Part II - The Story And Its Evolution

Much of what we know about the early periods of development was gathered from multiple articles, several websites, and some of the interviews we could find. As of such, it's not going to be 100% accurate, but we feel this is probably about as close to the true history of the story as we can get.

A child from the forest is summoned by the Great Deku Tree and is told that he has been cursed by an evil dark man known as Ganondorf. The child manages to break the curse, but Ganondorf has begun to affect other parts of Hyrule as well, and so the Deku Tree bids him to rid the land of this malevolent force. The evil force lay within several dungeons, and each one was cleansed by the child until all of Hyrule was freed from Ganondorf's touch. The child then went to Ganondorf's castle, where he took the Master Sword and destroyed the source of this evil once and for all.

The original version of this story is actually quite similar to our own, although it lacked the traveling through time or the extra races (Kokiri, Goron, and Zora). There also were significantly different dungeons, with only a couple bearing any resemblance to the ones we have now.

Lost Woods	Hyrule Market Town	Death Mountain
Lake Hylia	Hall of Time	Hyrule/Ganon's Castle
Stalfos Dungeon	Dodongo Dungeon	Skulltula Dungeon

We don't know a great deal of what happened during this point of development, although numerous interviews and an analysis of the screenshots does provide some information. We know that the Hall of Time (which we now call the Temple of Time) originally only held the Master Sword and did not use Spiritual Stones or any other kind of seal. There was also no time-traveling involved in the game, despite the name. There were three dungeons (possibly five), each of them drastically different and bearing little to no resemblance to the dungeons in the final game.
Of the world itself, things were very stark, simplistic, and creepy. The Lost Woods was an endless forest that could only be safely traversed with the help of a Poe (sound familiar?) and Hyrule Market Town was an actual town you could run around in (you could even enter some of the houses) and had only one inhabitant who we believe was named Aria. Death Mountain was similarly barren and looked as though it only had the one dungeon. Lake Hylia bears the strongest resemblance to the final version out of all the early screenshots, though that isn't saying much. The woman in that screenshot doesn't look like Aria, and no information was given about her (that we can find).
Currently, we have only found two rooms of the Stalfos Dungeon in the released copies of the game. Virtually everything else seems to be long gone, though it's possible that some of the old objects/enemies/characters are still in the game.

At this point, Nintendo revised the story and fleshed it out a great deal. Dissatisfied with the small number of dungeons, they changed it so that there were now six temples corresponding to the elements. The original names of these temples were very different from the final names. Here's a conversion table that matches up the original temple names with the final versions (we constructed this list based on filenames we recovered from the game):

Original Temple Names	Final Temple Names
Wind Temple	Forest Temple
Flame Temple	Fire Temple
Ice Temple	Water Temple
	Shadow Temple
	Spirit Temple
Spark Temple	Temple of Light

There appears to be evidence that the Deku Tree became a dungeon at this point as well, although it's not entirely certain. The graphics in the game have slightly improved, and the controls are virtually identical to the finished product now (though the visuals will alter later on). There are now medallions in the game, but the Ocarina of Time and Sacred Stones have not yet made their appearance. The Dodongo Dungeon appears to have survived the transition as well, although it likely has gone through numerous alterations by now.

New areas in this version with screenshots:

Deku Tree Dungeon	Fire Temple
Desert	Hyrule Field

It was at this point that the ocarina concept was introduced and the game finally began to look like the finished product. The changes were numerous in virtually every aspect of the game, but the story itself only encountered a few major revisions. First, the Hall of Time was replaced with the Temple of Time, as the programmers and graphic designers had finally figured out a way to make a huge chamber without taxing the machine too heavily.
The Ocarina of Time was then introduced as a musical instrument that could play special songs and unlock certain secrets. It originally held the three Sacred Stones within its holes, an unusual method that, on a real ocarina, would have hampered its abilities to make music. This idea was later scrapped and the Sacred Stones were simply marked on the Quest Status Sub-Screen.
Also introduced was the concept of time-travel. Child Link makes his debut here and was frequently shown in one of the three dungeons you encounter in child form: Deku Tree, Dodongo's Cavern, and Jabu-Jabu's Belly. Also introduced were the Gorons, Kokiri, Zora, and Deku Scrubs, all of which were completely unique to Ocarina of Time at that time. Their roles in the game were pretty much the same throughout the rest of its development, and not many other remarkable changes were made in the story (that we've been able to detect, anyway).

Note: Due to the extensive number of new areas that Nintendo showed off at this point in the game's development, I'll forego listing them here. However, feel free to browse our Screenshots section and check out how things looked during its final stages of development.

Most of the changes made in the game at this point were cosmetic as textures were remade to show more detail and levels were altered to look more realistic. There are numerous screenshots depicting scenes that do not exist in the final version of the game or even come close to matching anything in it. Of those, the most we can say is that they aren't hidden in the cartridge.

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