Streaming Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a one stick—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to beat the story with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. But if the stick breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this character acquires maximum stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a new game file that combines the states of the original two.

This causes fresh problems, however. The merged file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy version of the game that refuses to open some areas. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he cannot damage any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the character he transfers across universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is still a weak item that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful supply of items to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that allows him to clip through the world. A few would find these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through several of the game's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube version of his journey spares the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily clone items midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, he does defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

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