Recovering Pikmin 3's SIXTH main story area – Pikmin Unearthed

this video is not like other content on my channel it is a long form documentary that covers a long-standing Pikmin 3 Mystery that has haunted the community for over a decade we have provided timestamps below if you wish to view this video Chapter by chapter we found something big in Pikmin 3. something that will change how we view the game forever this video is the final bit of closure regarding a decade-old mystery the end of a long and exciting hunt today we're exploring a lost story mode area hidden within the files of Pikmin 3 never before playable restored back into the game after months of effort welcome to Pikmin Unearthed [Music] [Music] playing through the original Pikmin 3 story mode for the first time was one of the most enchanting experiences I've ever had with a video game the game takes you through four well-crafted and exceptionally polished seasonally themed main areas with lots of things to keep you entertained and occupied there's plenty of area to explore towering impressive bosses to fight new and familiar Pikmin to encounter with a good variety of satisfying puzzles that use their wide breadth of abilities there's new and old characters rescue play with and learn about and a bountiful bushel of fruit to collect the game's Pace feels almost perfect for the majority of the first playthrough as you go from area to area the game pulls you along a pretty linear tract though you become more free to explore each level as you progress acquiring new leaders and Pikmin types along the way this journey eventually crescendos with the discovery of blue Pikmin in the garden of Hope after rescuing Louis with this final Pikmin type the game fully opens up to you and with a complete roster of five Pikmin you are not long after sent to the climatic Encounter With The plasm Wraith in this Fifth and final area set in an imposing termite Mound rising from a dry desert a Chase ensues that leads into the game's final boss battle once the final boss is defeated Olimar is rescued and the game comes to a close the credit's role and the story comes to an end it feels like just as things have fully opened up to the player the game swiftly and politely wraps up following this playthrough I would proceed to play through this game again and again Cruise using to its main story and the many mission mode levels offered alongside it with each completed playthrough I became increasingly familiar with the nuances of the five main story areas put forth by The Game's designers and eventually I started hunting for Secrets I tracked down the data files I watched all of our secret memos I found the hidden murals I started looking for new ways to go about challenges pushing against the game's linear structure in all my years of playing it I never grew disillusioned with the game and the magic certainly never wore off yet the longer I played the more the pacing flaws became harder to overlook the game has a ton of polished content that is hardly used in the main story several well fleshed out returning enemies such as ball Bears sherwigs and the watery blowhog are completely sidelined only used in tiny amounts pushed back into back areas and used in a very limited capacity in the right places more of these enemies which are not only finished but also very robust could have helped inject a great deal of much needed challenge into the game's levels even during that first magical playthrough years ago it felt like the final climax of the game was rather sudden it felt like as soon as you unlock the blues and have a whole world open before you the game urges you to Sprint towards the Finish Line it felt incomplete as I started to interact with the wider Pikmin Community online I learned that I was far from alone in these sentiments today I'm here to justify those feelings the game does end abruptly there's no two ways around it as soon as blues are unlocked in the garden of Hope the game quickly pulls itself to a close after years of speculation and rumors and theorizing we finally know the reason an entire sixth area was cut from Pikmin 3's campaign situated at the end of the game and now nearly a decade after the game was released we've found it hidden away in the game's files before we get to that Discovery we have to start at the beginning [Music] E3 2012. after over eight years of waiting and speculation Shigeru Miyamoto finally reveals Pikmin 3. the footage shown differs a bit from the final version of the game pulled from an in-development beta but it is very clearly at its core the same Pikmin 3 that would release a little over a year later the game's footage focuses on mission mode primarily showcasing The Rock Pikmin and the tropical forest stage that would be made available in a playable demo and eventually be in the final game though that's not all that was there there are several shots in the E3 2012 trailer featuring an unidentified level that's nowhere to be found in the final game not in the mission mode and certainly not in the main story this area is a very wet environment with a flooded layout every shot we have at this place shows that it is absolutely covered in water with lily pads is a clear defining feature of the area while at first it may appear to be an early version of the Twilight River it has entirely different textures and theming from the Autumn themed area and a completely unique layout as Mr Miyamoto shows off the game on stage we get to see more of this mystery level and now looking back it is apparent that this place never made it into the final game even stranger it seemed like it was fully fleshed out and working on the console surviving the game's development leap from Wii the Wii U and not only that it was selected to be one of the very first areas shown off for the game polished enough to even make it into the debut trailer and yet in the final game it's completely missing but what is this mystery level where would it have been in the game a long-running fan Theory suggests it was a mission mode level re-skinned into the Twilight Hollow this is almost certainly false though none of the shots shown at the E3 presentation line up well with the final areas and outside of the presence of water and lily pads the Twilight Hollow hardly resembles this area the long Rocky River section that calmly flows past the skeeter skates and nectares dandel flies entirely absent the same is true of the section that requires the chain of Captain throws onto Mossy stumps over water in other words every important shot of this Lost trailer area is missing from the mission mode areas so we're back to where we started a missing map with no context or explanation from the Pikmin 3 beta clearly real and never finished for some reason following E3 2012 the map was cut from the game was it just made for the E3 presentation why not include that content in the game in some way a lot of things changed since the first trailer with characters such as Britney completely changing their color scheme and character D completely disappearing did the game just evolve in such a way that this map was now obsolete this Mystery Map sometimes referred to as the missing Marsh or the Lost River area seems to have been forever white from the pages of Pikmin history got from this game lost the time forever ever ever ever until now the year is 2020. Pikmin 3 originally developed for the unsuccessful Wii U is given a re-release onto the exceptionally popular Nintendo switch breathing new life into the game not long after its release Pikmin 3 Deluxe would become notorious for leaving in a bunch of unused content that wasn't in the original Wii U release of Pikmin 3. there's unused enemies fully implemented test maps and even beta versions of levels that made their way into the final game including an older tougher more open version of The Garden of Hope following the release of this game and the discovery of cut content within the Pikmin Community began to scour its files searching for anything and everything hidden within it about the development of the original release however the unused level we are talking about today is actually exclusively found in the original Pikmin 3 lost inside of the original release on the Wii U from a decade ago that means despite all of the unused content left in for the deluxe Port the developers retroactively scrubbed all remaining traces of this specific level from the switch re-release this discovery started small with a single thing out of place we discovered this level by accident following the wake of new discoveries in Pikmin 3 Deluxe gun of the hunt and I were sifting through many of the discoveries found at Pikmin 3 deluxe's content such as the beta version of The Garden of Hope when after deciding to look through the original Pikmin 3's files for anything similar gonna found some leftover pathing data left in plain sight but hidden from view initially there was not much to analyze regarding this level