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

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a playthrough. However, while many gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a one branch—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the story with no energy. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character acquires full endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct the software to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That causes new issues, however. The fused save file has a Link that did not obtain the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the title that refuses to open certain areas. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is programmed so that he cannot break any tools he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the Link he pulls across universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is still a weak item that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also makes use of a glitch that enables Link to phase through the world. A few would consider these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He further implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look painful. The video edit of his quest spares the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple long hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still just a stick. He is unable to always clone items midway the fight.

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

In the end, the streamer removed over a thousand users in his live stream. Rest in peace.