Streaming Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous players have attempted to finish the game using only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a one stick—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for such challenge runs, like the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire durability system, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character acquires full endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a third game file that combines the states of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, though. The fused file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the title that fails to open certain locations. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the character he transfers across dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all possible friction. The branch is still a weak item that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of items to improve his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows him to clip through the world. A few would consider these means reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look painful. The video version of his journey spares the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last several long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all just a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software compels the player to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.