Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that apply special rules on a gameplay session. However, although many gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the exact same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the whole world. But if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” file where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires full stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and generates a third save file that combines the states of the first two files.

This creates new problems, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable build of the game that fails to load some locations. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that allows Link to phase through the world. A few would find these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to defeat many of the game's bosses, but the battles look painful. The video version of his journey spares the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 straight. The final villain battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He is unable to always clone objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer banned over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.