Streaming Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the game using only bombs or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the story with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” file where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this character acquires full stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and generates a third game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That creates fresh issues, though. The merged save file has a Link that never obtain the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the game that fails to load certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the Link he transfers across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of items to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that enables him to clip through the environment. Some would consider these means reason to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat many of the game's bosses, but the battles appear grueling. The video version of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the entire fights, which is a blessing when some of them take several long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a stick. He can't always clone objects during the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game forces the user to use the legendary weapon as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed over 1,000 users in his live stream. Rest in peace.