whole of clock Town was 3D in small chunks. I wish that they had done that with OOT as well. It just always seemed odd to me. Yeah i get that with Majora they further modified the game engine and could do more, but really they could've broken up the Castle Town into little districts of houses and shops.
Personally i understand your wish for unified/ obviously connected bodies of water/and land but i would say that the body of water still does canonically skirt/ flow a similar path/reality. I believe it is underground, to service the concept of the kakariko well under acropolis/ death river ferry etc
it seems, that Hyrule Castle Town wasn't prerendered because of Technical Issues but because they made it as "PR aimed at third parties," possible as an ad for a Resident Evil Game on Nintendo... at least a translated interview at DidYouKnowGaming says that
20:15 Or maybe it was just an early version of the Great Fairy fountain. I can see the Great Fairy popping out of that. 25:17 I'm pretty sure it was stated that the Fishing Pond was a late addition, after one of the devs programmed it in secret. So it's probably not that. Maybe that path would just have led to a Fairy Fountain?
One thing all those cut content and previous iterations of final content tells me is, Nintendo had a big vision, great ambitions for OOT... I would love to see what the initial vision would have been like when fully reallized...
36:50 - That looks like a beta model of the entrance to that area of guards you have to sneak past to get to Zelda in the castle. The side water duct thing going off the fountain model really reminds me of that!
I'm pretty sure the fenced in horse/archery area with no discernable entrance or exit is a test area for riding the horse and firing the bow. The checker board patterns are a dead give-away.
dint see the 44 min video in my feed until right now as i write this comment. i am subbed and this is bullshit ganna love watching this, thank you for making these, also if its not there i like you being in the videos i like your humour.
12:40 thats the boss room from Ikana castle in majora's mask!! it even make sense with the 2 stalfos in there I get the feeling that alot of stuff on the beta rom wasnt implemented but was kept on the rom so that it could be repurposed for future projects like MM
I have seen this beta room so many times and it has never occurred to me until your comment that there similarities between this room and the Ikana castle boss room. I need to go get a better look and refresh my memory on the details but you now have me excited at the possibility!!
@@zaizen4359 from what I remember the MM version is about 50% larger (theres more room to fight in order to account for the 3rd enemy) but the 6 windows that stream in light for mirror shield use really makes me think this map was repurposed for the Ikana Castle boss fight.
That water temple and deku tree temple is the best found plus the medallions and the beta lost food and korkiri forest which the N64 VIa everdrive can work.
in the first dungeon you showed I think you would defeat the iron knuckle which would open the way to the balcony where you would then push a block off the edge and into the indent which would have a blue switch in it which would either open the way forward or reveal a chest.
The beta Dodongo head really reminds me of the weird red hooked rock formation in the Majora's Mask Goron moon trial. Specifically the upper tooth and the red coloring.
"I suspect the horses were axed once Child Link was added because he wouldn't have been able to ride a horse" and then Majora's Mask would come along and go "lol nah" and just let him ride Epona anyways. Oracle of Ages and Seasons of course also briefly feature Link (who's about 12 in that one, as per tradition prior to Ocarina) riding Epona, and Four Swords Adventures, which again features a 12 year old Link, also lets him ride Epona in some stages.
The old version of Phantom Ganon's arena would indeed have been an improvement as in the current version, it's rather easy to avoid his big lightning blast for failing to peg him instead of his mirror image simply by standing off to the side all the way.
10:44 The balcony looks like a similar design to the first room in the castle of Super Mario 64 but with different textures. You did mention just before this that the game was based on the Super Mario 64 game engine so it would make sense.
I kinda always like to think arias town peak/spire was a more architectural allusion to doom mountain, which still (in my perspective) is a thing via deku tree/sapling bab tree
3:09 while this one could be the pedestal where you pull the master sword but 3:22 this may be where you would put the sacred stones as the back wall kinda looks like it could open.
Triforce cutscene is not possible (or extremely hard to make) because Link has real-time shadow effect, which isn't impossible (Ganon in final battle has it) but, not in that fast update speed, so it gas to be A: Pre-rendered B: Just a demo
That indent in the ground looks more like a spot you’d push a block into. Probably to unlock a puzzle that may have been planned for this room. Then maybe the treasure chest would appear on the balcony.
This was back before “theme park dungeons” were decided on to be the go-to dungeon concept in OoT, a decision that would affect all Zelda dungeons going forward. It’s interesting to see, this is another issue I had with OoT back in the day that I didn’t know how to articulate: there are no dungeon-dungeons. Every dungeon has to be heavily themed.
i’m fairly certain Aria was named by the people who were trying to do facial animation stuff, and the name Saria comes from Zelda 2, so it would be strange for Nintendo to rename her like that
I don't know if anyone here has mentioned this yet, but the beta design of Hyrule Castle with the large central tower looks very similar to the Hyrule Castle stage in Super Smash Bros 64. Both games would have been in development around the same time and Sakurai has said that his team gets access to early content from upcoming releases to draw inspiration from for stages and characters.
