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

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose unique rules on a gameplay session. However, although numerous players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the game with a one stick—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly important when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. But if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third save file that merges the states of the first two files.

That creates new problems, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the game that refuses to open some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he cannot break any tools he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the durability problem, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of items to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that enables him to phase through the environment. A few would consider these methods reason to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an incredible 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all just a stick. He can't necessarily clone items during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the user to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.