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

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that impose special rules on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous gamers have attempted to finish the game with just a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the game with a one stick—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole game. But if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character acquires maximum endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a third save file that combines the states of the original two.

That creates fresh issues, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the title that fails to load certain locations. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he transfers across dimensions is the one from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to phase through the environment. A few would find these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove a fan from his live stream, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles appear painful. The video version of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take several long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone items during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final 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, PointCrow removed more than a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.