Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Hours Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while many gamers have tried to finish the game with just a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he played the title using only explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the game with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly important when working with the most fragile tool in the whole world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” file where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character acquires full endurance and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a third game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This creates new problems, however. The fused file has a Link that did not acquired the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the game that refuses to open certain areas. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a situation 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 one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The branch is still a ineffective weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables him to clip through the world. A few would consider these means reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The video edit of his journey spares the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them last several long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all only a stick. He can't always duplicate objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.