Streaming Personality Spends 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the time he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the story with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest weapon in the whole game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains full endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new save file that merges the states of the original two.

This creates fresh issues, though. The merged file has a Link that did not obtain the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the game that fails to load certain areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is programmed so that he cannot break 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 problem, as the Link he transfers between universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that enables him to phase through the world. Some would consider these means reason to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to get through several of the game's bosses, but the battles appear painful. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible stick is still just a stick. He is unable to always duplicate items midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer banned over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.