What is insane to me is the resemblance between the Stage 1 beta Hyrule town/castle and Twilight Princess castle town/Hyrule castle layout! :O This is no coincidence, whoever made either/both has been following a specific vision and blueprint. So most probably, at Nintendo in someone's office there might just be an actual, official blueprint of "the one" world of Hyrule. Adding the layouts of the newer games to this seems to even confirm it. :D
When you mention the Unicorn Fountain in this video, you specify at around 19:28 that it is a unique fountain separate from other fairy fountains. Some other people exploring leaked Zelda 64 content have been theorizing that it was simply a Beta fairy fountain. I’d seen some interesting videos that made this seem a very convincing idea. However, if it is true that there are other fairy fountains present in stage 4 in development alongside this fountain, then I’m REALLY curious to know what it would have been used for. I really do hope it gets leaked someday…..Considering it took over 10 years for the gigaleak, who knows-we may yet find out when we’re all old 😂 I really love the design, and I think they should implement it in a future game-if not solely for its legendary status alone! HD Unicorn fountain!!
I'm no dataminer, just speculation, but at 36:53, what if that fountain isn't a fountain, it's an early version of the well? Very well made video, love seeing more essay format content like this being created.
Having recently replayed Twilight Princess, it's fascinating how many cut ideas from OoT made it into that game. Castle Town with its massive walls, the bigger Kokiri Forest, and so on. I doubt that these concepts were cut just because of gameplay reasons. I bet if they had had the technology at the time, Ocarina would have been much closer to TP than what it ended up being. They really did want to create a seemingly endless world.
Shigeru Miyamoto did say in interviews that cut concepts from Ocarina of Time did make it into later Zelda games from Majora's Mask all the way to the present Zelda games on Switch.
They were betting on the disc drive version to make a definitive version of ocarina but that went under
The massive, tapered walls of the gigaleak maps feel very evocative of alttp
That was pretty much the point in tp. The full realization of what zelda 64 was intended to be originally.
Those bridges connecting a central area on the beta water temple really reminds me of TP water temple
The craziest part about all these cut and altered maps is that we had the gigaleak and then only a few months later an F-Zero prototype cartridge somehow had an early version of Zelda OoT on it so it contained a lot of early content in the dump.
Yes, what a wild timeline 😅
John Dark!
Just when I thought I'd literally seen it all, suddenly I see 45 minutes of all uncut data I have NEVER seen!!! Truly unbelievable.
Youll never see it all.
I sometimes wonder if Miyamoto and the OoT devs of the time ever watch these videos and laugh at the incorrect guesses. "They shall never know the truth."
“It’s a secret to everybody.”
“This would have been where you fought ganon”
Devs laughing in test maps
probably not
I like to think so. But knowing that Miyamoto doesn't speak very good english, i highly doubt it.
we do.
It's crazy seeing references to Team Beta Triforce. I was part of that team nearing 2 decades ago. Absolutely amazing era of beta Ocarina of Time discovery.
I really miss those days. So much mystery and hype in this new 3D world. Things just aren't that way anymore.
@@rexellate Can we not with the nostalgia wanking? You sound like a cranky old man.
This game's beta looks so fascinating. Sometimes it feels like we're watching something dreamlike.
I hope a full functioning beta is eventually found, if it exists out there somewhere.
The entirety of Oot's beta screenshots give me a very hard vybe of the concept arts of the first 3 zeldas, which had a certain aesthetic to it that I didn't see transformed into any of the 3D zelda games I've played so far (The last "main" Zelda game I played was Twilight Princess and later on A Link Between Worlds.). I have this feeling with the empty hyrule castle town (the one shown in around 1:30ish) which brings the same architectures we see in Zelda II's manual(Pages 6 and 7), and how that portal on death mountain around 17:30 feels like the entrance of a zelda II temple, as well. The larger-than-life maps that were tried and tested in several areas reminds me of certain concept arts from Alttp's manual, specifically the view of Tower of Hera on page 43, and the overview of hyrule in Zelda 1's manual, page 6. The very first Link we saw in that darknut "fmv" demo also followed the original concept arts of Link closely, along with how Hyrule Castle was once on top of a hill (similar to how the North Castle looks like in Zelda II's manual, pages 4 and 12) makes me believe they probably were trying to go for a 3D "sequel" or "spiritual successor" of Zelda 2 or at least bring the first 3D zelda game a faithful recreation of how the Zelda universe was portrayed up to that point in the original manuals.
I truly believe it was supposed to be Zelda 3, but then they decide to make YET another prequel for some reason...
Large empty levels are not difficult for the N64 to render, they were just bad designs that would get boring.
i remember reading in interview once, if it was one of the iwataasks or which interview it was specifically but i can't remember unfort. but the devs said exactly this. they started working on OOT by developing bigger more open playing fields, because that's obviously what makes sense in wanting to make something feel epic and have sense of scale, but it ultimately was kinda boring making these large environments with lots of empty running around.
@@bitroast If only they'd remembered that wisdom when making TotK.
