Indeed and its still quite fascinating to many of us. I've been looking into OOT Beta since 2003 myself which just goes to show.

Yeah it definitely is one of he strangest temples we have. Its history, its boss, heck it's name even changing at least twice (Hyrule Castle ->Wind Temple -> Forest Temple). It surviving at all is an amazing feat imo

@@TheObsessiveGamer Well, if you spent a lot of time creating complex structures and assets you wouldn't want them to go to waste, I can imagine. You would want to use the things you created in ANY way possible.They could have repurposed the structures for a variety of different locations across the game, to a point where different areas of the castle are completely disassembled and changed beyond recognition. But for almost the entire time of development from here they basically kept the castle intact for the most part, it seems. They just changed the location and turned it into its own dungeon. Mad respect for the amount of research and effort you put into your cut content videos. They have all been fascinating so far.

All the adult Link temples feel different from the 3 dungeons you play through as child Link. To me, the temples feel like real dungeons from a Zelda game that one would expect. But it's neat to play the three child Link dungeons as they are all inside living creatures (Inside the Great Deku Tree, Dodongo's Cavern being sort of inside the remains of a giant monster when you walk into the giant skull, and of course inside Jabu Jabu..) I wonder if the smaller child dungeons were planned to be in the same painting worlds as the temples or if they simply didn't exist in the earliest stage of development? I mean the Deku Tree was probably planned at the start because of the similarities between that and Super Mario 64's Bobomb Battlefield, but there's also the early entrance to the Forest Temple indicating that the forest already had it's own dungeon in mind. I have to wonder then if not only were portals used to get around faster, but also paintings? For instance, you could enter a painting in the castle and end up clear across the map of Hyrule? I then have to wonder when these teleporting abilities would become available to you? Right away at the start, or later on when you've explored more of Hyrule and need to get around faster like when you are able to ride a horse? Miyamoto had a crazy idea about Link aging naturally throughout the game from child to adult. I think that it might have to do more with each dungeon/temple you cleared as having Link grow normally sounds way too complicated and time consuming for the player to just wait for Link to get taller in real time. lol Like every dungeon would equal one year or something. Ganondorf would transform gradually too which would have been way too cool. That would explain why in early concept art we see Ganondorf hiding his face behind a veil. Maybe to fool the king of Hyrule? I can imagine the reveal being a big twist on par with the Gerudo guards being in the Iron Knuckle armor. Perhaps Ganondorf going after the power of the Triforce is what warped him? If the goddess of Power was evil and influenced the holder of it, what if the more time Ganondorf spends with it, the more he transforms? That would also mean the same for Link and Zelda and their respective Triforce pieces. Zelda would gradually become more wise and Link more courageous. But I also wonder if Zelda was always going to be Shiek? Was Shiek even involved when you already had Impa? I would still keep Zelda as Shiek because you have all 3 of them changing by the end of the game with big reveals. Link becoming the Hero he was always destined to become, Zelda being revealed as Shiek all along, and Ganondorf becoming Ganon.

@Ik That needs to be a movie right now.

@@SgtSega tldr

ikr? the live reactions to it were just as amazing

Indeed! Thought i'd be done with OoT for a bit but here we are again lol

I did take a month still but that was cause I was thinking about how to cover this lol glad I found a way

While I agree with the reflection part, the only reason I did say the other sides could lead to something else is cause Goddard himself said when the crystal spun it would let you go to the other rooms that appear on it. Thus why I said it could be either a reflection or another room all together. The infinite hallway however I don't know if it was for experiment purposes. This was a map he got from the Zelda team meaning that they may have made this hall function just like that. Especially noteworthy to point out that since it was being developed simultaneously with Super Mario 64, the Zelda team was trying the same trick here too before they gave their map to Goddard. Also Goddard mentioned what he experimented on, and the infinite hallway wasn't on that list, so I am theorizing this was done by the Zelda team. Also OOT's final game already breaks immersion like that when you throw a bomb in a bottomless pit and still can see it.

