Twitch Personality Spends 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a playthrough. Yet, while many players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a single branch—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, like the time he played the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with zero energy. A single stick run, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole world. But if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” file where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this character gains full endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third game file that merges the states of the original two.

That causes fresh issues, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the game that fails to load certain areas. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then updates the software midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any tools he wields, likely to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the Link he transfers across dimensions is the one from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is still a weak item that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would find these means reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove one fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the player to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than a thousand users in his live stream. Rest in peace.