Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a single branch—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for such challenge runs, such as the time he played the title using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to beat the story with no stamina. A single stick run, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially important when working with the weakest tool in the entire world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” file where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains full endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and pauses partway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and generates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That creates fresh problems, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the game that fails to open certain areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a weak item that renders encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that enables Link to clip through the world. Some would find these methods reason to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still just a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software compels the player to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.