Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while many players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a single branch—meaning, the exact same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he went through the game solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A single stick playthrough, though, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the entire world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he progresses normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains full endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a new save file that combines the conditions of the original two.

This creates new issues, however. The fused file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable version of the title that fails to load some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the software partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he cannot damage any tools he wields, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the Link he pulls across universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eradicates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a weak weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that allows Link to clip through the environment. A few would consider these methods reason to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The video version of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them take several long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone items during the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the player to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over 1,000 people in his live stream. Rest in peace.