Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>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 debuted, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while many gamers have tried to finish the game with just a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for such challenge runs, such as the time he played the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to beat the game with no energy. A one-branch run, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability system, which is especially important when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the actual file, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this Link acquires full stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the software to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a third save file that combines the states of the first two files.

This creates new issues, however. The merged save file has a Link that never acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the game that fails to load some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the character he transfers across universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to clip through the environment. Some would find these means grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last several hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still just a stick. He can't always clone items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.