only two gen files containing miscellaneous enemies and objects were left behind alongside a broken PATH map a path map is essentially a compilation of nodes and links between them which dictate the route Pikmin follow when transporting objects a Pikmin will always follow these paths exactly unless acted upon by an outside force such as a player enemy or wall there are also different types of nodes and links used to further customize these paths such as having a wing Pikmin specific path a path that can only be taken by Pikmin carrying small objects or one used to determine where they wait for a lily pad although it might appear to be an insignificant aspect of a level obtaining a functional PATH map for this project would be a game changer it would provide invaluable Insight towards the actual layout of the level's geometry and overall flow but the PATH map we had wasn't functional it wasn't even viewable it was just some leftover junk data so is that the end of the road without a viewable PATH map the project seemed finished we're left only to speculate based on a handful of scattered enemy and object locations But ultimately that's insufficient this project appears to be dead that's what most people would conclude but gonna is not most people gonna taking a look at the broken PATH map found something that was masking the missing map waiting to be revealed gun has speculated that the map wasn't entirely useless there must be a way to bring it back to life in a viewable form and so gun of the Hun dared to do the unthinkable Gunner delved into the 3600 line pathfile determined to diagnose the issue to our surprise he discovered that a single simple typo made by Nintendo was the only barrier to accessing this map with one simple fix we finally had it and it suddenly became very clear what we were looking at the path show us a sprawling level much larger than any of us expected with branching overlapping paths puzzles Arenas and mazes this wasn't just a simple missing map this was a scrapped story mode map with our Newfound knowledge we could now easily see that this level was filled with water implementing many rivers lakes and bridges to cross them we could trace out the exact shape and size of these bodies of water by taking note of node Heights Lily Pad paths and blue Pikmin specific routes as we compared this with enemy location carrying paths and other similar information a clear picture of the level started to form with a now complete view of the level's overall shape the question still remained of what was actually in this area paths are nice and good but it takes more than simple geometry to make a playable level all Pikmin levels are crafted by implementing several gem files together to place objects such as enemies walls plants and items basically anything that isn't a part of the 3D model for the level is handled exclusively by gen files and this is where we got the aforementioned enemy locations and other information some levels have a complex spawning system sprawling multiple variations like the garden of Hope with a whopping 10 gen files that activate at different intervals depending on your story progress some simpler levels however may only have one or two gen files like the Twilight River or on Earth level follows this pattern established by the Twilight River showcasing only two significant gem files one file contains information about The Landing site onions pellets and water boxes while the other focuses on enemies objects and plants when examining these files it becomes evident that there are five onions at the Landing site rather than the One Singular Master onion found in the final game additionally there's a discoverable onion positioned at the top of the map the properties of this onion suggest that it's designated for blue Pikmin and has the first discovered parameter set to one an attribute exclusive to onions discovered in story mode allowing them to be activated not surprisingly many of the objects referenced in their level are from a much older version of the game one that couldn't Simply Be imported into a modern mission mode stage without Minor Adjustments however it should be noted that all edits to gen files were done strictly with compatibility in mind seeing everything together we knew we had come across something massive looking at everything we were able to line up various trailer shots from the E3 2012 presentation the signs pointed towards this being the lost story mode level from all those years ago we had found it and now it was time to explore however all we have was pathing information and gen files although that could tell us almost everything we needed to know about the level giving us so much technical information about the shape and design it still was hard to see since it was lacking a model so for the sake of fully understanding this place our team expanded gun of the Hun and I brought on legendary Pikmin theorists and digital artist davogato to build the missing geometry davagado has studied Pikmin series map design for ages and is skilled with area concept art together with our information davo passionately set out to revive our missing map reconstructing the geometry from the ground up making a map from scratch using only gen file data and limited beta footage is no easy feat and a lot of imagination and artist interpretation is required that being said the map we have now was very accurate as accurate as we can get matching with all of the data we have on hand taking into account everything we know from the trailer shots and from in-game data starting from a flat image created by davo and Gunna based on all available information davogato Drew shapes and walls around the paths and flowing water keeping in mind where Pikmin could and couldn't walk based on the Node data that Ghana had meticulously and painstakingly traced out anime behaviors and Bridge placements LED them to shape the level in ways where dead ends would open the small Pockets or large Arenas based on prior map designs in the series gonna then provided data the data for the vertical height of the path nodes which led to topographical elements like ramps and raised areas Donna took the information from Davos rough map of walkable and non-walkable terrain and traced out refinements by hand on paper with the node data printed upon before adding in things like extra path data objects and obstacles Bridges enemies and elevation in the proper places all by studying the Gen file then they handed it back to Davao after days of intense analysis and labor including extensive back and forth with our team a team that expanded from just gonna Dabo and I to also include physical model maker 3D boy and later our editor wigwaman davo finally finalized this 2D map of the area as davo and Ghana crafted this map and the entire thing came together it became clear that more likely than not this was our lost E3 area we had identified the location of each missing shot from the trailer and we placed them where they belonged tracking them down based on the data at hand on screen now is the culmination of that process the First Complete Recreation of the Forgotten wetlands area from Pikmin 3's Premiere with the green light from the whole team it was time to bring the 2D into the 3D using the 2D render as a blueprint Dava began the model of the geometry that would make up the final restored area meanwhile 3D boy Gunna and I were hard at work on our own projects based on the map data Ghana realized that several unused cut or unfinished enemies were positioned on this map based on contacts from the series enemy testing levels and work in progress models from Pikmin 3 Deluxe files gonna got to work restoring several of these unused enemies into the game meanwhile 3D boy put his physical modeling skills to the test sculpting fully realized versions of these incomplete models in an attempt to in some way finish these incomplete and broken enemies as they did this I composed The Unique Piece of music that was made to get as close as I could to the Pikmin 3 style while also representing this area it was tranquil yet foreboding drawing from track such as the game's rain theme The Garden of Hope theme and the Twilight River I employed the pickpack a set of samples from the Pikmin games put together by waffles a dedicated Pikmin sound Guru who knows more about the audio aspect of the games than anyone else I've ever met using this pack I was able to employ actual instruments used in Pikmin titles to create something as stylistically cohesive as I possibly could while I worked on this various thoughts about the music of Pikmin 3 ran through my head if an iteration of this map really made it so late in the development as to be shown off at E3 was its music already made was it scrapped too or was it used elsewhere in the game and have we already heard it could something like the game's rain theme have been married to this area Once Upon a Time for example I suppose this could be the case