Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose unique rules on a playthrough. However, while many gamers have attempted to complete the game using only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the game with a single branch—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the game solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no stamina. A single stick run, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the entire world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple explanation is exploits. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” file where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this character acquires maximum endurance and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses partway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a third save file that combines the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh problems, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable build of the title that refuses to load some areas. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then updates the software partway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the durability problem, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The branch is still a ineffective item that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He also makes use of a glitch that enables him to clip through the world. Some would consider these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The video edit of his journey spares the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a blessing when a few of them last multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still only a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate items during the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 people in his live stream. Rest in peace.