Streaming Personality Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. However, while many gamers have attempted to complete the game using only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, such as the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch run, though, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains full stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the game to open an automatic 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.

This causes new problems, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the game that fails to load certain areas. As with 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 game midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he wields, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the one from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is still a ineffective item that renders encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of items to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that enables him to clip through the world. Some would consider these means reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The video version of his journey spares the viewer sit through the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate items midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.