though the theme is just as likely to be lost media if it ever even existed at all this time Java kept working on their map iteration by iteration starting with low poly geometry not unlike an N64 game with each new version the map was passed over the Gunna to implement into the game and play test following each test the entire team handed double notes on what did and didn't work influenced by footage of Gunner's Explorations by using textures and images already present in the base game's existing Maps davo gave the map a very Pikmin 3 feel inspired by the textures and level design of the map as seen in the trailer months passed and our team kept working on this project secretly we kept the knowledge of our Discovery close to our chest believing that one big reveal with many eyes on it was more likely to be shared and to create the buzz of the discovery of this magnitude deserved we spent hours pouring into the footage and play testing the restored content hunting for bugs and resolving the issues that we discovered with our original prototypes matching even closer to the original footage with every pass davo set out to make the area pretty enough to feel real but not too complex that it would crash the game towards the end of the process Gunna and Dava went back and forth a few final times with different versions to make sure the now detailed map played and looked correct map complete gonna put finishing touches on everything through decorative plants foliage and cleaning up the lily pad pathing to turn corners and tight spaces just right it was finally here [Music] following several months of work from our team the final level had been restored recreated as accurately as possible given the information we had at our disposal looking at it as a whole the water in this level appears to be generally shallow resembling a creek or stream rather than the river although it deepens in select areas the map is very open and it hasn't I can see it but I can't reach it just yet energy much like the bomb rock or watergated sections of the force of Hope in Pikmin 1. also similar to the forest Naval there's a centralized Landing site with optional Gates and multiple ways to optimize pathing with the use of tearing down obstacles and constructing bridges that being said this map's data only has a few Wing Pikmin paths making building the bridges or tearing down the proper walls a necessity in some places in the E3 footage the area can be seen to have a River Marsh or swamp light quality and the layout provides further Evidence towards this overall aesthetic the Gen files show that the map is covered in water and is also home to many aquatic amphibious and water adjacent enemies even though our map is a fan Recreation we can still observe the overall flow and layout of the area there's Rushing Water that makes an incomplete circle around the entire map on which lily pads float there's smooth coastlines to enter and exit the water and their steep coastlines the player cannot freely walk up scattered around the river are a handful of small ponds and deep basins that deviate from the flow holding enemies and Bridge shards two notable portions of this map are seen with the bull bear family section and the crawl mat Arena the latter of which requires a little effort to reach due to the nature of the enemies the land to water slopes and the data from the E3 footage tavagada choose to texture the map as a fusion between three biomes Sandy River marshy River and Rocky slab all three of these biomes would have textures similar to those that are already present in some form within Pikmin 3. so textures from the other story mode Maps were used to get the look as close as we can manage within our time frame to something that could be in game much like a GameCube era Pikmin map this map features no in between hallways or separate areas and is all one body this is to say that the area has no transitions if shipped like this in the final game this would be the only Pikmin 3 story mode area to have this trait this leads us to speculate that this map information we're working from was from an old iteration of the marsh map made prior to the version of the map shown in the E3 footage an interesting Quirk about this level is the lack of fruit typical Pikmin 3 levels have many fruit to collect as it is the main collectible of the game yet this level lacks any that said in its place the area possesses numerous items labeled as test item zero scattered throughout it and some are even held by its resident enemies this item appears to be a giant screw with very basic textures using other beta or test levels as reference we can safely assume that test item 0 is a placeholder for free in our Recreation of this map we opted to place fruit at these locations to get the intended effect overall there are six different fruits found throughout the area four of which are freestanding two of which are inside of creatures adding these to the total present in the current day Pikmin 3 it brings us from 66 fruit up to 72. the game clearly went through several design iterations between here and then wraps the number of fruit in the game was originally a round number like in the past two entries with pikmin's 30 parts or Pikmin 2's 200 Treasures plus Looney when this level was eventually scrapped and as other areas changed the number of fruit may have changed out to the current 66 we have today it's entirely speculative but I wonder if perhaps the golden variants of fruits were once intended to be used in an area maybe this area and they were cut as the development of the game progressed limited only to mission mode perhaps they once yielded greater juice than other fruits which may have provided a more limited Supply than they presently provide in the final release version of the game we just can't say for certain we can see that while this level is in some ways very unconventional for a normal Pikmin 3 level it still embodies a lot of Pikmin 3's General design philosophies to make progress towards what appears to be the main story objective the player must complete a series of very long Bridges to unlock access to different places in the map and this mechanic establishes a clear order of operations that is meant to unravel this Maze of a level without much leniency for alternative methods this is very much like the other Pikmin 3 story mode levels which have the same sort of simplistic linear structure to them that said this map is a fair bit more open than other Pikmin 3 levels in terms of how the player goes about completing this linear objective the entire right side of the map however doesn't contribute to the map's story based objective looking at our overhead view you can see that almost everything of importance is concentrated towards the left side the right side has one long bridge that is meant simply to provide access to the side of the map it is the longest bridge to build in the whole level yet once you get over there there isn't much to see only a Toady Blaster that holds a test item zero so a fruit and a few scattered enemies that said useless sections of areas to the main story aren't exactly uncommon in the Pikmin series even in the final build of Pikmin 3. famously the tropical Wilds has about half of the map that can be considered practically useless from a story standpoint having only a few enemies and fruits to collect we could possibly be looking at a similar situation here alternatively this right section of the area might just have not been as finished as the left side this whole area was after all scrapped during development and itself is an incomplete product not only that the old iterations of the finished areas for the game are very different to what we have in their final State clearly changing drama radically in development even if some version of it was finished this still probably would have major changes due to this development metamorphosis at the same time this map is far more complex and open-ended compared to other Pikmin 3 maps though this is probably partially attributed to its unfinished form it is likely also due to its place as a more challenging late game map similar to the perplexing pool for its Naval or distant spring from prior Pikmin titles the final version of Pikmin 3 lacks something like this entirely and this map may have been intended to fill that purpose before ultimately being scrapped regardless of the reason this level's difficulty is significantly higher than anything else encountered in the final game now that we've looked at an overview of this place let's walk through it together following the path the player probably would take as the player lands in the area they are settled in a well-protected circle with a ring of barriers surrounding the landing site much like the forest of Hope from Pikmin 1 or the Twilight River from Pikmin 3. the first thing you'll immediately notice is the separate onions at the Landing site instead of having one combined onion like in the