I'd guess that many of the large spaces were conceived with the intention of filling them up somehow at a later point in development, but filling them up with lots of individual objects turned out to be impossible to render. The forest with all the individual trees is almost like a case study. It didn't even work with fog, and they wanted that sweet sunshine over Hyrule.
That last part of climbing up the tower really reminds me of walking up the final twisting staircase to fight the boss from Tower of the Gods from Wind Waker.
The reason all the fences block off specific areas was because the maps from that build were what Nintendo used as a playable demo prior to release in order to showcase gameplay. Nintendo didn’t want players to wander off too far and see areas too early on.
Yes, exactly. It's odd that he is clearly working from info from The Cutting Room Floor, and yet appears to not know a lot of the information given there. What's most interesting about the fences in that map is that they've blocked off the top left - an area that does not have anything in the release title but does have that potential entrance into Hyrule Castle in the earlier builds. Another sign they were planning something there which ultimately got cut.
@@Ashley6100 yeah, I’ve always wondered about that spot!
@@Ashley6100 The Obsessive Gamer is notorious for saying whatever he wants. Literally just grabs an idea and starts making connections and states it as fact.
Don't get me started on the use of "the beta version" being so inaccurate in every video
@@paradisealivegames2403kinda get that, if I recall correctly some of the connections he made in some videos felt wrong, I remember when he said the Saturn Sonic and tails are not used, I then stated that they were used and got a retexture in the plane level, you can see them before they get shot, (I think in tails story only but sonic might also have it)
He then said that I was wrong because he couldn't see it.
Edit: I can't find the comment, either it was on a short video or I am mixing things up.
Interesting fact
2:02 The N64 was actually more powerful than folks give it credit for- but as indicated by the fact that the gigaleak shows that almost maps are shrunk down in their final forms, bigger maps *just weren't as good.*
Just playing through the retooled beta maps, like the fairly polished beta Deku Tree shows that there's a lot of traversal without much to do.
6:42 And I think they're cut for both games in this form because it was most likely just weak content.
The OoT form of the Lost Woods especially- just look at it.
You bring up later that you struggled to run it, but we don't know your emulation setup- and we don't know theirs, but presumably there were reasons they had gotten that far with that map, and it may have run better on real hardware. But they DEFINITELY could have streamlined the mechanics and system to work if they actually thought it would have been worthwhile, because we would have seen the *gameplay* system implemented- that's the part they cared about.
Nintendo have OoT an ungodly amount of development time by the standards of this era of video games, more than enough to explore the limits of where and how they could push coding and hardware. (And it shows in how they executed the Actor handling system, which is really THE reason they were able to create Majora's Mask on the technical side of things)
They weren't just taking away content, they were curating, editing and refining what they had, both on the front end and back end of the game.
Most N64 gamrs focus on the simpler models, spaces and textures because development time was too short to troubleshoot and streamline the environments and assets. 1/4-1/2 the console's power was a general guideline, unless you were, say, making a rail-based game like a Fighter, Crash-like, or Panzer Dragoon-Like, where the polygons and player behavior was EXTREMELY predictable. And cartridges were extremely expensive.
But Nintendo were making a special exception for Zelda 64, and were living up to it, even moreso than Mario 64, which had HAD to come out so early.
The sad thing to me is that I don't think any OoT developer will EVER admit to the totally reasonable explanation that they shrunk most of the OoT maps in development (and probably most Twilight Princess maps after the WW feedback) to make the game a stronger experience, because folks in general just have it in their head that Bigger = Better, no matter what.
7:11
I'm more inclined to think this was about the UI being tailored to represent the Elemental/Spell Arrow system they had been planning. Perhaps the plain white around the bow would take a different hue for each element? It seems a little strange to me for it to be so pale otherwise
10:54 To me, this feels like the place where an antagonist would exposit some stuff, before having you fight the Iron Knuckle, possibly while they watch.
You run to catch them, but they're gone.
If this were Ganon's Castle, then perhaps it would be a place to bait you with a captured Zelda? And the lit up area would probably be some pre-Rooftop Showdown safety/rest/item-get spot, judging by general video game logic.
14:14
I never understood why people insist that these are the same dungeon, and not a test dungeon being repurposed, with the different wall textures. I'm thinking Early Ice Temple, repurposed from the test/beta/eyecatcher they made with the Triforce in it.
16:52 Turtle Rock instead of a dead Dodongo. For some reason, OoT decided that the child dungeons didn't involve enough being eaten by actual beings, so they had to make it a real head, I guess? Its the only reason I can figure that they made the change, and its a strange theme.
21:39
IIRC there's unused text about a secret entrance. It both likely explains this, and how there's that rather conspicuous unused area to the West of the Castle gates in the Final game. A later, less Gravestone-ish version also reflects the ALTTP secret entrance you use at the start of the game, in a way.
22:01 Exactly what I was talking about with the Map shrinking.
But the farm inclusion makes sense- Malon/Link was the intended OTP by the developers. They even wanted to include a Lon Lon ranch fire, where you would have Malon on Epona with you as you jumped the fence and galloped away, saving her heroically.
