Twitch Personality Spends 37 Hours Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although many players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a one branch—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the story with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple explanation is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this character acquires maximum stamina and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third save file that combines the conditions of the original two.

That creates fresh problems, however. The fused file has a Link that did not obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an unstable build of the game that fails to open certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of the hero is programmed so that he cannot break any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the Link he transfers across universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that allows Link to phase through the environment. Some would find these means reason to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban one fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to defeat many of the game's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The video version of his journey spares the audience endure the entire fights, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is still only a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate objects midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the player to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed more than a thousand people in his Twitch chat. RIP.