final game there are actually four separate ships next to the Drake with space for a fifth blue onion as well presumably this would work just as the onions from previous titles did with the player moving to each in order to access the types Within These five onions are arranged in the spiral creating a visually striking Landing place when all types are acquired that said the player would have discovered this map prior to unlocking Blues as evidenced by their absence from the initial Landing roster along with some things that we will cover later the starting area has three openings though two of them are shortcuts blocked off by stone walls requiring bomb rocks to open up because of this the players funneled to a central Fork that opens up to the left and right should the player choose to go right they are met by an enemy previously entirely unused in the game a new cousin of a fiery and watery blowhog with a green colored mouth that blows bubbles these bubbles could in theory be very problematic for your Pikmin since any of your units could become caught in them and end up being dropped in the water drowning especially given the level's coastal location that said we had trouble getting the unfinished bubble blow hog to properly function in our level so he's being replaced with a watery blowhog for the time being continuing to the right from this point the player comes across a flint Beetle and dead ends seeing a rock wall that appears to be somewhat strangely placed leading into the North End of the base at this dead end there is a lily pad jump node where players may move on and off from the lily pads in the water something we will break down more in depth later returning to the site of the bubble blowhogging taking a left the player comes across a second Flint Beetle and a pile of bridge shards leading to a bridge on the far west of the map currently inaccessible by land these 50 shards form half of this bridge and the other 50 of the same color are located Elsewhere on the map these shards are the first indication of the level's clear dichotomy blue and Wing Pikmin are much more useful here than their landlocked counterparts that said red yellow and especially Rock Pikmin all have their clear uses here and must make their way across the treacherous Terrain in order to carry these Bridge pieces to their destination land-based Pikmin must hitch a ride on the southern lily pad on the player's starting Island and drop them off using this lily pad to the West catching a ride on the new Lily Pad at the same station before dropping off at the most northern node on the main island this path would let these Pikmin run right through several dangers including the aforementioned blowhog and these two yellow wallywags in the water that are positioned in the way that they actually may threaten the Pikmin that ride the lily pads should the player move on from these Bridge pieces and Traverse South along the coastline they arrive at the left path coming from the initial Fork at the mouth of the base location and come across even more Bridge pieces this time 20 blue ones these Bridge pieces are used at the bridge right next to their location though they don't come anywhere close to finishing the bridge considering there are still two other locations that house 40 blue Bridge pieces each right next to the bridge pieces are a watery blowhog and three share wigs enemies otherwise unused in the main campaign except for illusory wraith created mimics in the formidable Oak these tougher enemies existing only in the oak has been a long-standing mystery in Pikmin 3 and this finally gives us the answer as to why they were developed to be used here as well alongside them there's a lily pad access point over here and an armored Canon beetle larva over here making this section of the map a very tough encounter pushing past this the player comes to a second stone wall leading into their face this time guarded by a foe entirely absent from Pikmin 3. the decorated Canon beetle larva while this creature doesn't actually have a model in Pikmin 3 we do have plenty of evidence that leads us to believe that this must be the creature located at the spot first the internal name is consistent with the Japanese name of the creature from Pikmin 2. it's labeled here as Miyabi second test areas for enemies found within Pikmin 3's files have the same Miyabi enemy placed in exactly the same location as the armor and Arctic Cannon Beetle lava finally if it's level design regardless of the direction the player approaches from it is able to aim at homing Rock directly at the player crushing all in the party except for the newly immuned Rock Pikmin and hard to crush Wing Pikmin after defeating the decorated Cannon Beetle the area appears to dead end but it's actually the end point for another bridge that we will talk about later now having explored all of our Central Hub Island it's time to travel through the water that surrounds it on all sides to do so we'll set off at this Lily Pad point the first available node on the main island and we'll see where the water takes us this is actually the second Lily Pad landing spot on the river as there's one closer to the river's Source we'll get back to that one soon the water overall flows clockwise coming through from this path down here at the southeast and flowing northward hopping on this Lily Pad at the second note here we flow Downstream until we get to the next Landing Point here where we disembark to explore as we jump off we're immediately ambushed by four Shear crops fortunately these sheer grubs are female and completely harmless to our Pikmin as we move across this shark Coast we notice that we're next to a Cliffside with an elevated fruit placed above us Out Of Reach walking onwards down the coast here we come across a ramp leading up towards that elevated cliff and that fruit we saw earlier the first fruit of the area at the bottom of this ramp rest 40 blue Bridge pieces tasking Pikmin to collect them reveals the utility of that first Lily Pad landing spot we skipped over earlier at the furthest point to the east of this Coast the lily pad stops at its first node here after defeating another female sheer grub Pikmin carrying Bridge pieces can hop onto lily pads and disembark back onto our Landing Island dropping off the bridge pieces they carry from there they can jump back onto the floating lily pads and flow back over to the southern coast Western drop-off Point creating a large loop after all these Bridge pieces are delivered it's still not done the final 40 pieces weighed on this tiny Island here surrounded by water using winged or later blue Pikmin we can finish assembling the dark blue bridge by bringing the remaining 40 pieces over if the player hasn't cleared the enemies on their main Island's southern coast at this point the presence of these foes will create a dangerous environment for Pikmin carrying these pieces at the same time neglecting to explore the water will leave these pieces Out Of Reach for the player designed like this incentivizes a good split between exploring both the waters and the surface of this area with the Bridge completed we climb to the top of the hill where it leads and carried back home the fruit that rests at the top behind it we notice a cardboard box and we push it with our Pikmin revealing an extension of the area moving in we notice a fruit guarded by a bull bear these enemies are delightful to fight in the original Pikmin 3 but they're hardly utilized this shows that yes they were intended to be used in more places during the main campaign than just the back room in the distant Tundra the player can choose to fight or run here but either way they're likely to dispatch this bull bear at some point collect the fruit and carry it home moving on by hopping back onto the lily pad from any of the three nodes we've taken prior we have four more stops we can now take flowing down the river clockwise should the player choose to exit at the next available Lily Pad stop they will arrive at the point to the south of another section of coast here they can get to work on another bridge this time with all 100 of the pieces together in one spot finishing this bridge creates an easy path back to the player's starting land mass which will come into play soon just north of this bridge is a typical dirt wall nothing too crazy for a Pikmin 3 level after destroying it the player has access to this entire section of Coast coming face to face with a typical Red Bull borb and five of a never-before-seen sort of sharecrop our prospective player could attempt to fight this bullborg but the big Beastie has a trick up his sleeve these share grubs hitch a ride on the large creature forming an armored shell that makes him much more difficult to defeat to help the player take down this bullworb armored with armored share grubs the designers were kind enough to provide five bomb rocks behind the Beast and these can presumably be used in the battle in