Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous gamers have attempted to finish the game with only a stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the title using only bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the game with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. But if the stick shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character gains maximum endurance and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the software to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and generates a third game file that combines the states of the original two.

This causes new problems, though. The merged save file has a Link that never obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the title that fails to open some areas. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the software partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the character he transfers between universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a weak weapon that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that allows him to clip through the environment. Some would find these methods grounds to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the viewer endure the entire fights, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over a thousand people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.