The Beta Hyrule in Zelda The Wind Waker | Cut Content

The three shiny Doritos that Ganondorf wants is something.

That beta concept for going between Hyrule and the Great Sea may have been inspiration for traveling between land and sky in Skyward Sword.

5:30 is literally the path to the Sacred Grove in Twilight Princess. Same scale of the trees, same kind of platforms, same aesthetic of roots on cliffs, etc. Nice.

I like how wind waker made Hyrule but it's sad to know we could a gotten so much more and even explore the damn place

bro ganon’s tower being in a desert makes a lot of sense since he originated from The gerudo, a tribe dwelling in the deserts

Really great video! You've been putting out some bangers recently. I agree with everything you said here and have some additional thoughts surfacing! 4:45 the castle with the moon, look at the sky. It's drawn with wavy lines running all across it behind the moon indicating to me that it is in fact underwater and the moon is shining through. It'd be closer to the surface being that high on a cliff allowing the moon to be seen. The presense of the full moon and ghostly flames lining the stairs makes me believe this location might've acted like the ghost ship but down in hyrule. 4:55 the (what I assume is a) wandering trader is wearing a similar hat and bag to the gorons in the final. My theory is that Stovepipe Island was the original home of the gorons considering the hot springs iconography and doodle on the page. When both concepts were scrapped they were combined and repurposed. The gerudo desert is so interesting to me because it implies desert enemies, the only of which we have is a boss and his minions. I wonder if the small moldugas have any sort of left over AI for spawning or acting independently of the boss to indicate they'd appear on their own? The desert was definitely meant to be traversable and seemingly the lead up to the final dungeon so I could see the molduga boss battle originally taking place here too. I always thought it felt off in the original dungeon. Also it's just crazy to me they were actually planning a whole Hyrule. I bet you're right and the original plan was: first 3 dungeons would be the sages, 4th was tower of gods to unlock Hyrule, then 5-7 would be the sages temples and 8 would be Ganon's Tower in the desert. You'd go collect the sage, bring them to the warp at tower of gods down to Hyrule and travel across Hyrule with them, using their powers, to their temple. Clear the temple, exit at surface entrance ready to get next sage. I can't wait until early versions of Wind Waker leak one day with some remnants of this development period left!

Awesome video, man! The underwater Hyrule has always been so damn fascinating to me, it makes me wish Windwaker would get a remake so they could add more of underwater Hyrule. Maybe using those concept arts you mentioned.

If I were rich, I'd pay Nintendo just to make an extended Wind Waker version with all the dismissed ideas.

If they rebuilt the game from the ground up, we could definitely get the full idea today.

If that vast desert was going to be traversable, there would have to be a horse or vehicle used to traverse such a vast landscape. I’d propose having the Gerudo Desert be traversable by boat just like how Link does on the surface. The lore explanation would be that the desert sands have become a viscous quicksand (either through the flood or “evil Ganondorf magic”) which makes travel by foot impossible, but is sailable by boat using the winds. Still, there would HAVE to be something else to find and do out in the desert other than go straight to Ganondorf’s tower. And if there aren’t any little islands, caves, treasures, etc. to find out there, then the desert itself becomes a gigantic waste of time.

Imagine being able to explore an ruined Hyrule, still Wind Waker is fantastic

Is shame we can’t explore Hyrule in the final game

5:50 I don't know how no one mentioned this but this roughly became the way to the Sacred Grove in Twilight Princess And while not 1:1 the same, the Desert and Hyrule map have a slightly similar layout. So the Hyrule Layout might have been copied and changed for the Desert map.

Imagine if they made a Wind Waker remake for the switch, but they were given, like, 5 years to make it and added all of the scrapped dungeons and ideas that were removed due to time restraints! That would be amazing

Three shiny Daritos is amazing

Wind Waker is so good despite being rushed that it makes me think that the world couldn't handle a fully-realized WW

As we know WW was rushed in the develop that’s why ichthusk was destroyed and jaboon hided in prologia and that’s why they made the tremendous triforce searching quest at the end of the game. I think that this is also the reason why they skipped the path through the dessert to Ganons tower. They likely hadn’t enough time to finish so they just cut the way at the cave entrance. But I’m not sure if they wanted to make a whole Hyrule under the sea that you could travel.

The series did always have something of a recurring affinity for duality in map structure, going back to stuff like the light/dark world from ALTTP, the time travel mechanics in OOT, or Labrynna and Holodrum. Plans existing for a more fully featured Hyrule would be intuitive!

Not even Hyrule castle itself is fully explorable as it has unused stairs on both sides

6:23 I never knew the final battle took place there. Thanks for all this insight!