Streaming Personality Spends 37 Hours Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to defeat the story with no energy. A one-branch run, though, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character gains maximum stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a new game file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, though. The merged file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the title that refuses to open some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a weak item that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that enables Link to clip through the world. Some would find these methods reason to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain battle, which depletes the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still only a stick. He is unable to always duplicate items during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned over a thousand users in his live stream. Rest in peace.