Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have attempted to complete the game using just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the game solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to beat the story with no stamina. A one-branch run, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole world. But if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple explanation is glitches. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this Link acquires full stamina and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a third save file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

This causes new problems, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the game that refuses to load certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any tools he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the Link he transfers across universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of items to improve his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to phase through the environment. A few would find these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He further implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through many of the game's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube version of his journey spares the audience endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take several hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate objects during the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, he manages to overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.