Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while numerous players have attempted to complete the game using only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the very same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the time he went through the title using only bombs or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when working with the weakest weapon in the entire world. But if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple explanation is glitches. The full answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this character acquires maximum stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That causes fresh issues, however. The merged save file has a Link that did not acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable build of the title that refuses to open some locations. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he transfers across universes is the one from the start of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is still a weak weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a matter of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that allows him to phase through the environment. Some would find these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He further implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, establishing an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat many of the game's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take several hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to use the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.