addition to other places in the level after the bulborb is slain he drops the third fruit in the area right next to the bullborg is a stack of 50 Bridge pieces and these can be collected to build the second bridge on the south of this Coast connecting it up to an elevated patch of land for the sake of understanding this level we'll continue following the lily pad River for now and literally cross this bridge later though you would be able to complete it using these pieces and these pieces together as we hop back onto the lily pads from the top note of this Coast I'd like to take a moment to highlight that this is one of two different ways that this section of Coast can be approached by using blue Wing Pikmin or by entering the island by disembarking from the lily pad at the top of the island rather than the bottom the player is able to flank the Red Bull orb and attack with bomb rocks from the back rather than the much more dangerous front in doing so however they have to float via Lily Pad through the water next to these yellow wallywags that directly threaten their party as they coast along or walk by them with aquatic Pikmin this is an excellent example of how this level despite being designed in a similar way to other Pikmin 3 levels gives the player quite a few more options regarding how they would like to approach the challenges it sets forth that's not to say that it's necessarily better design than the levels that exist in that game as it stands now there's something to be said about Pikmin 3's levels being very approachable and Polished another thing to note about this level there's clearly some bugs with the enemies and their placement as you've probably noticed in this section by now though the armored share grubs do work as intended and latch onto the red bullboards they also have a tendency to glitch out and moonwalk into low orbit meanwhile even recurring enemies that fully function in the final game such as the yellow wallywag have problems here while riding the lily pad it becomes pretty apparent that they don't behave as intended here and suffer from clipping issues with the lily pad the lily pads in the final game either occur in deep water or are in areas without enemies to prevent this issue it's likely that this section would have had to have been reworked where this area to make it into the final game in order to accommodate for this curiously there's reason to believe this problem was already fixed in a later iteration of this map this section of the map is where this shot from the E3 trailer appears to be from though the enemy placement was a little different with skidder skates replacing the yellow wallywag and the nectarist dandel Fly soaring overhead in the opposite direction against the water's current the skidder skates and wallywags both play the same role and add a similar sort of threat to the section of the map placed to endanger non-blue Pikmin on the Lily Pad but the high Mobility long range and delicate nature of the skidder skates compared to the deliberate and slow heavyweight wallywags means that they're a much better choice of enemy to position in this location as we resume our Lily Pad rafting Adventure clockwise down the river we will pass by a number of wall poles these docile tadpoles are submerged underneath the water meaning they are Out Of Reach for both our landlocked Pikmin and our winged aerial aces in addition we see a fruit and a little Cove to our left also similarly submerged we cannot get to this now not without blue Pikmin further reinforcing and teasing this next type is a pellet Posey growing out of the water drifting onwards we passed two points of no first to the right is our second to last node on our Lily Pad Journey this node connects to the most northern part of our starting Island directly adjacent to a bombable wall it's our last chance to get back off onto the main island before our final node when the lily pad will eject us at the same time on our left here there's a little patch of land upon which rests a glass wall behind it there are some pellet posies a new enemy that we will talk about soon two wall pulls and of course last but not least the blue onion this was the location where Blues were originally intended to be discovered not the garden of Hope but here once acquired they'd eventually land back at the center point with the other onions finishing out the spiral but we're getting ahead of ourselves to get to them we need to break this wall first and that means getting Rock Pikmin across the river in order to do so we need to get rock Pikmin floating on the lily pad with the leader and this can be done from any of the prior nodes though the shortest distance is to Embark here right where the bombs would be discovered as you float along you throw your Pikmin over and you could toss a leader as well or at least have one walk there through water moving unfazed through the liquid that's lethal to your landlocked Pikmin at this point you can break down the wall and get to the blue Pikmin inside that said before we explore this new section we need to take a look at what happens if any Pikmin or leaders are still left on the lily pad if any passengers are left on the lily pad perhaps because they were forgotten after embarking on an earlier node in the sequence perhaps because they're in the player's party as they're exploring perhaps because they were a rock Pikmin not successfully thrown over to break the gate in front of the blues or perhaps because they were the leader actually doing the throwing they will ride along until the final stop in the lily pad River where they will be dropped off here unless they are blue Pikmin they are trapped there's water on all sides and though the island slopes down and leaders can come and go the Pikmin cannot that said there is a way out there's two circular pillars in the water here and another outcropping of land flanking them with some Ingenuity involving Captain throws the player can get the Pikmin back cross and over to the home Island where they can hey wait a minute this is super familiar isn't it if you've seen the original E3 trailer for Pikmin 3 as much as I have this trailer shot is probably burned into your memory when we looked at this level's gen file this seemed to be the place where this trailer shot made the most sense for example the river is flowing in the correct direction here if this shop were from elsewhere in the region the water would be flowing the wrong way and the lily pads with it in addition it's the only place where this shot makes any sense at any other place along the river either the elevation of the pathing data or the gameplay functionality of a throw like this doesn't line up with what we've seen from the E3 trailer if that shot is in this area this seems to be the place where it would have had to have been taken but there's a problem the direction in which the leaders are thrown is the opposite of what we see in the trailer even in the most ended version of the footage there's not much that can be seen Beyond this encounter as if it's deliberately cut in the trailer it's used to show off the captain throw mechanic Captain Auto plucking after being thrown and also the four new leaders in the game labeled a b c and d though character D would eventually be cut it's notable that there could have been four leaders for Captain throws in the game at this point in time that said this puzzle in its completion only needs three though it could be a bit tedious to do so if we assume that the throw Direction was opposite in the trailer footage from how the area would typically be played just for the sake of demonstration a lot of things fall into place this is a puzzle about rescuing your stray Pikmin and the goal is to get them back into play requiring a whopping three liters to do so while not strictly necessary any Pikmin stuck here in your squad at the end of the day would likely still get back safely it's a way to punish the player for carelessly leaving Pikmin on the lily pad and to put a dent in the number of Pikmin they can have alive and active on the field without first solving this puzzle to get them back into play to get started the player must first throw their Pikmin from the drop-off Island onto the first of two stumps following that they must throw two leaders one of those two leaders throws the other and the Pikmin to the next dump from there the leader at the second stump May throw the Pikmin off to a bigger island finally to get the Pikmin off of the bigger island and back onto the mainland where they'll be accessible the player must Captain throw a leader from the top of the starting Island over to the island where the pikminar and from there throw them back over to the mainland if this sounds like it would be tedious especially taking in the captain throwing mechanics we're used to in Pikmin 3 that's because it would be in Pikmin 3 Captain throwing is not only fairly limited but also much more finicky than say with throwing