Streaming Star Spends 37 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 Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. But if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires full stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the software to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a new game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This creates new issues, however. The fused file has a Link that never obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy version of the game that refuses to open certain areas. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would find these means grounds to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The video version of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all just a stick. He is unable to always clone objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than a thousand people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.