Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have tried to complete the game using just a stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the time he went through the title using only bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with zero stamina. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup file has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That creates fresh issues, however. The merged file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the game that fails to open certain areas. Like 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 game midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the Link he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables Link to clip through the environment. A few would consider these methods grounds to question the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll remove a fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The video version of his quest spares the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still just a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone items during the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to use the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.