@@TheObsessiveGamer I'd argue that the hallway is entirely too similar to the crystal teleports in function (since those could just show an image of the end location and then just teleport your XYZ coordinates there) to claim it was unrelated. In Mario 64, the staircase is at an angle and shrouded in a bit of black fog (so it's harder to see the end), while here you can literally see it going on for what seems like forever. So maybe he just didn't mention it because he forgot or because it seemed obvious that it was part of the experimentation. There's also a difference between a bottomless pit that you can throw bombs down (which is more of a technical necessity), and a hallway whose sole purpose is to appear endless. The first can be ignored by the player because it really doesn't matter, the second one is focused on a magic trick practically begging to be discovered. The effect also worked in Mario 64 because there's no way to really ruin the effect unless you know how to pull BLJs off (which no child at the time could do outright), while shooting an arrow is the first and easiest thing you could do (it's literally what I thought of doing when I saw this). Either way, I am sure this was never meant to be in the game, or if it was, then they probably quickly scrapped it after realizing just how quickly this could be ruined by doing exactly that.

@@GermanPeter Goddard however had so control over the layout of the map, so he couldn't make the infinite hallway himself. He only programs not design maps. Also it doesn't matter if there is fog at the end or not here, it wasn't done yet. Heck the beta Forest Temple is missing a lot of fog on its own as its not complete either. I think it is more an extension of the Mario 64 similarities considering the team was already bringing a lot of what they did with Mario 64 into the game (spiralling dungeon, Castle Hub World, etc) A bottomless pit is supposed to look endless too, but technical limitations prevent that and they would here too if it got in. It infact might be the very reason they got rid of it once they programmed in a bow, which is very possible wasn't in yet in 1995. Goddard said he only did 4 experimentations: Portals, Light mapping, Lighting effects with a light gun, and Reflections in the water. He was very specific and I think he'd mention if he did that and none of these altered the map either like an infinite hallway would.

@@TheObsessiveGamer I think you misunderstand. The fog had nothing to do with what I meant, I just wanted to explain the differences between the effect in Mario 64 (where you can physically walk up the stairs that are shrouded in fog, hiding the fact they teleport you back) versus how I theorize this effect works here in Zelda (which is instead projecting a different part of the level on screen that you can't physically get to). The crystals effect can very likely work the same way as the hallway effect (e.g. just rendering a different part of the level as an "image" that you can approach), meaning the hallway doesn't have to be part of any level geometry. So just because he's not a level designer doesn't dispute this. The effect could literally exist on the side of a wall, like the portals from Portal. Those have nothing to do with level design either. I mean, how else do you think the crystal works? The levels don't physically exist within the crystal, a rendering of them just gets projected onto them. Imagine a reflection on water (which he worked on, after all), just the water is on the wall and when you approach the reflection, it teleports you to a different room that looks just like the reflection.

@@GermanPeter While yes both are a type of warp with the crystal opening up an entrance that lets you seamlessly get to another part of the map intentionally and the infinite hallway moving you by itself without any seamless structure. However considering that hallway also looks to lead to nothing, I do think this was the Zelda teams intention too. It's literally pitch black at the end like the Mario 64 one. This had to have been a Zelda team decision and if Goddard was showing this on purpose to say he did something like this, i'd think he'd have mentioned it. And again.. this is way too similar to the Mario 64 one to just be a coincidence of both of them doing the exact same thing

his quite literally proves an old theory that's been dry of info for a while... someone on the internet had theorized that the forest temple was supposedly the original hyrule castle, but not in a development sense, in the actual history of hyrule. so I guess this is the closest we'll ever get to a real answer to the question of what the OoT temples were actually used for by the characters in hyrule (others such as the temple of time being a chapel and the fire temple being a... prison?)

I imagine he is a very organized person for still even having this, so I imagine he might have those too. Though for legal reasons I imagine he can't share those.

Indeed. It's why this 38 second clip even got a whole video just dedicated to it with how much was there.

Yeah! Though this wasn't from the Gigaleak.

@@TheObsessiveGamer Oh I know but I’m almost certain that things like this wouldn’t have been found had it not been for the leak.

@@RondoOfBloodX Well true. It did spring interest again in beta Zelda, so maybe quite responsible lol

kinda humorous how slapped on the vines and other overgrowth seems now that we know the full story

He probably got copywrite struck singing that and thus we only got his Phantom :P

Amazing how we finally have one theory proven.

@Lame Name In the May 2021 interview with MinMaxx he said it was Hyrule Castle

Thats fucking sick kinda like the promotional image for Alttp

Glad you enjoy these! Got plenty more planned

@@TheObsessiveGamer 😱🤯

Thank you! Got plenty more planned too!

Still amazes me how my one little video led to such a revelation. Feels like I accomplished a silent major goal of this channel lol

Thank you! hope you enjoy it into 2022 and beyond too! :)

Well I mean if you think about it, it kinda is as bizarre as Peach's Castle which never looked that complete either.

