I'd like to dedicate this episodes to my subscribers here who brought to my attention before about the importance of Stovepipe Island. Back when I made my Beta Dungeons video, I had not really considered it as much but upon closer inspection it just made so much sense to also be a major contender. You guys are amazing!

Sometimes you have to wonder how much of a masterpiece Wind Waker and Mario Sunshine could've been if they weren't rushed out so the GameCube would have more titles.

You're forgetting about Phantom Hourglass on the DS, which is basically ALL the ideas they couldn't implement into Wind Waker (including better ship combat). That one also includes a volcano island, as well as the Ghost Ship. I think that one was the other cut dungeon from Wind Waker. It makes the most sense, as the Ghost Ship feels incredibly rushed in the final game, being only a small combat arena. It's also possible the sand ship from Skyward Sword took some elements from the WW Ghost Ship.

If you look at the Gorons within the goron mines... they have have stove pipes/smoke stacks coming out of their heads like in the 'wind waker goron' doodle you were showing :D

I also believe that the Stovepipe Island was the island for gorons. In the concept art you can see a hot spring lake. In Twilight Princess there are hot springs in Death Mountain: also reused.

Dragon Roost is probably a perfect introduction to Wind Waker dungeons... but it's fun to imagine a "late game" version of Dragon Roost... your theory that the 'Goron' dungeon appearing earlier in the game feels spot on. Great stuff, Obsessive Gamer!

_Wind Waker_ should’ve had a Goron Island with a Water Dungeon tied to it… in _Majora’s Mask,_ Goron Link drowns in water… but in _Twilight Princess_ we see a Goron just hanging out under water for half the game… so I’m gonna go with the fact that Gorons _can_ breath under water, or hold their breath indefinitely 🤷🏻‍♂️

I feel there is more than meets the eye with ice ring island, yes it could have been just a reference to the ice cavern from ocarina of time. But I think it could have been one of these two scrapped dungeons. Think about this, if greatfish island was fleshed out and had a character who was the third sage, what matches well with water? Ice of course! And if we assume that the original intention was for dragon roost to be stovepipe island, then that would make sense on why the sage of earth is from that island, because they were a goron originally, not a rito

Something to consider is that if you shoot an ice arrow into any section of lava, it causes the lava to cool into one of those temporary rock platforms that appear the same way when you throw a water jug. As far as I'm aware, this gameplay mechanic is _never_ necessitated in-game. But it may have been an essential puzzle in a cut fire dungeon, with the ice arrows acting as one of its key items.

I believe the town could have been kakariko village, it does kinda remind me of twilight princess kakariko village because of how the buildings are positioned

If Twilight Princess was developed off of the Wind Waker engine, wouldn’t it have been easy for the developers to reuse the cut assets from the cut dungeons and place them in Twilight Princess?

I recently binged your whole Zelda cut content series and I loved it. You must have put a lot of work in it so thanks a lot for it. Im eagerly waiting for Twilight Princess!!

Sidenote, but the facial expressions of Link and the NPCs in the concept notes are hilarious. Good video as always!

If you look at the village on Stove Pipe Island concept art it looks like Kakariko Village from Twilight Princess. So I think it is far to say that the Goron Mines was meant for Wind Waker.

I always look forward to your wind waker videos. Something about playing this game screamed there was a lot of cut content and watching them confimed them

I personally think that water dungeon was for the middle of getting the 3 pearls but the volcano one i believe is was more like a early version of dragon roots island and fire mountain and you forget to mention that the triforce was a replacement of that missing dungeon too

That chainsmoking goron has some serious shopkeeper vibes

Wind Waker always felt incomplete to me, especially without a Water dungeon in an ocean 💀 It's still one of my favorites, but it probably would've been amazing with those 2 cut dungeons. I love Water so it really made me upset to not see one in WW. A third sage also felt missing with the Stovepipe Island temple probably

I love beta content. Great work!! Stove pipe island 🏝️

2:32 that thing looks very like one of the Goron Elders from Twilight Princess

Another great video on what is still my all-time favorite Zelda game!

easy retcon for the zora/rito thing is that Medli's ancestor fell in love with a rito and the zora part of her bloodline faded over time

I like mechanical levels so it would’ve been cool to play a steampunk-ish dungeon but the Goron Mines are great!

