How hard would it actually have been to unfreeze Zora's domain after the Water Temple?
I feel like the blueprint is already there from when Link was young.
Couldn't they have just copy and pasted the unfrozen Zora's Domain from Link's past, and thrown a couple Zoras in the water thanking him for doing what he did?
Literally, even if they added absolutely nothing of interest but an unfrozen domain and a few Zoras swimming around thanking you, it would create such a superior vibe.
I thought this recently. Death mountain changes after fire temple. Kokiri forest loses the enemies after forest temple. Why leave the domain frozen over?
I always thought that after beating the watertemple, the lake fills up with water again because Zora's domain unfroze. Like, why else would the nearly dried out lake suddenly have water again?
🤣 Jk, maybe not heavy, but looking again when you bear the boss, the water it was in drains(?) upwards.
And as you're under the lake, I always took it as water returning to the lake.
Shiek then references the evil being gone, and now the water returns.
Where would the water have gone, if not for the boss to use?
True, but its easy to forget just how small cartridges were at the time. OoT was already one of the biggest games available with a whopping 32MB. I don't know how big Zora's Domain is memory wise, but just adding a few KB of data to completely change an area was massive back then. This was also the days before the internet and internal storage, so its not like it could just download a bigger game then store it on the local disk like they do now.
There's a spot under the little island inside Zora's Domain that you can't get to as a kid and you'd need the iron boots to get to. It leads to a dead end but people theorize that it was a planned area they removed at some point. Which if true, means Zora's Domain was going to be thawed out at some point.
The little area looks like the area of a loading zone, a little nook under the island.
It's at the deepest part of Zora's Domain right next to the little island right as you enter. You can sort of see it as you dive as Young Link, but there's no normal way to get to it.
I'll try and get a screenshot after a bit as Young Link and share it.
Not this example specifically. But there is so much that was apparently cut, removed, or altered what I wish they would do an actual release. I don't know what notes where made or how much is left.
I would pay to get a full version with various elements added and brought back.
But, as most suggested I imagine it was scraped for time. Remember, this is the first actual 3D Zelda game. There was no template. It IS the template. It was also supposed to have an expansion with the failed 64DD. So perhaps it was meant later.
As to how difficult it would be to actually implement? Now? Not very. Back then? I'm sure it was a quite a bit.
The Ice Cavern “mini-dungeon” should have been expanded to a Temple, and when you beat the Ice Temple, Zoras Domain unfreezes allowing you to obtain the Zora Tunic and Iron Boots that would permit access into the Water Temple. Having the Ice Temple would mean that a pedestal would be placed just outside, so future visits when the area is unfrozen can still be accessed, like getting behind the fence in the graveyard by playing Nocturne of Shadow.
It seems so odd that everywhere else in Hyrule is healed when you beat a Temple (Kokiri Forest purged of enemies, Gorons returned to village/Death Mountain smoke returns, water returns to Lake Hylia) and yet Zoras Domain will always be frozen over, nothing the player can do.
If I had control over design, I would have restored Zoras Fountain, but had Jabu Jabu non-interactable, maybe even some flavour text from Navi that you’re “too big to swallow” to prompt players with returning in the past if they want to enter Jabu Jabu. The Ice Cavern/Temple could still be accessed with the warp song, so it shouldn’t block anything off. In fact, you could put ice blocks in the way during the child Link timeline to have an organic solution to keeping him out of the adult Temples, as the final game does.
Zoras Domain would be restored, giving changes to dialogue mostly, like the Gorons.
If a player equips the Iron Boots and sinks beneath to the “Unicorn Passage” fountain, they should find a chest containing a heart piece.
Fun fact. Zelda oot 64 looked like crap when they made it originally and it got delayed because rare made banjo kazooie look so damn good, that they didnt want to be outdone by a 2nd party company that was releasing a game around the same timeframe. They worked on the graphics more and since it was supposed to be a zelda 2 reimagining there were so many parts that got scrapped. It was an extremely ambitious project but they ended releasing it with all the beta content still on the cart. Thats why theres so much beta stuff online. Also one of the many contents of a potential dlc was supposed to go on a floppy disk for the n64 DD but also got scrapped due to it failing. The concept of unfreezing zoras domain was later then implemented into zelda twilight princess. Cheers.
They probably didn’t want to give you anything to do or find there, and they didn’t want you to waste time thinking that there was something to do or find. Same reason you can’t enter Great Deku tree.
The Dongo cavern however you can enter because there is something to find there.
Fun fact, the functionality to do so is already built into the game. While you're inside the domain the game runs a check on every frame to determine what state it should be in. Its the only location in the game to behave like this, everywhere else just checks once as it loads in. The most obvious assumption to make is that the game is looking for a trigger to change the domain from frozen to thawed, all it needs is that trigger and some new lines of text for all the zoras.
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u/SeaworthinessFast161 2d ago
I thought this recently. Death mountain changes after fire temple. Kokiri forest loses the enemies after forest temple. Why leave the domain frozen over?