You prefer the water temple over this?

to be fair the Water Temple is my favourite Temple in the game with the Forest tied second with Fire

@@TheObsessiveGamer The atmosphere is nice sure, but pausing and unpausing constantly is so annoying.

Yeah possibly. The only reason I considered otherwise is cause Goddard said when you spin the crystal you see other locations to walk into.

i see a face in it tbh so im guessing reflection

@@TheObsessiveGamer Maybe Sword slashes would "Spin" the crystal and change what is shown

Guess a long time theory finally solved eh?

specifically obsessing over the gaming kind :P

Well we'd first need the source data released of course lol

@@TheObsessiveGamer The game was recently 100% reverse engineered. They have to do a small amount of cleanup but it is all there. No need for the source code now.

@@darklink4160 oh you mean to literally recreate this in that? I mean yeah that can be done now. We just don't know what the rest of that first build looked or functioned like

@@TheObsessiveGamer We don't know that much about it yet but from your video it sounds like he still has that build. I can still hope he drops more content for us. Sounds like he might considering how easily he gave up that clip.

@@darklink4160 I think he gave up what is safe. As he told me personally he showed what could be built with tools available now. Anything more might have the Nintendo Ninja's at his Kyoto doorsteps lol

James Lambert has been working on exactly this for a while now 👀

To think this was once a truly "lost" build

Would be fitting considering that's how you get to final Bowser

Sky Temple is a myth. No proof ever existed for its existence. Just wishful thinking. Ice Temple has some evidence in the form of the medallion and dungeon name still be there as well as the Ice Cavern seemingly having some beta content (check my Cut Dungeon video on it). Forest Temple... exists unless you meant Wind? which was just the beta name of the Forest Temple.

A bit too stonelike for me to think of it as a mansion (especially the courtyard)

What do you mean?

@@TheObsessiveGamer What would be the layout of Hyrule Castle in the final version look like if it were kept to make it a hub world?

Definitely. Though this demo here was done with N64 specs in mind

@@TheObsessiveGamer I imagine the FPS view also came from the original idea from Miyamoto wanting it in the game.

I would hope but I doubt we can get more due to legal reasons

Thanks! I mean if the hub world was a dungeon on its own like this Hyrule Castle/Forest Temple was, it would have been really neat

Sounds like a Sitar/Setar. Popular string instrument in South Asia and Iran

@@TheObsessiveGamer omg thanks!!! 🙏

I think the problem is that Goddard never presented his portal idea to the Zelda team, thus to them it basically never existed and may not return to it. However... I do hope they return to it still one day.

I don't think he stayed on for THAT long to know much about Unicorn Fountain. I do want to talk to him though but it seems he has messaging via Twitter off which is usually my means of talking one-on-one with someone the world

Yeah I presume that is the case due to legal reasons

300?

Maybe :P

Yeah I’m pretty sure I read nearly a decade ago that they used Ocarina of Time in their original tech demo for Portal.

While I'd always appreciate any assistance I can get, I can't exactly pay people, which is why it is more or less a solo venture to do all these. Appreciate the thought though

@@TheObsessiveGamer​ Knowing her, she probably wouldn't mind doing it for free. She cares a lot about preservation. Legit this one game, Subnautica. She is obsessed with that game's history, especially the prototypes for it. However, I do understand wanting to do things solo, and I am pretty sure she would also understand, as she does a lot of things on her own most of the time. Also now that I think about it she is usually really busy with stuff such as a few games she is working on and her school, so I dunno if she would have the time for this. (Though to be fair I have no idea what the status is on that stuff atm soooo yeah) Glad I could try to help out! Have an amazing day!

@@amoose5141 well I am open if she wishes to message to do some research. She'd get full credit for whatever episode we'd do work on. Let her know she wishes to, she can message me on Twitter

lol, how is it supposed to be pronounced? I've seen a few videos on him and everyone seems to pronounce it differently, so i'm pretty confused myself lol Anyways thanks!

@@TheObsessiveGamer Jye-ulz Gaw-derd! You're pronouncing his first name correctly! For the longest time I thought it was "guy-ulz", haha! I really love these Zelda videos of yours!

Ooh just saw. Really like what you did with the Iron Knuckle and Link there

Yes I did need to considering it was analyzing it and there was alot to go through since it told us a lot. I made no clickbait. I said it was an analysis afterall and nothing more

Ok don’t spam it