One of the gorons in Twilight Princess has steam coming out of him like in the concept art. Also one of the cut dungeons may have appeared in Phantom Hourglass.

I think the whole Rito/Zora thing can be explained. There was hints somewhere that there are multiple "domains" of Zoras. I just watched a video on here about this recently, can't remember who uploaded it. Maybe one such domain of Zoras ended up evolving into the Rito, whereas the other domains remained as Zoras.

1:26 Did they really write in English for these concept sheets? I would have expected Japanese text.

Great video, as always. Now, I know that there were more Wind Waker videos, but they seem to have been delisted. I wonder why?

this wasnt in my feed for 3 days. happens a lot with some channels right now

I'm upset I didn't get the notification for when this video was uploaded

You missed a strong piece of evidence pointing towards the Goron mines of Twilight Prince, being from Stovepipe island. One of the Goron Elders you meet in the mines has little volcanic craters that are constantly giving off smoke kinda like that concept art.

I could see stovepipe island and whatever the zora temples dungeons being accessible via the hyrule field and you have to do them before entering Ganons tower; it always felt weird to me that you just re fought the other bosses before getting to puppet gannon instead of having something unique... also going through the desert and fighting through ganons tower could of been much expanded, that would be such a contrast compared to the rest of the game. There you would have to fight fire and ice types and just hordes of enemies to get up through the tower to puppet ganon and it would be more of a proper temple

I hope some day we're able to decompile the other games and port them to PC natively like what was done with OoT. It would be awesome if someone then mods WW for a beta recreation that imports these maps from the other games back into Wind Waker and reskins them with the Wind Waker art style. Nintendo would never do it because it wouldn't make sense for them to reuse entire dungeons, but the niche community online that loves this beta stuff would love re-exploring the same things in the original intended context.

Underrated channel

When this game originally came out, even way back when... It felt rushed and lackluster when it came to content. Had amazing atmosphere and I still enjoyed it but it is a shame to think what it could have been with more islands/towns/dungeons and less just empty open Ocean.

I thought for a while that Stovepipe Island might be where the Gorons ended up after the flood, possibly growing chimneys on their bodies to adapt to their environment. It would explain why Gorons appear randomly and why they later reappear properly in Phantom Hourglass.

I noticed how the music in the Goron Mines sort of sounds like a slowed version of the Illusion Room in Ganon’s Tower Wind Waker. I wonder if this could be a small piece of evidence of the Goron dungeon originally in WW? And I can see the resemblance of Stove Pipe map in Twilight Princess Death Mountain with Kakariko Village at the base and the hot springs up on the mountain.

_Wind Waker’s_ unfinishedness hurts me so much.

if the Goron Mines are a cut WW idea alongside the Lakebed Temple (which I'm starting to believe tbh) then we do have a better idea of what the Water Boots could do in theory, maybe not full on movement underwater, but something similar that functio only within the scrapped dungeon unlike the Zora Armor from TP which could be used anywhere.

I'm largely on board but I don't think that Stovepipe Island was supposed to be where Dragon Roost is. Rather I think Birds Peak Rock replaced where Stovepipe Island should be.

Pleeease if they ever release this game again they really should add those two other dungeons, I always felt like the game was too short

I suspect one of the cut dungeons was supposed to be hyrule castle. This is because very little items are required to progress just the claw shot and the bow while the claw shot isn’t in wind waker it could easily be substituted with the hook shot. And the abundance of darknuts which were common in the castle in wind waker Sorry if this came of a little rambly I’m not good with explaining ideas

3:45 I never knew this! Thanks!

It's such a shame that we could have had an almost tears of the kingdom underground type thing with Wind waker and all the other content that got cut. I still love Wind waker a great deal but if it could have had more development time it could have potentially surpassed ocarina of time greatness