23:41 Looks like one of the public maps, like for E3 or Spaceworld-type events. Iirc they even have a sign that says something to that effect (In Japanese)
25:23
Using more recent textures doesn't necessarily mean anything, if the textures were replaced in the same directory before the map editing was discontinued. I'd look at the metadata instead. Even then, that's not 100% reliable.
28:43 Just to clarify, the Forest Temple is one of the earliest development settings in OoT- the rumors of them initially going for a Mario 64 setup about being set in Ganondorf's castle and going into paintings started development with the Forest Temple AS the castle. You can see early ~'96 footage from Giles Goddard playing with Portal-esque tech in the Forest Temple for some funzies.
31:47
This area is so bizarre because of the textures to me- it goes to show what the system can theoretically handle, but how janky it looks when you go mixing and matching different fidelity and color scaling levels.
37:19 To me, with the white triangle sitting over the black, I think its visually supposed to read as a grey Triforce with a black center, and a single, smaller white triangle in the middle, but from the ground, it just looks like an inverse triforce, so they had to change it.
They were probably trying to visually represent "Three mcguffins come together to give you the Power in the Temple" but it totally fell flat. Just happens sometimes, and they caught it.
41:29 The Gerudo Training Ground at one point was used as a public demonstration space- giving preview players goals was pretty standard.
Overall though, I hope I don't come off as nitpicky.
We don't actually learn new things if we all just parrot the same ideas- its EXTREMELY important to do independent examinations and come to one's own conclusions on things with the skills we have, like you have and continue to do.
I know that takes a ton of effort to go in and look at all these things by hand, especially when you get stuck in spaces, and things crash, or don't want to record and such. So kudos.
>The N64 was actually more powerful than folks give it credit for- but as indicated by the fact that the gigaleak shows that almost maps are shrunk down in their final forms, bigger maps just weren't as good.
Or, you know, they cut them because the game was moved from 64DD to N64, leaving the devs with less storage space.
Of course the original maps weren't as good as the finals. They were still pretty basic and early, so they didn't have all the polish, content and details from the final ones. That has nothing to do with map size, but simply with those being really early versions of the areas. Obviously if they had kept the large maps, they would have given them similar level of polish as the ones we got.
@@Ericss2009larger maps = more walking. Personally I think the final hyrule field is painful enough to walk through, I can only imagine how boring it would be to walk massive distances in even more areas
@@legokingcandylarger maps = more space for content and exploration
There is no reason "walking" in large maps should be boring if they're well designed and full of content. Plenty of open world games prove it.
@@Ericss2009I genuinely don't think storage space was the issue. The 64DD wasn't a massive storage format, hell, it maxed out at 64MB, which was the same size as the later batch of N64 cartridges. As far as I know, models don't take up that much space. Maybe it played a small role but I don't know that it was the defining factor. Also keep in mind that in early 1997 Miyamoto was quoted as saying that the game would be 16MB, the final game is 32MB. So it's entirely possible it was a limitation early on before they were able to use bigger cartridges.
@@clouds-rb9xt Storage was definitely an issue. Mario 64 was going to have twice as many levels but they had to cut it down to half due to its cart's storage limit. When Earthbound 64 was moved from the 64DD to 64 it was similarly cut down. That was also the reason Square, Enix and most RPG devs skipped the N64 and moved to the PS1. N64 cartridges just didn't provide enough storage for a 3d RPG with a decently-sized world.
The Ocarina of Time we got had very little unused space in its cart. To include bigger environments would have required a larger ROM, which would have been unfeasible considering that when it came out, OOT already had the largest ROM size of its time.
Miyamoto and the dev team probably underestimated how much space the final game would require when he made that statement.
The fact we all have access to such an early and different version of hyrule field is just glorious
I love the stage 1/2 stuff so much
I think watching videos about cut content is inspiring, watching this video makes me want to make a game
wow lazily clicked this not expecting actual new stuff, seeing this beta has been mythical for an age. ty for sharing
I believe I've read that the fences in the 1997 build are a remnant of when they made a tester build of the game for fans to play a short sample at an expo. They didn't want fans wandering into unfinished areas, thus, tall fences all around.
22:50 Zora's River does flow all the way from Zora's Domain to Lake Hylia in the version we got.
Pretty good video covering some of the more recent finds, btw the parts where it struggles to load in (28:04, 30:33) are likely just far clipping params (zNear/ zFar) not being setup for the map, making the camera cut off parts of the level (32:46 could play without issue, so the others probably would have been fine too)
Many of the people who analyze and preserve beta content in these old nintendo games are talented enough, I could see them getting into actual real world archeology
42:28
That's not the Spirit Medallion being grey, but the Light Medallion being white.
I think the Forest Temple ultimately having a windmill symbol is a reference to woodwind instruments. The ocarina itself is a woodwind; you even get your original cute fairy one from Saria. It's a really clever idea for a forest temple.
Behind Lord Jabu-Jabu in that open area head to the back and climb the rock and stick as high as possible, now face north. There's a weird white thing you can see. Wish someone would boundary break that area. I remember it from years ago so details can be off but it's that area.
