Twitch Personality Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply special rules on a gameplay session. However, although many gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to beat the story with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the whole world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this Link acquires full stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the software to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a new save file that merges the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh issues, however. The merged file has a Link that never acquired the ability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the game that fails to open some areas. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of items to improve his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He also employs a bug that enables him to clip through the environment. A few would consider these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an incredible 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software compels the player to use the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned over a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.