Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply special rules on a playthrough. However, although many gamers have attempted to complete the game using just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to beat the game with a single stick—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the game using only explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with zero stamina. A one-branch run, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him completing the intro and initial starting area, and this character gains full endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a third save file that merges the states of the original two.

That creates fresh issues, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that fails to open certain locations. As with everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he cannot break any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the character he transfers between universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that renders encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to improve his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to clip through the world. A few would find these means grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The video version of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 hours. The final villain battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all only a piece of wood. He can't always clone objects during the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, he does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final strike, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer banned over a thousand people in his live stream. RIP.