Streaming Personality Spends 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a playthrough. However, although many gamers have attempted to finish the game with just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the very same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with zero energy. A one-branch run, though, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability system, which is especially important when working with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple explanation is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and generates a new game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This creates fresh problems, however. The merged file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the title that refuses to open some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls between universes is the one from the start of the game. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is still a weak weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would find these methods grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He further implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban one fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The video version of his journey spares the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 straight. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still only a stick. He can't always clone objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the player to use the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.