Twitch Star Dedicates 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, enthusiasts would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. However, while many players have attempted to complete the game using only a stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a single branch—specifically, the very same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for such challenge runs, like the time he went through the title solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest tool in the whole game. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this character gains full stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the software to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a new save file that combines the states of the original two.

This causes new problems, though. The fused file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the game that refuses to open certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software partway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of Link is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls between universes is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is still a ineffective item that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of consumables to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a glitch that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these methods grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove a fan from his live stream, creating an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles appear painful. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He is unable to necessarily duplicate objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than a thousand people in his live stream. RIP.