It's been long established - for over a decade or two, no less - that the Rito from TWW (regardless of any possible relation to the ones from BOTW/TOTK, if they're even related at all) evolved from the Zora due to the divine intervention of the goddesses themselves. This either occurred directly, or as an indirect response due to the unnatural water of the Great Sea being uninhabitable for the Zora (recall that it's pointed out on more than one occasion - and even at one point by Ganon himself - throughout the game that regular, catchable fish are either sparse or outright non-existent). I'm really not sure why people still struggle and pull mental gymnastics with and over this to this very day because it's absolutely not that complicated or deep in the slightest. I also don't think it's a stretch to think that the Rito were always intended to evolve from the Zora either, especially when taking into consideration that the Kokiri became the Koroks and that even numerous enemies seen in OOT have descendants that've evolved differently over time from them (e.g the Boko Babas evolved from the Deku Babas, the Magtails likely evolved from the Tektites, etc.). I believe their intention was to make TWW feel very similar to OOT in many ways (much like they'd later do with TP), while also feeling very "exotic" when compared to it because of the introduction and effects of the Great Sea. This would've made it feel like a greater amount of time has passed since OOT while still heavily tying the game into it, and the fact that Link was seemingly supposed to age gradually also fits this idea rather nicely and pushes a more natural passage of time compared to the time travel seen in OOT. The Gorons being left unchanged and so few in number on top of it I think points towards the possibility that they were originally supposed to have a lager role alongside the Kokiri/Koroks and Zora/Rito. That, and they would've likely also "evolved" into a new race as those two races did (albeit perhaps with less dramatic or notable changes from the Gorons themselves), thus becoming the "smoke pipe" race that was meant to inhabit Stovepipe Island before it was ultimately cut. Nintendo still desired to have the Gorons present in the game, however, so we were just given three unchanged ones with no relevance to the main story as a compromise so as to still have all three major races introduced in OOT present (barring the Gerudo, and I guess the Sheikah as well). This would explain why they're the only ones left unchanged without a home or dungeon of their own. Goron Mines in TP is likely and largely based off of Stovepipe and its cut dungeon, with even some of the Gorons being inspired by the cut descendant race they were meant to have in TWW as a means of paying homage to them (hence why some of them have literal organic smoke pipes on their bodies). Afterwards I feel like it turned into somewhat of a gag/inside joke to keep the Gorons relatively the same in every game they appear in regardless of how much or how little the other races around them change. lmao I'm certainly willing to believe that the Rito may have original been under the care of Jabun, however, and therefore may have been moved from Greatfish Isle to Dragon Roost in the final game. TL;DR: Rito evolving from the Zora is not at all complicated, has been explained, and is in line with other things we see have changed since the events of OOT in the final game. Gorons were likely meant to evolve like their sister OOT races, but the game being rushed left us with three unchanged ones with zero plot relevence. Gorons Mines and certain Goron designs in TP are based off of Stovepipe Island, its dungeon, and the descendant Goron race that were all cut from TWW.

I think the gorons smoking was going to be a plot thing about them having an addiction. Kind of like in tears of the kingdom. The industrial theme would be about pollution coming from the mines. It probably got scrapped because it didn't fit the game overall.

Honestly, not mad at all. I love the mines and lakebed temple!

Does anyone know the song at the start? It sounds like the Great sea theme but then changes to the main zelda theme. I can't seem to find it

Everyone likes tobacco lmao

Twilight has a goron elder that has smoke coming out of them. 🙂

I wonder if the modding community could add in Stovepipe alongside the other removed dungeons in Wind Waker.

I have the answer to 2:52 Remember the old Gordon’s that had the key peaces in twilight princess

It would be awesome if future HD remakes did include cut content, not just Wind Waker but other games too, like what if Ocarina of Time did add the Wind Temple? Maybe as to not interfere with the story it is unlocked after beating the game? I don't know just a thought Hyrule Historia is full of great ideas that weren't used in their respective games, some of the Divine Beast BOTW designs were mind blowing and incredible would've Loved them to be DLC

I always thought Gorons as nomad traders was a moronic idea. Gorons can't live or travel underwater. They should have been sedentary in wind waker. Still, I liked that idea better than all of TOK or BOW.

"Goron-infested" 💀

I really hope we get a chance to step away from BoTW soon, because the Wind Waker timeline has always been more interesting to me with how it expands on the future of Hyrule and the world.

I still wish if they released a fixed completed wind waker instead of a remastered

This game was so good!

9:41 " the introduction of doritos"

definitely sounds like they reused some concepts for TP

Isn’t it obvious that the Great Valoo might have driven away the gorons and granted the Zora their wings. Gorons may have been scared away because of the dragon Volvagia

Oh. OH. OOOOOOOHH!!

😀 - Nice!

Cubegame

Wind waker is better than totk