21:29 I think this was an attempt at reusing an old cut concept from A Link to the Past where Link would've escaped Hyrule Castle by emerging from a secret tunnel underneath a grave. There are theories that the Bottom of the Well was supposed to be the sewers of Hyrule Castle, and just like in ALTTP, Link would've had to escort Princess Zelda away from the castle while its under attack by Ganondorf.
Saria's name came from Zelda 2, so I doubt they would have been intentionally changing that name during development if they were meaning to reference it.
Agreed, especially since the other sages also derived their names from the same source. (Plus Mido.)
I think the townsperson was just named Aria because it's a good name.
A lot of these beta maps heavily remind me of the game Quest 64, they all have the same feel as that game.
I like to think that they still kept the "lost woods" and used a section of it for the begining of Majora's mask. That seems to be the only place I've ever seen a huge tree area like that...
A lot of times designers showcase early concept they got from managers, this is just supposed to foster more management conversation. It's not supposed to be fleshed out. So it's not really just an evil castle.
All I could think when seeing the much bigger and open maps was, “Man, the devs must’ve been really sad when they realized that, because of the limitations of the N64, they’re entirely unable to make their visions of huge Hyrule work.”
Notice how much more fluid Link's movements are in that earlier build at 13:08 as well.
also note that in the beginning of the clip Link stopped in his tracks with visible drag on his feet and his upper torso leaning forward because of the forward momentum. god the final version lacking those physics makes it feel weightless in comparison
The best part of it was the cap physics. Those physics were actually really good, probably the 1st time such a thing was done.
@@yozora1047Even if it looks better, it might not end up feeling better depending on how it was implemented. FF14's original version had much better character animations compared to 2.0, but it came at the cost of stuff like starting/ stopping your character movement feeling really sluggish.
Although tbh I don't think OoT link moves fast enough in the final game to warrant sliding so much lol
@@yoso378 i dunno generally when a game adds weight such as gravity, air, momentum, friction, etc. it makes the game more satisfying and adds realism. for example in most hack and slashes like tales, side kh games or nier, the characters stay level in the air when doing an air combo until the combo ends. but in the main kh trilogy, dmc or even souls games, the character will slowly descend even when doing an air combo, which adds weight and realism. or in the switch games where link throws his body with the momentum of the weapons he uses, making the older 3d games look weightless in comparison.
@@rewdonaghy1305 are you one of those nonverbals?
The horse and archery "mini game" area looks to me like it was a development only level, not meant to be played in the game, but as a space to build and test horseback riding and archery itself.
At 38:10, I always found it interesting as a kid that the great fairy as adult Link was moved from where it was as child Link to be north of the castle instead. Whenever the overdump happened and this map got leaked many years later my first thought was "well shit, that explains the age old question."
The path even looks similar to the one in the final game as an adult.
Playing OoT now, I'm so glad the N64 couldn't handle so much data because this seems like a heck of a lot to explore. Just going from one area to another would've taken forever, when so many people are already walking Link backwards or sidestepping to get to places faster in the final, smaller cut.
The main reason why they downscaled the game so much was because there was a ton of space full of nothing to do because, im pretty sure the n64 could handle big vast areas like these.
I have been interested in the beta of Ocarina of Time since I first saw YuriOfWind's Gaming Mysteries video on the subject in 2010-2011 and it's still as interesting as ever! I am still hoping for more new discoveries.
nice coverage. I didn't even realize it was 45 minutes long.
21:28 The presence of the cross is interesting. Some of the early Zelda games had references to Christianity, but this basically ceased with OoT where they introduced the Hylian goddesses.
The beta Water Temple looks amazing.
During the 90s it was more mysterious to see update news from the development of a game. For ocarina of time I had to wait 1 to 3 months just to have 4 small pictures, or maybe a 30 seconds video on a video game tv program. So this made the waiting so long.
Now this days, the mystery is over, there are just to many spoilers, the new game will be released in 3 months and they already showed the intro, the first stage, the controls, even there is a demo, so when the game is released I don’t feel as mysterious as in the 90s. But if they don’t show all of this stuff, younger people seems just don’t buy the game.
37:19 That's just a big triforce, small triangle in the middle tricks the eyes
31:10 is definitely just a test map to test functions of the horse
the outdoor top of Beta Ganon's Tower reminds me of the Tower of the Gods from Wind Waker.
wow, never get tired of new finds in ocarina of time. good video!
One thing that slightly (slightly!) irked me a bit about some of your old videos was the occasional tendency to jump to conclusions about something cut when there was little evidence to support it as true or false. I notice now there's more "in my opinion, it may be..." or "some theorize...," stuff like that, which is appreciated when something is more open to interpretation. I know we're just talking obscure info on a video game, but still. Your reads in general have improved over time (not that they were ever really bad with it) and your videos in general are improved, too. In my opinion.
NICE JOB 😃
I would have actually preferred Link's animation at 6:10 where he swings the shield around as he turns around. Looks so much cooler.
I personally like to think that the beta dungeon was actually meant to be something closer to the Hyrule Castle Tower climb from A Link To The Past or Twilight Princess, seeing as it's not as dark and dirty as Ganon's Tower.