their Pikmin subordinates this is because throwing a leader is a lot weaker than throwing a Pikmin and this is especially true with vertical throw height presumably to prevent throws that can cause a player to get out of bounds escaping the intended play area that said in the original E3 trailer we see that Captain throwing mechanics were quite a bit different for example Captain throws were notably much higher and even in the shot just before this one we see two leaders thrown up onto a ledge from the tropical forest that they could never reach in the final game still all things considered we can line this up side by side with our shot from that E3 trailer playing this section backward for the sake of footage if we do that it seems to line up perfectly when working on this part of our map our team realized something gameplay elements present in our map also appear in the mission mode area shaded Garden upon close inspection it's not a direct match for our map while a tree stump leader throw puzzle is present the layout of the stumps isn't exactly the same the directions are different there's a lack of lily pads textures don't match and plant types are a little different however the Shaded Garden map in mission mode may have inherited some components from the scrap story mode map such as the stump throwing mechanic or the general biome much like the tropical forest used assets and themes from the garden of Hope the Shaded Garden may have inherited from its story mode counterpart but remained as a mission mode map once the story counterpart was removed tangentally the avogado pointed out that if our marshy river map was present within the final game each non-dlc mission mode area present in the original Pikmin 3 on Wii U would line up with a theme present in each story mode map aside from the formidable Oak the tropical forest and garden of Hope as Springtime backyard themes the Silver Lake and distant as winter snow themes the Thirsty desert and tropical Wilds as summer sand themes the Twilight Hollow and Twilight River as fall Arbor themes and finally the Shaded garden and the scrap Marsh as Wetland River themes while there's no definitive proof that our area was in some way the template for a part of the Shaded Garden it's certainly possible that said the Shaded Garden also uses elements from the caves from Pikmin 2. Perhaps it is overall an homage to spaces that didn't make it into the final game now that we've rescued our stray Pikmin from the final drop-off point it's time to unlock the blue Pikmin as we shatter the gates with our Rock Pikmin we're able to enter this chamber with a blue onion rests here we encounter a new variant of Wally wall which we have dubbed the calcified or Crystal Wally walk after dispatching it with rock Pikmin the player can pluck their blues and begin building their Navy this is one of the strangest sections of the map to me though the rocky wallawagu encounter when initially entering the room can be easily vested with rock Pikmin you could probably skip it and that would leave it as a massive danger towards your fledgling blue population especially since the wall poles on the pond where the blues are encountered might lead one of your earliest Blues directly into the wallywags leaping range if not dealt with on top of that there's a second Wally on the Northern section of this chamber too far away for rock Pikmin to deal with unless the player risks them going swimming based on its Rocky or crystalline design we were unsure what kind of texture would be on his body we can assume it was designed to be a Wally that was best dealt with using Rock Pikmin and without them he is now a massive threat you cannot attack a number since you won't have many blue Pikmin around to deal with him you could use bomb rocks to deal with this foe but they are few in number on this map I don't have a particularly good theory for why this is as it is but regardless the functionality of the room remains intact you collect creatures and pellets to begin building up your blue Army then as you go outside you begin to go through the water collecting more creatures pellets and that submerged fruit from earlier with the blues unlocked from this chamber the player finally has the ability to access some of the completely submerged sections of the game's map from this area and from Beyond there was a cluster of bridge pieces available under the water here just outside of the chamber where Blues are discovered they're used to build this bridge here though it's a bit of a journey to get there blocked initially by this submerged dirt wall it's something that should be breakable only by blue Pikmin but by the laws of having land nearby it probably can be cheesed with earlier Pikmin types if Pikmin 1 speed runs are anything to go on after busting through here the player is faced with more bridges several Skeeter skates and the consequences of their actions flanking the player from both sides are two Canon beetle larva though one of them is the decorated Canon Beetle encountered earlier should the player have already dealt with him he won't provide a problem here the other Beetle which is just a regular Rock thrower will have to be taken care of in order to safely build the bridge this Stone hurling larva rests at the top of this coast and presumably flings rocks down on vulnerable blue Pikmin as they approach he can be flanked by following along the river path and taken out so that all of these Bridge pieces can be brought over and assembled there are two more enemies in the region as well a water dumple and a Toady Blaster and they are guarding Bridge pieces and the penultimate fruit of the area respectively after finishing the bridge you have a clear route to bring the fruit home and with that we've searched the entire River say for an outcropping pond on the left of the map remember that bridge on the west side of the area that I said we'd cross later now's our time to do so well technically we could have done this as soon as the bridge was complete I wanted to tackle the challenges that were external to the main path of the area before moving on to its toughest encounters immediately after Crossing this bridge there is a terrifying chamber full of two spotty bull bears and nine of their juveniles it's sealed Away by a bomb wall though once it opens the player can move into one of the most dangerous Encounters in Pikmin 3. but before we go there we're going to go into what may have at one point been one of the other most dangerous Encounters in Pikmin 3. before we do that let's grab this final fruit from up here after defeating this blister and pushing this box here theoretically it should seal the walkway and let Pikmin and carryable objects pass now in our implementation using the present-day Box model it's too short to fit but it seems like it was supposed to fit really snugly here creating a walkway over theoretically we don't actually have to push it to get our squad over there especially by using captain and Pikmin throws but that's something we'll gloss over for now and address in a minute the entire implementation of this box puzzle was rather odd but I'll talk about that after we come back for now we walk over this box made passageway into this Arena at the end like most Pikmin 3 levels the end goal is a boss that must be bested coming to this arena in the upper left corner we come face to face with this area as never before seen boss the actually wait wait that's just a bug I crawl mat what's he doing here perhaps he was just a placeholder for the boss the fact that there are no hermit crawmads in level could be a sign of this bug-eyed crawmads tend to share areas with their smaller cousins in the final game though perhaps this wasn't always the case and they were more of a differentiated variant of the same base type of enemy maybe another boss was playing for this area but it wasn't yet finished so the crawl mat was put there temporarily for testing purposes perhaps the quiggled lyre klops was once intended to occupy this Arena but after the area was cut he moved over to become the second boss in the garden of Hope alternatively we could have had an entirely original boss occupy this place but maybe that boss never saw the light of day that said could the bug-eyed crawlman have actually been the boss of this area but eventually was turned into and Polished up as a mini boss when the area got scrapped it's totally plausible all of the level design clearly has the player working their way over to this area requiring them to collect blues and then work their way down the river to access this fight frankly it takes more effort to get to the bug-eyed chromat here than it does to get to some of the bosses in the final game with the sand belching mirror slug the chief offender among them let's assume he actually was the boss for the area for a minute the chromat boss was probably pretty far from completion at the point that the specific iteration of the area