The concept art made public within the Hyrule Historia revealed many hidden secrets of The Wind Waker that never came to light, such as cut islands. It’s known that the original development of The Wind Waker was, unfortunately, subject to content cuts due to time constraints, which means that some islands and dungeons were not fully realized by the time of release.
Incomplete islands weren’t all we got from the Hyrule Historia, though. We might be familiar with the cartoonish Link that explores the Great Sea in The Wind Waker, but the concept art revealed an older version of the seafaring Link as well as a — slightly less old version of him?
Hearing about the idea of an adult version of Link in The Wind Waker, the first thing I did was think of Ocarina of Time and the time travel mechanic available through the Master Sword. I thought maybe the scrapped concept was that removing the Master Sword would bring Link to a future version of the Great Sea, exactly like in Ocarina of Time. However, this idea was shattered upon seeing the middle Link, which seems to imply that Link would have aged gradually instead of instantly gaining seven years.
The idea of a gradually aging Link is extremely intriguing to me. If this Link would have aged the same amount as Link from Ocarina of Time, that would mean the in-game events would’ve taken place over seven years. It’s possible there would have been several stages to Link’s growth, potentially aging a set amount after the completion of every dungeon. It also could have been a mechanic tied to the total playtime, simply aging Link according to how long the player has been playing the game, which would be a cool mechanic for speedrunners to show how fast they completed the game.
Assuming the entire world would age alongside Link, this would mean that Link’s sister, Aryll, would also get older, as well as Tetra and her entire pirate crew! There isn’t much else that implies an aging mechanic in the Hyrule Historia or in the final game, which probably means that the idea of aging in general never made it far in the development stages.
While the idea of a gradually aging world is a very cool one, it would take a phenomenal amount of work to fully realize. Even if a majority of minor characters changed minimally, it would mean several new designs for every major character (which is already a lot to do), not to mention changes to the world alongside the characters. I do hope we see this concept fully realized someday, but with the amount of work it would take and the time constraints already putting pressure on the developers, it’s plenty understandable why this concept was cut.