I think what you keep referring to as the N64 having a hard time rendering is just a culling mask. The developers put a draw distance limit so it wont overwhelm the N64. It COULD render the whole scene it would just start to create considerable lag after a point. However, given how flat a lot of early maps are, i doubt it would have much trouble as that would equate to relatively few polygons.
It's important to remeber the maps for stage 1 and 2 were bigger because at the time it was planeed as a 64DD release.
I have a theory about the Beta Ganon's Tower. The strange aesthetic change between the first two sets of stairs and the third one that leads to that glowing room. I think a lot of the ideas and aesthetics of the Tower of the Gods were experimented with and then shelved, and then later reused in Wind Waker. I think the glowing circle would've been a teleporter, and that the top would've had a bell. That got shelved and revamped into the Ganon's Tower in the final game. I think that map might've been a transitionary one, partway through revamping. The first and second halves are just so, so different.
This is amazing! I for one would have loved a deeper and more complex Water Temple. It's my favorite OoT dungeon and I've been laughing at people ever since release for bitching about it.
While it probably never made it past the pre-alpha drawing board, It would be hilarious if the long rumored "dating simulator" mechanic version was real, and link really did get to court the many women of Hyrule.
20:32 note the difference in the heads.
Middle is looking straight, right (of viewer screen/ stage left/ rnd lf timeline side) is facing up/looking skyward, left (stage right, towards beginning o timeline side) is looking downward and seems a bit darker shade wise. If viewed in old ass magazines/ screen shots of poor quality, this head (looking down/ sullen) is at the bsck of the room, the unicorns of sky and land locked looks are skewed towards the mouth / opening.
It is my belief, this conferred magical arrows. Fire, light and i prepose a possible dark equivalent though this is conjecture apropos nothing really. I believe this is why the very unique placed/seemingly import fairy grotto right st beginning of the stretcb leading to moblins before forest temple.
Additionally this is why ganon pupet dons a horned horset helmet. This is why the horse of light seemingly disappears after Ganon giving chase following the lost woodz/hylia recion of map after 3 stones before first time warp.
As well, this is why the spooky horned effigy statue on boat during kakariko well dungeon. I believe this dsrk arrow, became the lens of truth
This is why i think several things are though not because of why they cufently seem be.
In brief heres my thoughts/ preposition:
Ganon wounded zelda, killed impa using lance, a hesvy inversion of silver/ sacred arrows of yorr, his fatal weakness.
He commandeered the horse, forrupting it and enslaving it in death. He wounded zelda and hlinded one eye, this eyes blood flows into the water, corrrupying its purity in kind and distorting through a evil lookinglass like effdct of red and purple. This is why the red flame. I believe that the idea for the flame arrows in relation and usage in final feriges from such cincept
I think zelda presumed dead was used as s excuse for zelda to look into and take up the mantle of snd avenge the now eradicated bloodline of sheikah, seeking to keep it ali e in practice. Sye is a inversion to Ganondorf (man) but not entirely like a warped mirror/ looking glass) a brutish but flamboyant darker skinned, ill doer serving unddr fslse purposes and ideation/ design. Sporting red motif, one eye vs one mind. A smattering of three red accents of a otherwise all seeing eye adorning in sheer mesh fabric at chest vs long flowing but entirely obfuscating/blocking Crimson flows at back in robe and hair source. Essentially dealing a hand of death and living beyond natural means, destined for a greater end beyond bllldshed and false heroics.
Both stem from similar concepts but ultimately only use them to a point but never entirely championing them (Gerudo/sheikah vs Ganondorf kingdom/ vs highrule) the middle groun is the lost woods, death mountain, zora domain. Mediators, intermingling but not entirely stemming nor denying/servings from or to the divine but thesd aee the crucial missing link all higher and lowly powers ride upon. Epona is the one , like how Link, Sheik, Ganondorf are up until they link the trinity within their shared rivers flow ij life and desth within themselves. This is why the ice arrows pop up so randomly, originally i think it waa dark. Dark , fire, light. Death, life, eternity.
So..
I think this is the origin of the paintings and demon ghost ganon, his spear, his mask, his mount, sheik and impahs ends/ origin and why they appear/ interacti near/with/what or because of.
The unicorn fount, i think was at the beginning of forest temple, second lake Hylia, third kakariko well Executioner dumping reservoir, certainly element still link them in theme/ behaviors
Like oke horned charging moblins, prominent eye/bow / exploding sunbheads of magical/ deasoy bezks of light reflection and the cutting off/sacrifice of others bodies, blood and deeds for a grander scheke only viewable unddr the right but ekewed/ damaged perspective. The horse unicorn mane also seem to denote a partial covering of eye or face/ wrapping or folding thin but effective fliksy veil over omes full facd to obscure, hide or lend perspectives tailored to the design one find/often seem
Bla bla bla i have way more to say but my wording eyfks extra bad because tired and on medication
Sorry if intolerable/ poor wording
"it may have even been unfinished."
my brother, you are so deep in speculating that all the places for these things were finalized when the game was still near fully a crayon drawing. NONE OF IT WAS FINISHED??