was from clearly this was an older build of the game presently the crawl mat is a lot simpler than other bosses in the final version and the arena is way way simpler too perhaps at one point it could have been planned for him to emerge from different Holes in the Floor and Ambush players based on his behavior in the current game even still there's no evidence for this at the moment and he remains rather static for an area so late in progression it would really make him seem like a pushover if he was a pushover for so long perhaps instead of buffing him they instead demoted him to a sort of stronger enemy this wouldn't be the first time this happened in the series either as the same sort of downgrade happened in Pikmin 2 with the fire 8 ball blacks being demoted from boss to regular enemy something evidenced by its piccolopedia icon texture size being shrunk in engine from boss to regular enemy and by its name using the more imposing bull blacks title rather than the bulborb title of less powerful grub dogs regardless of the reasoning the crawl mat is clearly in this Boss Arena now and as it stands he is the major goal of the level after steamrolling him with our Pikmin our less than imposing bosses defeated after his Spirit rises from his body the crawl mat drops an item known as test item one much like fruits were represented by test item zero test item 1 seems to represent some sort of progression item perhaps like the data gluttons in the final game what gets really interesting though is the item's model test item 1 appears to be a giant pill-shaped pod with Louie housed inside a common thought among our map Restoration Group is that this is an early stasis pod concept an idea that would evolve into the spacesuit audio sleep function that is present in Pikmin 3's story mode to make Olimar and Louis function as a carriable object what makes things even stranger is that despite all signs pointing towards the bug-eyed cromad being the big boss of the area and test item 1 is its reward there actually is another instance of test item one in the area dropped as a reward for defeating a random Ball Bear in this southern area that we will get to soon clearly whatever it is this item is meant to be more rare or important than the generic Fruit Stand invariant as it is only held by higher level enemies in the Far Corners of the map that said it's unlikely that there are two louies or even that these two test items though identical even represent the same thing could it possibly be some sort of Story related item could this once have been both Olimar and Louis separated in this map or could one of these have possibly been a stand-in for a suit upgrade like we see in the final game hidden across the game's map and the other one represent Louis unfortunately all we can do is speculate as we leave this room I'd like to explain the biggest mystery surrounding this level it's bigger than test item one bigger than the true identity of the boss this mystery spans the entirety of this level actually and like apparently everything else here it's a rabbit hole that only goes deeper the more you look into it here's the situation as mentioned earlier you can reach the boss chamber by throwing leaders in Pikmin and skipping the Box pushing puzzle entirely the thing is this box puzzle is the only thing that is preventing the player from getting to this boss before getting to blue Pikmin all of the shards required to build bridges that would allow you to get to the boss from one foot are found on land and nothing is stopping you from fighting the boss with a squad of lambound Pikmin and then using Wing Pikmin to airlift him in his drops after his defeat back to base in fact pretty much the only thing Blues are really required for at all in this area is the rightmost section of this area which just seems dumb honestly for a blue focused area perhaps this is why this area was shelved why design a blue focused area for the discovery only to have them have almost no function within that area even as essential keys and that's when it hit us this level is from an old build of the game that much is abundantly clear from all the pathing data we know we had five picnic types at this point as evidenced by the onions but exactly how robust were the wing Pikmin at the time of this level's development their abilities may have changed quite a lot in the time between this iteration of the level and the final game we may have been holding this level to 2013 Wing Pikmin standards when these Wing Pikmin are actually from at the very latest summer 2012. if Wing Pikmin were more limited perhaps they couldn't fly off the ground and carry things simultaneously at one point this would mean several Bridge pieces here actually require blues and make this whole area much more blue Reliant it would also help balance out Wing Pikmin considering they are very powerful in the final game and can be used to complete puzzles designed for yellow Pikmin as well as blue Pikmin maybe this was just changed in the final build to show off the processing power of the Wii U in many respects from the juicing scenes to the environment to The plasm Wraith the original Pikmin 3 can be seen as a Wii U Tech demo alternatively perhaps Wing Pikmin could only fly when carrying items or in combat or just for a limited time in general either way it makes significantly less logical sense than having the wing Pikmin able to fly at all times though it may have been how the game was balanced at the time of this map's development and frankly how it had to be in order to have things run well on the Wii if they were designed at that time the only alternative hypothesis I could think of for how Blues could be at all useful on this map is that Wing Pikmin actually came after blue Pikmin but laying out the game's progression like that Sim simply inverts our problem if this were the case there's literally nothing left for Wing Pikmin to do here that Blues cannot do that said it's unclear as to whether or not this was actually the case only speculation based on how this map is designed alongside some other factors for example how the wing Pikmin are depicted behaving in the concept art for Pikmin 3 or the fact that Wing Pikmin do have a few leftover states that allow them to ground for example when riding on lily pads even so it could explain why this level was inevitably cut once Wing Pikmin became more powerful perhaps after switching over to the Wii U this level no longer serves its purpose and blues were moved to the Garden of Hope an area we know went through significant redesigns based on the leftover beta versions in the files of Pikmin 3 Deluxe we now turn our gaze to the final and toughest part of this area a place that our team has nicknamed The Bull bear Den this portion of the area is in itself a solution to another long-standing Pikmin 3 Mystery it explains why the bull bear is so underutilized in the main campaign as it stands this room is full of ball bears and dwarf ball Bears which Patrol its grounds and while ball bears are mostly absent from the main campaign this area features an abundance of these very dangerous predators much as the distant spring did in the original Pikmin unlike their restful counterparts in the distant spring however these beasties are very much active alert and dangerous and this creates a very lethal area of the map though the player can actually first see this part of the map earlier from this bull bear-bearing chamber to the east it's blocked off by a cardboard box which can only be opened from within in order to enter this chamber the player must bomb down this rock wall and bring their squad in through this Northern entrance here they do battle with a whopping nine dwarf Pope bears and two adult bull Bears if that doesn't make things bad enough the area is also home to an enemy named the ogane believed by our team to be an unfinished version of the glint Beetle from Pikmin 2. this time with the ability to distract a player's Pikmin and lead them into danger much as the iridescent Flint Beetle from Pikmin 1 does we asked 3D boy to sculpt this model-less enemy and this is what he came up with Ledges in the area provide the player with two groups of five bomb rocks and five more can be found on the ground though to get to them the player must be Swift and skillful considering the great dangers that lurk in this chamber that said The Ledges also provide players with three carriable berries that can be used much like bomb rocks these berries serve to distract enemies something that seems to be a great asset in this dangerous chamber after fighting their way through this chamber the player is rewarded with the final drop of the area another test item won pushing away this box they have a clear shot now to bring the second Louis pill home completing the entirety of this area this area answers so many questions about the overall flow and structure of Pikmin 3. knowing that this is the lost story area even that such an