Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only 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 self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while many players have attempted to finish the game with only a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he went through the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A single stick run, though, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. But if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains full endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third game file that combines the states of the original two.

That creates fresh problems, however. The fused save file has a Link that never obtain the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the game that fails to open certain areas. As with everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the software partway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he cannot break any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the character he transfers between universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that enables Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He also implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer manages to defeat many of the game's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a blessing when some of them take several long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which depletes the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate objects during the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. RIP.