I wonder if the grave looking thing on the side of Hyrule Castle showcased @21:31 was meant to be a Royal Family tomb/graveyard or even an early version of the Composer Brothers Sharp and Flat? I mean, with the Shadow Temple and Bottom of the Well both hinting at Hyrule’s bloody past, as well as Zelda 2 having a place called “King’s Tomb” makes me wonder if that’s what they were going for with that grave like texture.
Either that or a just shortcut from Graveyard to Hyrule Castle. Which ALTTP had the graveyard next to the Sanctuary (which had secret passage from Hyrule Castle to it)
22:39
think those rivers and canals are still conected but you cant see the conections in the map, going all the way from zora waterfall going through the castle river, until we see the river again on gerudo waterfall and ending in lake hylia
My Teenage years dream was to live in the Universe where they developed the Beta Zelda 64 all the way through and released it, so we could have had an open world Zelda since the N64 instead of the linear Zelda formula being set in place. I mean, the beta screenshots look so much COOLER to play than what we got...
The Gerudo Training Ground and fences in Hyrule Field are that way due to the F-Zero Overdump likely being the exact same cartridge used for the playable demo at Space World 1997.
The strange head inside of the beta Dodongo's Cavern actually reminds me of the recurring location/dungeon in earlier games in the series, Turtle Rock. In fact I think the giant terrapin that takes you to the Great Bay Temple in Majora's Mask is potentially a nod to it. Interesting that it might've also existed here; check out that beak and those beady eyes! Plus it being much more clearly _rock_ as opposed to fossilized bones. Ultimately the giant saurian skull was probably cooler.
Now that you mention this, Turtle Rock in Link’s Awakening heavily features lava….so it would certainly make sense if they were considering this in the early stages of development.
This was one of my favorite videos ever. So much crazy, useless, but need to know info. Thank you.
The earlier versions seem to really give more of a Link to the Past art style vibe than the unique style we got in the final product.
What a nice and comprehensive video of the gigaleaks. Well done, friend.
Amazing how many of the beta scenarios were a inspiration for Twilight Princess and SS.
Zelda devs have often mentioned in interviews that they keep scrapped concepts for future games. For a recent example, TotK's seamless sky/land exploration was something they originally wanted in Skyward Sword, but the Wii wasn't powerful enough to make it happen.
One thing I've never understood about Ocarina of Time is the fact that the Castle Market is just a rendered background. In Majora's Mask the whole of clock Town was 3D in small chunks. I wish that they had done that with OOT as well. It just always seemed odd to me. Yeah i get that with Majora they further modified the game engine and could do more, but really they could've broken up the Castle Town into little districts of houses and shops.
Personally i understand your wish for unified/ obviously connected bodies of water/and land but i would say that the body of water still does canonically skirt/ flow a similar path/reality. I believe it is underground, to service the concept of the kakariko well under acropolis/ death river ferry etc
Great video dude not often im this glued to my screen
it seems, that Hyrule Castle Town wasn't prerendered because of Technical Issues but because they made it as "PR aimed at third parties," possible as an ad for a Resident Evil Game on Nintendo... at least a translated interview at DidYouKnowGaming says that
Great vid as usual! Love this game!
damn, ive never even played ocarina of time but i love beta stuff like this, great video, keep up the good work
What ...
You should give it a try. It's very good and not too long.
You have to play Zelda ocarina of time before you die in real life
20:15 Or maybe it was just an early version of the Great Fairy fountain. I can see the Great Fairy popping out of that.
25:17 I'm pretty sure it was stated that the Fishing Pond was a late addition, after one of the devs programmed it in secret. So it's probably not that. Maybe that path would just have led to a Fairy Fountain?
One thing all those cut content and previous iterations of final content tells me is, Nintendo had a big vision, great ambitions for OOT... I would love to see what the initial vision would have been like when fully reallized...
This guys channel is actually gold and so underrated, it kinda helps give insight into developer mentality for the lore.
36:50 - That looks like a beta model of the entrance to that area of guards you have to sneak past to get to Zelda in the castle. The side water duct thing going off the fountain model really reminds me of that!
I'm pretty sure the fenced in horse/archery area with no discernable entrance or exit is a test area for riding the horse and firing the bow. The checker board patterns are a dead give-away.
It makes sense as there’s nothing else in the game that has this look to it. It stands out very much as looking like a test area.
dint see the 44 min video in my feed until right now as i write this comment. i am subbed and this is bullshit ganna love watching this, thank you for making these, also if its not there i like you being in the videos i like your humour.
12:40 thats the boss room from Ikana castle in majora's mask!!
it even make sense with the 2 stalfos in there
I get the feeling that alot of stuff on the beta rom wasnt implemented but was kept on the rom so that it could be repurposed for future projects like MM
I have seen this beta room so many times and it has never occurred to me until your comment that there similarities between this room and the Ikana castle boss room. I need to go get a better look and refresh my memory on the details but you now have me excited at the possibility!!