area existed at all put so many things into perspective from the moment the tree branches pulled in the Twilight River and the player receives the call from Louis the final game feels like it Sprints to the Oak only taking a pit stop in the garden of hope to pick up Blues as if by obligation if this area was present after the Twilight River it would fix the pacing adding this area back into the campaign could dramatically help with Pikmin 3's biggest flaw the underutilization of blue Pikmin and the overall short length of the campaign by adding an entire new main area into the mix Pikmin 3 with a fin on release definitively the longest Pikmin game in terms of main areas not taking into account the extra padding that caves add by literally stopping or reducing the flow of time our uncovered area already takes a significant amount of time to complete when first exploring and considering that what we had found was probably an early iteration to the factors like the split onions a lack of area Transitions and no pathing data the version of the area that was actually shown at E3 would likely have been significantly more developed especially considering it was up and running just a little over a year before the game's launch regarding Pikmin 3 showing at the E3 2012 event there was actually a Hands-On demo that attendees got to play this demo showcased a playable early build of the tropical forest collect treasure mission mode stage this stood out to us as if we could find this demo it would be an incredibly simple way to try and date our level if the E3 mission mode stage was still intact within the game's files we could compare the structure and naming conventions with our level and get the good idea of how old our level was in comparison Pikmin 3's development spans over a decade so many things have changed between different builds of the game one of the more major ones being path notes there's also some secondary markers such as Bridge naming conventions onion parameters and stray Pikmin parameters if we could just match one of these variables up with our story mode map then we would have a slightly better picture of when this level was scrapped in development lucky enough this E3 demo still exists hidden within the files of Pikmin 3 for Wii U discovered by gun of the Hun after a bit of digging with this find davo and Ghana started combing through all available information to see if there was anything to be learned in this lost demo Gunna pointed out that while small the bridge naming scheme did vary from this demo to the final build more closely resembling the naming scheme found in beta levels such as the beta Garden of Hope and r on Earth level this is far from conclusive evidence of it being built around the same time as the E3 demo but is almost certainly a big clue that at least suggests that this story mode level was still being worked on in the months leading up to E3 2012. and it makes sense that it would be before being scrapped this was the proper home area for the blues this was the fifth area in the campaign that pads out the runtime before the formidable Oak this was the level that filled the world map screens marshy unhighlighted region approximately where Europe would be in the real world a space that could easily have been used for the formidable Oak without needing to add the extra land mass that the area occupies in the final game but for some reason it wasn't a constant source of speculation it just makes so much sense that this place would slot in here this area would complete the seasons with not only the classic winter spring summer and fall represented but also the wet and dry seasons through the dichotomy created between this place and the formidable Oak as for the enemies this is the home for so many unused or underutilized foes in the final game including Crystal wallywags armored chair grubs bubble blowhogs decorated Cannon beetles watery blue Hogs sheer wigs and the Mysterious ogane this is a glimpse into an ambitious early version of Pikmin 3. we had finally found it but there's still that haunting question why was it scrapped from the very moment we first discovered it our Unearthed area has given us a glimpse into a world of pre-release Pikmin 3 and we gotta see a lot of things that have changed since that time some of these changes are rather meaningless aside from quality of life for example the levels being planned with five onions rather than a single Master onion to make pulling Pikmin from it easier could this level have been removed because there wasn't enough time to fully polish the area up to the standards of present-day Pikmin 3 or was it cut for simplification and streamlining of gameplay this is something Pikmin 3 suffers from a lot the rounding of corners and smoothing of content in favor of a manicured mechanically perfect experience rather than a long but clunky one its largest contrast between Pikmin 2 and Pikmin 3 from a fundamental design level this could have been the reason it was trimmed but the more we looked into this level the more it seemed to have been scrapped due to a fundamental incompatibility with Pikmin 3 as it stands rather than a lack of Polish looking at it this level was simply designed for a different game than the one we received as discussed earlier the wing Pikmin must have once functioned dramatically differently in order for this map to have surfed its purpose that said they're not the only type that seems to have drastically changed there's a distinct lack of electricity in this map this alongside some other discoveries that we came across during this project discoveries that will prob probably find their way into a future Unearthed video implies that at this point in development yellow Pikmin may have been used solely for their High throw height digging ability and bombs maybe the carryable distraction berries from the bull bear Den were just something else for yellows to do at this point giving them more carryable items to use and once electricity returned they were axed for the main game maybe the proximity bomb that made it into the final game was also once intended solely for yellows either way if two of the five main campaign Pikmin types were fundamentally So Different At this point in development perhaps these changes necessitated major redesigns that ultimately led to this map being scrapped on top of this there's other things such as The Disappearance of character D our fourth leader from the game shown off at E3 2012 at the same time that this map and the copiots were first presented perhaps this map and some of its more difficult elements were cropped and trimmed with the game as it evolved perhaps it was a combination of all of the previous reasons that led to this map being shelved and the garden of Hope serving double duty as the homo both the game's second and final Pikmin types regardless of why it was ultimately scrapped this map had gone missing for years it was a long-standing source of mystery and discussion in the Pikmin Community shown off at E3 But ultimately gone from the final game many Mysteries sprung from the at times almost sloppy removal of this map from the game clearly an important part pulled out from the larger hole leaving the game fundamentally unfinished now thanks to the effort of our team this map is once again playable but I'll leave that for a gun of the hunt to talk about in the follow-up video that's going live on his channel not long after this one so this is where our story ends we've Unearthed and resurrected the playable area that we all thought was lost the time along the way each of us on the project treaded paths that brought our head spaces closely in line with the mindset of the game's developers as each task required us to think and problem solve just like the Pikmin team themselves and thus we happily can say after months of work for the first time since E3 2012. welcome home to Pikmin 3 River area it's so nice to finally meet you this project would not have been possible without the following people data minor and level engineer he's making this map available on his channel go check it out davogato the map artist and modeler 3D boy the physical modeler wiggle a man editor waffles creator of the instrument pickpack El camo creator of the Pikmin 3 Deluxe necromancy pack which was the basis for the restored AI of the armored sharecrops all of my patreons during this time molcakofa tentacles Von Briner Fernando Arista zepson Avis Gary the gamer and everyone who stuck around and supported our team during this time and of course anyone who took the time out of the day to watch this massive project my name is Vantage emblem thank you so much for supporting this project we've been working on for months and I hope to see you guys very soon [Music] [Music]

Channel: VantageEmblem

Views: 147,587

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Id: 62eagS2w6Co

Length: 64min 46sec (3886 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 18 2023