Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, although numerous players have tried to complete the game using only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the very same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he played the game solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch playthrough, though, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple explanation is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the intro and initial starting area, and this Link gains full endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This causes new issues, however. The merged file has a Link that did not acquired the capability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the title that refuses to load certain locations. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the software midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the character he transfers across dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that renders encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that enables Link to phase through the environment. A few would find these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, establishing an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The video version of his quest spares the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still only a stick. He is unable to always duplicate objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned over 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. RIP.