@@zaizen4359 from what I remember the MM version is about 50% larger (theres more room to fight in order to account for the 3rd enemy) but the 6 windows that stream in light for mirror shield use really makes me think this map was repurposed for the Ikana Castle boss fight.
That water temple and deku tree temple is the best found plus the medallions and the beta lost food and korkiri forest which the N64 VIa everdrive can work.
Top tier compilation, sir!
in the first dungeon you showed I think you would defeat the iron knuckle which would open the way to the balcony where you would then push a block off the edge and into the indent which would have a blue switch in it which would either open the way forward or reveal a chest.
The beta Dodongo head really reminds me of the weird red hooked rock formation in the Majora's Mask Goron moon trial. Specifically the upper tooth and the red coloring.
29:28 Some of the broken pillars are in one of the outdoor rooms in the final version.
"I suspect the horses were axed once Child Link was added because he wouldn't have been able to ride a horse" and then Majora's Mask would come along and go "lol nah" and just let him ride Epona anyways. Oracle of Ages and Seasons of course also briefly feature Link (who's about 12 in that one, as per tradition prior to Ocarina) riding Epona, and Four Swords Adventures, which again features a 12 year old Link, also lets him ride Epona in some stages.
The old version of Phantom Ganon's arena would indeed have been an improvement as in the current version, it's rather easy to avoid his big lightning blast for failing to peg him instead of his mirror image simply by standing off to the side all the way.
Ocarina of Time would’ve been a goofier game. Good thing they stepped up their game and made peak.
Yeah it's almost like they never made a 3D game before 🤡
i wish they made games like this again.
and they could do it over and over
Not gonna lie, the deku tree temple looks quite sick.
10:44 The balcony looks like a similar design to the first room in the castle of Super Mario 64 but with different textures. You did mention just before this that the game was based on the Super Mario 64 game engine so it would make sense.
I kinda always like to think arias town peak/spire was a more architectural allusion to doom mountain, which still (in my perspective) is a thing via deku tree/sapling bab tree
The unicorn fountain looks like a gaudy coffee table you would find in a rich person’s house in the 60s
3:09 while this one could be the pedestal where you pull the master sword but 3:22 this may be where you would put the sacred stones as the back wall kinda looks like it could open.
Cant wait for shadow of the colossus one day. its gonna be big
All of this old footage looks like DK 64 or CBFD. This is proof that Ocarina is a very polished game
Triforce cutscene is not possible (or extremely hard to make) because Link has real-time shadow effect, which isn't impossible (Ganon in final battle has it) but, not in that fast update speed, so it gas to be
A: Pre-rendered
B: Just a demo
I'm willing to bet prerendered, but not as in an FMV. They might've hade texture & model animations to mimic real-time lighting for the scene.
That indent in the ground looks more like a spot you’d push a block into. Probably to unlock a puzzle that may have been planned for this room. Then maybe the treasure chest would appear on the balcony.
This was back before “theme park dungeons” were decided on to be the go-to dungeon concept in OoT, a decision that would affect all Zelda dungeons going forward. It’s interesting to see, this is another issue I had with OoT back in the day that I didn’t know how to articulate: there are no dungeon-dungeons. Every dungeon has to be heavily themed.
i’m fairly certain Aria was named by the people who were trying to do facial animation stuff, and the name Saria comes from Zelda 2, so it would be strange for Nintendo to rename her like that
That beta Deku Tree dungeon was pretty slick; sad we missed it.
I don't know if anyone here has mentioned this yet, but the beta design of Hyrule Castle with the large central tower looks very similar to the Hyrule Castle stage in Super Smash Bros 64. Both games would have been in development around the same time and Sakurai has said that his team gets access to early content from upcoming releases to draw inspiration from for stages and characters.
The beta Hylian shield looked like a sleep lion. 😊
What is insane to me is the resemblance between the Stage 1 beta Hyrule town/castle and Twilight Princess castle town/Hyrule castle layout! :O
This is no coincidence, whoever made either/both has been following a specific vision and blueprint. So most probably, at Nintendo in someone's office there might just be an actual, official blueprint of "the one" world of Hyrule. Adding the layouts of the newer games to this seems to even confirm it. :D
Loved this video, youre a legend mate ⭐️
When you mention the Unicorn Fountain in this video, you specify at around 19:28 that it is a unique fountain separate from other fairy fountains. Some other people exploring leaked Zelda 64 content have been theorizing that it was simply a Beta fairy fountain. I’d seen some interesting videos that made this seem a very convincing idea.
However, if it is true that there are other fairy fountains present in stage 4 in development alongside this fountain, then I’m REALLY curious to know what it would have been used for. I really do hope it gets leaked someday…..Considering it took over 10 years for the gigaleak, who knows-we may yet find out when we’re all old 😂
I really love the design, and I think they should implement it in a future game-if not solely for its legendary status alone! HD Unicorn fountain!!
That lake looked more like a pond before the redo
I'm no dataminer, just speculation, but at 36:53, what if that fountain isn't a fountain, it's an early version of the well?
Very well made video, love seeing more essay format content like this being created.