Author: Unknown
Year: Unknown
Has anyone heard of the dying soldier from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time?
Many simply pass by him in Back Alley of Hyrule Castle's Market Town, but in the finished game he appears right after you get the Ocarina of Time and tells you to go to the Temple of Time. After telling you this, he stops moving and is presumably dead. However, in an early build of the game he played a very different role and led you to a different place. Just like many who played the finished version, many testers passed over the dying soldier. Those who found him were treated with a surprise. For finding him, they were given a key to Hyrule Castle. Some testers thought this key would lead them to the Triforce, as the key had the Triforce symbol engraved upon it.
They followed the tip the soldier gave and entered the path leading to Hyrule Castle. When they entered, they noticed something was off. There were no guards protecting the grounds from tresspassers. The gate was open. The sound was mute. As this was an early build of the game, the testers thought this was a simple glitch or bug.
They eventually found their way into an all-new section of Hyrule Castle and continued until they ended up at a locked door. They used the key given to them by the soldier to unlock this door. Link opened the door very slowly after unlocking it, as if he didn't want to enter, but eventually the door was open and Link walked into the darkness. A new environment opened up; it was the hall you could see through the window when you first met Zelda. Ganondorf wasn't present and guards were nowhere in sight. But there was...something...that the testers would never forget: On the other side of the room, they saw the bloody remains of the King of Hyrule. Most testers screamed and some even stopped playing. It was quite a horrific sight. They assumed the king was dead, but when Link walked up to him, a text box opened up.
"He said he would bring help, not a child..."