Streaming Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous gamers have attempted to complete the game using just a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for such challenge runs, like the time he played the game solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the game with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest weapon in the whole world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple explanation is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup file has him going through the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this Link acquires full stamina and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new save file that merges the states of the original two.

That causes fresh problems, though. The merged file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable version of the game that refuses to open certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He starts the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he transfers across universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that allows Link to phase through the environment. A few would find these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles appear painful. The video edit of his quest spares the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He can't always clone objects midway the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the user to use the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.