Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although many gamers have attempted to complete the game using just a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he played the game using only bombs or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the whole game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple explanation is glitches. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this Link gains full stamina and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a new game file that combines the states of the first two files.

That causes new issues, however. The merged file has a Link that never acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy version of the game that fails to open certain areas. As with other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the Link he transfers between universes is the one from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also uses a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear grueling. The video edit of his journey spares the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily clone objects during the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned over a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.