Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Hours Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although many gamers have tried to complete the game using just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the most fragile tool in the entire world. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple explanation is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” file where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character acquires full stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That causes new problems, though. The merged file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the title that refuses to load some areas. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the one from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to phase through the environment. Some would consider these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still just a stick. He is unable to always duplicate items during the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, he manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned over a thousand people in his live stream. RIP.