The Unused Dungeons Hidden in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom! 

This was so interesting. It makes sense if they used BOTW as a base that they began development having the dungeons be in separate maps. I'm actually glad they changed that part for the final game. Still, despite how unfinished and rudimentary it is, LargeDungeonSoul does highlight the missed potential of the spirit temple. I very much enjoy the construct factory, but there is still room to have integrated some more dungeon elements in-between finishing Mineru's Construct and fighting the boss. Something more curated like this could have been more interesting to go through rather than the trek through the depths that we got in the final build. This was really fascinating though. Considering how close the geometry of the other dungeons are to the final game, I can't help but wonder how far into development it was before they decided to change the dungeons from separate zones to being seamlessly loaded into the overworld. We may never know

Wow, that Hyrule castle cutscene is Terrifying! Ganondorf just floating there, completely obscured besides his eyes in a misty blood-moon background. Super cool.

Regarding the Sprit Temple combat training, from what I recall of my playthrough, they seemed to implement most of theses concepts for the pathway from the Construct Factory to the Spirit Temple. They had different stops that contained different fuse attachments and different groups of enemies to face with those attachments.

I bet the dungeons were always intended to be part of the overworld, but they simply developed them in separate maps to make sure the dungeons worked and were well designed--they they ported them into the overworld

I think the copies of dungeons are used for testing before integration into the main map.

We're in the days where people forgot what test areas are... Like they ever actually planned for these to be in these locations

Wished they had implemented divine beast mechanics inside the floating lomei labyrinths in the sky, for example turning them upside down. They are floating! Such a missed chance.

I knew about LargeDungeonSoul, but not the other copies.

So Hyrule Castle went from being part of the world in Botw to being a seperate map in Totk beta, back to being part of the world in final Totk? Bizarre...

The Beta Spirit Temple is wild! I love seeing how they plan dungeons out.

Another weird thing about the Hyrule Castle map is that the shrine is still there, but for some reason instead of Serutabomac Shrine it's Isisim Shrine. It properly displays the shrine name on the outside and if you go inside it's like normal, and going back outside puts you at the real shrine at Death Mountain.

During early beta testing, nintendo displayed concept art for what is now Ascending, and the Recall function. But they also had an unused feature of more advanced aerial combat where Link would have been able to rotate at least 180 degrees to fire his bow during freefall.

Thanks for the video, GR! It's always great to see beta/testing areas. It makes me wonder what else might be hidden away in this game that hasn't been discovered yet!

Of course do the voids look weird and out of place. These are unfinished maps which lack the background instead of the voids. It probably would’ve included a low poly version of the surrounding area so we have the immersion that it takes place in one world. So all these maps are not complete at all

I always like to see how games are developed, I'd really want to know what else we might be missing, maybe they started making the dungeons separate from the map and later integrated them once they were more polished to decide the layout or geography around them.

Aint no way maximum hearts and maximum stamina

Zelda’s torch is used ingame, you can literally find it

The british accent is strong in this one. 💂🏼‍♀️

What if you zuggle below the ground before the lightning temple rises?

By far the most fascinating thing about this was finding out that the cutscenes weren't pre-rendered videos. I had no idea it was all being constructed on the spot, the alternate cutscene looked really cool yeah, but frankly I'm surprised they went that route in terms of loading it, I feel like it must be a little more efficient to just animate a few cutscenes as custom filmed animations no?

5:17 if you fuse a star piece onto any rod type, which would shoot out three it will shoot out light beams so you can see

6:21 there is some glitchy textures on a sky island in and around the Elden region. It’s kind of funny to see it.

I imagine these maps were all just ways to test the dungeons, and that they aren't really indicative of Nintendo originally meaning to cut them off from the overworld or anything.

The construct dungeon thing makes sense to be scrapped because one the depths is practically the obstacle course to those gimmicks aren’t really used often anyways so what’s the point?

oh hell yeah I'm totally expecting LargeDungeonSoul to be in the video hehe

great job covering all this, interesting points (:

Very interesting. I'd love to see a basic tutorial on how you found and accessed those.

I'm pretty sure the dungeons are in their own maps not because they were using Breath of the Wild as a template but for testing purposes. Easier for devs to test dungeon stuff In their own enclosure rather than having to accommodate every change to the rest of the map. Which is why the Spirit Temple looks like that. It's not like the Spirit temple was bigger than it was in development. It's more like the whole trek to the spirit temple in the depths is part of the dungeon as well and what we see is the developers testing that part of the game in its own map before integrating it to the rest of the open world.

The one mod I'd love to have for this game is to remove the "you can't go any farther" walls. This was a very interesting video! I love unused and beta content!

I agree with what others have said about them only being separate maps for testing purposes. It would not be efficient to have them be in the overworld until they are mostly finalized.

This is definitely a dumb question, but why are the dungeons in the source code listed with English names? Does Nintendo (and other non-english developers) code in their non-native tongue? Or is it translated in post? Kind of a silly question but it's always intrigued me Also great video :)

21:05 two minerus?

If I’m correct wasn’t there an unused shrine in the golden sky area?

This is great stuff ❤️❤️❤️

I think the dungeons should have been on separate maps tbh, it means you can get more detailed and it can give you more room. The dungeons definitely could have used having more room.

Definitely interesting but there isn't much different at all really. These must be from very late in development.

I'm pretty sure these are just the build maps for the dungeons before they importing them into the overworld. Because it would be honestly stupid to design the dungeons in the overworld. The same flags get triggered because it's literally the same levels. With the only tweaks are item drops and enemies.

4:35 nuh uh I did fire first

Please do an expose on The Lost Woods ! So many mysteries

Very interesting.

Great video, would be great if you find a method for obtain infinite hearts and stamina

EDIT: This was false, you might still find it interesting though. So, first of all, this is incredibly interesting stuff. I have a different interpretation of what you showed here, though. The dungeons look to me like they might actually be the FINAL versions of the dungeons in question, rather than unused or beta content. Based on what you showed, it seems like the geometry is all there, and the actors too - but the actors are inexplicably ignoring some of their parameters (enemies all being their most basic form, chests having what seems to be a default item). I am thinking that this may be a bug that just happens because the maps are not intended to be loaded directly, and are instead supposed to be automatically "embedded" within the main field or depths. This could be tested in a couple ways: 1) checking whether the game data itself has the proper enemy parameters, chest contents, etc; 2) checking whether or not the actor definitions are duplicated in the main field or only in the LargeDungeons; or 3) actually deleting some of the LargeDungeon data and seeing whether it affects the dungeon on the main map or not. Of course even if I'm right, the Spirit Temple is very clearly an exception to what I'm saying, being blatantly different from what actually appears in the final game (being apparently replaced by a walk through the depths themselves). That one seems accurate to describe as an unused dungeon for sure.

Cool Video!

Nintendo has made great Zelda titles for the switch but still missed the mark. We NEED true dungeons and bosses back. We need items again and not abilities, and we need actual challenging fights for the bosses not hack n slash like BOTW/TOTK

Im sorry but the accent caught me way off gaurd

These dungeons look way better than what we got, thanks for making me more salty

Bro I have no idea what the fuck you are saying